Access to green space and nature is crucial

Sheffield Green Spaces Forum had a relaunch this year, with a new committee and a new chair: Ted Talbot, who manages Manor Fields Park and other green spaces around the Manor for the Green Estate social enterprise. He says the city is very lucky to have nearly 100 voluntary ‘Friends’ or similar groups helping to look after those green spaces, but says they are very much in need of help.

“Those austerity cuts have come to these supportive folk too,” he says. “They might need some health and safety information, or maybe just three or four wheelbarrows to carry out a task. But that kind of support is just falling away.”

There’s been a discussion for many years about how some progressive companies have budgets to help improve their local environment, and how lots of people in Sheffield are keen for opportunities to volunteer, often on physical tasks, to improve their local parks and countryside.

Wouldn’t it be great to tie those things together, to maybe start a database of companies, potential volunteers and jobs needing to be done in green spaces around the city, so the city can find a way to maintain its parks and woodlands when they’re needed more than ever?

The Green Spaces Forum brings together local volunteer groups, in a meeting space provided by Sheffield University, and Ted says the volunteers of the forum are desperately in need of help.

“We need some administrative support to help us communicate well, along with some kind of digital presence and decent website,” he says. “Our green spaces are not joined up at the moment, and we want to be able to galvanise our great volunteers and supporters, but at present there’s no mechanism to make that happen.”

As part of the Friends of Wardsend Cemetery group, Howard Bayley travels across the city from his home in the Porter Valley to help promote and maintain the beautiful cemetery near Owlerton, designated as a heritage and local wildlife site.

He says Friends groups on the west of the city are better able to cope with cuts to the city’s ranger and parks teams as their members often have the skills and contacts to bid for funding and bring in donations from local people.

“The Friends of the Porter Valley did a fantastic job of raising money, I think £750,000 for the Forge Dam work, they always do, but they live in an area where they’re able to do that. I couldn’t begin to think about that in Southey or Shirecliffe of Burngreave,” Howard says.

The council are sympathetic, he says, but have little money and few resources because cuts to public funding have eaten away their ability to offer much more than a skeleton service to keen locals.

If people feel proud of what they have on their doorstep, they’ll visit their local park or woodland, rather than feel they need to travel to the Peak District or somewhere else miles away, he says.

One of the main aims for less well known places like Wardsend is for people to know about them, and feel happy about visiting them. The reinvigorated Parks and Green Space Forum might now be able to address some of these disparities, he hopes.

Access to green space and nature is important for everyone, says Howard, not just those with the skills and resources to write emails and make calls to the right people to make things happen.

“We all know austerity is here,” says Ted Talbot. “But what hasn’t been created yet is the means for others to simply and easily step in when they want to help, whether it’s a volunteer with a shovel or a company with some money to help the Outdoor City.”

At present, SGSF can be contacted at: https://www.facebook.com/sheffieldgsf