Your Park Your Voice Event!

Thanks to everyone who came along to our event on Saturday – we had a fantastic and lively discussion about Old Dagenham Park’s potential and how residents and the council can work together to make improvements and bring new life and energy to the park.

We spoke about the results from the survey we conducted at the end of last year and how we plan to turn what residents have told us into reality – by installing outdoor gym equipment, improving the multi-use games courts, adding new seats and benches, and improving the park’s biodiversity. Attendees told us what gym equipment they wanted to see, where they wanted to see new footpaths and where they wanted new benches to go. If you weren’t able to join and want to share your ideas, add them to our ideas board here.

We were joined by Laura Collins, who works for Go Parks London, and had a great chat about starting a Friends of Old Dagenham Park group. Laura spoke about her experience of setting up her own friends group in her local park and shared some great advice, including:

• Making sure you can keep in touch by setting up a Facebook page or a WhatsApp group of local park users
• Building an email list of people who are interested in your group which can be handy for sending out notices of meetings, upcoming events and for fundraising
• Starting slow and building your activities over time as your group expands. Laura gave some examples of the events and activities her own Friends of the Park group have organised, including regular gardening sessions, bake sales, and an outdoor cinema!

Attendees shared their ideas for how they might be able to contribute to the park’s improvement. Amongst the great ideas were activities/artwork to encourage kids to use litter bins and taking drone videos of the park as improvement go in to show how it has changed. If you weren’t able to join but have some ideas for how you want to get involved, add them to our ideas board here!

Finally, we spoke about what events and activities people want to see in the park.

As local park users, you know what events and activities will attract people to the park, make it a more welcoming place for everyone in your community, and bring a new lease of life and enthusiasm to Old Dagenham Park. And so, we will be bringing together a group of local park user to form the Activate Panel! who will help us decide what events and activities will have the most positive impact on the park and the local community.

If you are interested in taking part in the Activate Panel, please express interest by filling out this form here.

You can also sign up to our Old Dagenham Park ‘Heart of the Community’ project on the Citizens Alliance Network website here to stay updated.