Wild and Playful York Central

17th February 2020 by Phil Bixby

Event held at York Explore, Wednesday 12th February 2020

Nineteen of us turned up at York Explore (many thanks to Barbara Swinn for use of this excellent space – home to all sorts of creativity judging by the stuff which surrounded us) to share ideas and creative thinking about the outdoor, public bits of our proposed Co-Owned Neighbourhood. And we did it playfully.

Starting with Pictionary – we drew stuff on the tables to reflect what we’d like to see / hear / smell in the neighbourhood, and we then wrote on cards which put in words what we thought the pictures showed. We then split into groups and used these cards as tools. We spent some time thinking about less appealing stuff – what are we likely to end up with, whether we like it or not? Delivery vans, money-grabbing developers and similar stuff immediately came to mind, and was written down. We then used the cards to identify, with each issue, where we wanted to be and how we might use the good stuff to build a bridge across to this. After a lively set of discussions we came back together to talk through how those bridges would get built.

Jai Pic .jpg

We then did a round of “when I go to York Central, in my suitcase I will pack…” which created a fun A-Z for our neighbourhood:-

A lot of children to make the streets busy

BRIEFCASE full of tools

CHAIRS so I can sit outside and talk with people

DRIVER of screws

EARS so I can hear the birdsong

FRUIT TREE for every household

GARDEN seeds – for wildflowers

HELLO’s for the people I meet

An INTERN (well paid) to research the neighbourhood and tell others

JAMJARS so I can make use of the fruit from the trees

KAYAK for my river commute to work

LOADS of chocolate

MUSIC of all kinds

NUMEROUS ideas to turn inequality on its head

ORANGES to make marmalade

PEACE and quiet

QUOSH for hot summer days

RIGOROUS RECYCLING

SWIMMING pool

TRAMPOLENE and a TRESTLE TABLE for events

A spirit of UNITY

VIEWS of special things

The back-end of a FOX running off into the landscaping

Lots of YUMMY food

All of it being ZERO carbon

IMG_2114.jpeg

We finished off by agreeing on our next steps:-

  • Let’s get local children involved by working with schools in the area (St.Barnabas and Poppleton Road) to get their participation in shaping the place

  • We have an application submitted for Community Led Housing start-up finding – as soon as we hear more about this let’s think about what we can do with these resources

  • We’ve been looking at “meanwhile” use of The Gatehouse on Leeman Road – let’s pursue this and explore how we can build links with the local community and use the place to articulate ideas.

Previous
Previous

Citu Online with Chris Thompson

Next
Next

Online session with Neil Murphy from TOWN