Last week we had our kick off gathering for 5 wannabe Ginnel Gardeners from across Heaton ward in Bradford as part of Nature’s Way. Pioneers have stepped up to clean up rubbish, tame weeds and nurture nature across 5 snickets, back alleyways and corners across Bradford over the next 6 months.
Through our peer group we’ll cheerlead and champion for our ginnel gardeners. Combining monthly meet ups with inspiration and Q&A with local resident and expert gardeners, sharing knowledge and guidance from our council partners. Our pioneers will swap stories and share experiences to bolster door knocking, clean ups and overcome barriers that so often lead to inaction when the initial small steps people want to take aren’t supported.
Enjoying Daal & Rice at our Kick Off and Nature’s Way goody bag!
Each with their own vision for transformation, our peer group members deserve to be celebrated, because it’s hard stepping up. We have lived through decades of being challenged before we even begin ‘who gave you permission?’ and ‘what if something happens, who will take responsibility?’ the sense of ‘public’ in public space has been severely diminished or extinguished entirely. I’m not saying those questions don’t need to be asked, but we need to embrace a new way of thinking about and the creation of an enabling culture across our neighbourhood public spaces. If we want to begin to tackle our collective long list of impending crises such as biodiversity loss, mental wellbeing, climate change alongside ever shrinking council budgets then we need to do things radically different. But overturning these deeply held belief systems and cultures within our communities goes far beyond ‘project working’ and is far more personal.
We often think of our work as supporting people to find and flex their civic muscles. First coined through our experiences supporting parents to run a play street where they live for the first time. Peer groups of community members unlock a particular kind of action inspired by shared experiences and locally rooted accountability. (You can read more on the power of peer groups via our good friends at Huddlecraft.) It’s within this safe environment where people can find brave spaces to share their motivations (and frustrations) about where they live, voice their vision for change and begin to plan and take action together.
For some peers nature is their whole life compass — memories of their children’s childhood, they’re deeply driven to enable their neighbours to experience this too.
For others it’s about pride (and frustration) for the place they call home, showing others they can stand up to those dropping litter and reclaim ownership of these useful snickets and alleyways.
For others the pull of nature is it’s power to help us regulate within the chaos of modern family life.
You can see some of the spaces each peer is trying to tackle below. Many of these spaces are already thriving nature spaces, with multiple species already enjoying life here. But how might we find a balance in creating a space that can also support the neighbours to thrive too? How can we tame nature whilst also embracing it’s messiness and learning to notice and love what it brings? How might we shift the dial and expectation (across different cultures) in terms of what a cared for space looks like?
Spaces beyond the doorsteps each Ginnel Gardener would like to tackle
We hope we can support the peers to take small steps towards the spaces they want to see beyond their doorsteps over the next few months. It might be messy and stop — start, reflecting the rhythm of people’s lives and nature. But we hope when change happens it will feel different, be genuine resident led action and the beginning of many more journeys into citizenship.