Second Workshop in the ‘pool exhibition in St. George’s Hall (07.02.09)

[tomke]

Settled down

People have settle in! Good news! They start to think about how move on from where they have located themselves on the map. A cleaner city is an issue. More bin men are demanded to work in the city. Other people brandish the cleanliness of Singapore as an example to follow: if Singapore can do it, we should be able to do it also. However, and well spotted, one must start first to change oneself to convince others: “You should not drop it (rubbish) in the first place!” Civic design is suggested by coming back to reminiscent equipments of the past: the overhead railway turned into a monorail for public transport, for example. Not more space for the young people is requested, but stated that there is none, and the absences of green space in the city centre pointed out. The settlement is getting somewhere. A people plan seems now possible.
The amount of stickies on the present map of Liverpool indicating diaries, green spaces around schools, even tennis courts and disappeared churches has grown exponentially! People start also to look to change Liverpool’s destiny as a city by developing networks. Someone has written along the whole large poster: Liverpool needs a green corridor. It meanders through suggestions to sign up, if you want to grow your own food in Liverpool, while others had already stated that one year is too long to wait for an allotment. And who says it is only one year! I know that it takes five to get a plot at the allotment next to Shorefields School. Some ask for soul mates to work together. Space is becoming short to contribute on this panel. People assemble around the table between the future and the past to discuss the present. Families, elderly and young people, men, women, all talk about their experience with food and environment in Liverpool. Experts on the subjects as no other expert could.
The workshop has united eight women — why are women so prominent when it comes to work for the bettering of the general well-being? Are they more responsible citizens than men? — and the exchange about how to make more people participate and network is very effective. Different skills come together, all want the same: to facilitate the access to information that brings communities throughout the city into contact. LCVS is not enough, neither a portal on the Internet, because nothing can replace face-to-face contact.
How the Growing Granby Project can help other projects of the kind? What about the vacant and derelict space in the city or the sloap: space left over after planning? How can that be that there is left over space after careful planning? Who to ask, if space that seems to have no other value than just to be there, could not be transformed by and for the community? Wild flower planting could make many such spaces at least more beautiful, other places could be turned into allotments, … There is no shortage of ideas, enthusiasm and a will to make a change for the better.
There will be more meetings to come, the Duncan Society talking about health in the city, the Slow Food Association will talk about slow bread, even the Lord Mayor will come on the 13th of February to see how his people make a plan… Come together!