• 2 months ago
The new friends group was set up in April of this year and they have big plans for the Blackpool park and the group is looking for more people, funding and support to put their plans into action.
The chair of the Friends of Revoe Park is Beverley Peacock, she has lived down the road from the Blackpool park for a long time and is a regular visitor. She picks up her grandchildren from Revoe Park on a frequent basis and she was always seeing litter and dog fouling. She had to go in everyday with a carrier bag and clean up the litter in the playground area and put it in the bins.
After complaining to the council she decided to take things into her own hands.
Transcript
00:00Yeah it's perfect, so if you could just introduce yourself and your position with the Friends of
00:05Revel Park in Blackpool. Hi I'm Beverly Peacock, I'm chairperson of the Friends of Revel Park group
00:12in Blackpool and we've been going since about April. Yeah yeah perfect, what was the initial
00:22inspiration behind starting the group and your connection to the park? I'm a local person,
00:29I only live around the corner so I fetch my grandchildren and minded children down to the
00:35park. My issues were mainly dog fouling, litter, broken bottles which were a main concern in the
00:47play area. I used to have to go in every day with a carrier bag and pick it up and put it in the
00:53bins and I complained to the council a lot about it and decided that instead of keep complaining
01:00and not a lot getting done, I have to take action which is why I started to set up the Friends group.
01:09Yeah, what are the main things that the Friends group want to address in the park?
01:15Litter, the play equipment needs, looking at and fixing, we want to open up the community garden
01:25more and get that more friendly for people to come in and get involved in growing their own
01:35vegetables and helping tidy it up really. Yeah, you talked about the community hut
01:45where you have your meetings for the group, how often do you have the meetings and what
01:49are you hoping to accomplish with the hut? We've just held a meeting in the community hut,
01:55we've only just got the keys for it so it was a quick go in and brush off all the cobwebs and
02:01hold the meeting that day. The first one was last Friday I think it was,
02:08our next meeting is the 21st of November. It was a place for us, we want to open it up and
02:17serve refreshments in the park, get coffees and teas for people that are coming,
02:24a place that people can sit and meet and talk and perhaps find out the information that they
02:30may need to know. That's not going to happen straight away obviously because we need to do
02:37the hut up. So where can people find the group? We have a Facebook page, Revel Park Friends Group
02:50and Friends of Revel Park. The Revel Park Friends Group is the open page, the other one
02:57unfortunately I made private and which is a bit harder to find I think.
03:05So you've got you know what you want to do with the park and the group and stuff like that,
03:11what do you need in terms of groups to join the group and funding and stuff?
03:16We need support from the local community, more people to become involved in volunteering,
03:28doesn't have to be a lot of volunteering, an hour a week, an hour a month, anything that can help
03:37and painters, decorators to help do the hut up. Ideas of what people want in the park,
03:47what they want to see, what they want out in the bigger park. I don't know what else.
04:00So you said you were hoping to do some stuff for the school?
04:04Yes, I want to get the school, there's a couple of local nurseries as well around here,
04:11there's one at the football ground and one a little bit further down that I would like to
04:16get involved. Get them going in the community garden and have their own little plots so they
04:25can grow vegetables or plants or whatever you want to. So you want it to be like a community?
04:33It is a community garden and it's a lovely park that can be made much better if everybody got
04:44involved. Yeah, I think that's good. Brilliant. Good, because I'm sorry, I talk a lot with...

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