Social PARKS: Urban green-space as a focus for connecting communities and research
Funding Body
Principal Investigator
Rebecca Wade, University of Albertay, Dundee
Co-investigator
Researchers
Andy Milligan (Environmental Design, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee, Ian Smith (Director of the Cities Research Centre, University of the West of England, Lian Scholes (Urban Pollution Research Centre, Middlesex) and Jo Vergunst (Anthropology, Aberdeen)
This interdisciplinary group has been asking the following questions:
1. What do we know about these spaces?
What is the ‘value’ of green space over other land use types and the added value of water (or other significant features) within parks?
How can we incorporate different ‘typologies’ of these kinds of spaces in to our research without losing the diversity and richness of notions about what parks and green-spaces are?
How does our existing knowledge from our collective projects begin to explain how local parks might affect health and well-being? And what do we know about how these spaces might not only frame behaviour but change behaviour too?
2. How are they changing?
What is the adaptive capacity of communities in the face of climate change?
Can we identify the role of such neighbourhood/community level green spaces in enabling communities/individuals to change their behaviour (or not) in the light of climate change issues?
3. What does the future hold for urban parks and green-space?
What new roles should/can parks and urban green-space play in generating greater community cohesion in the ‘Big Society’?
Kate Pahl has been conducting ethnographic research in Clifton Park, Rotherham and Victoria Park, Rawmarsh, to look at the ways in which parks support interaction and also how parks affect and change behaviour.
In Victoria Park, Rawmarsh, Kate has been walking around the park with young people and with the youth service. She has collected some examples of language and meaning making in the park drawing on research by young people on bike stunts, and other multimodal meaning making practices.Her work supports the view that young people’s meaning making practices are spatially located and involve a focus on place, space and identity.
In Clifton Park Kate Pahl and Abigail Hackett have been looking at the way the park supports family literacy and language practice. Abigail Hackett has been regularly walking with families in Clifton Park to find out how they use the park and what they like about it.
We plan to hold an exhibition in Victoria Park, Rawmarsh, shortly, in which findings from the project will be projected against the side of the Youth Centre wall with the Youth Service in Rawmarsh.
