Transition Liverpool Director, Paul Riley talked about the journey he and his team have been through from concept to the realization of the sParkIt project.
Paul decided to get involved in crowd funding, and having just read Rob Hopkins’ Book, “What if….?” Rob Hopkins, the founder of the Transition movement. Rob encouraged people to ask themselves “What if …. as a way of engaging creatively with imagination. He encouraged people to crate a positive message to create change.
The ParkIt movement began in LA where a group of hard-up artists paid for a parking space for a day and this was the beginning of a new initiative that is now taking place worldwide. Over the next two years, Paul got in touch with Make CIC who were willing to make a pop up. The group tried to promote the idea in the Echo, Liverpool’s local paper but the article ended up suggesting that this was a move to steal people’s parking spaces.
The crowd funder was successful thanks to the help of a number of people who were interested in the pop-up plan. In spite of the pandemic the money from the doners for the crowd funder, Liverpool City Council and the Annex provided the funding for this to go ahead. The national Transition Network also contributed a grant. Thank you to Ross the architect who designed structures for this and a number of other projects in compliance with the requirements of LCC. They are modular and can be redesigned and reused.
Although they were not able to put a Parklet on a Liverpool public road, they found a prime location outside of the Open Eye Gallery outside the Open Eye Gallery. The parklet was designed as proof of concept. And has sparked interest already.
The pop-up has been used as a part of Community Car Free day, in September and a mass cycle ride from the Mystery park in Wavertree to the Parklet on Mann Island. Paul talked about some of the things he learnt from the experience. His first piece of advice was to really invest in your team.
What’s next
Wilmslow Town Council who want to explore how they can use parklets to improve the public areas in the city centre. They have begun conversations with Transition Wilmslow around a joint collaboration. They have been approached by Wirral who are interested in doing projects connected to their town centre development fund. They have also been approached this month by Liverpool Rock who have invited them to do a pitch for putting some parklets across their estate. They have had conversations with Everton Community, Milap Fest, the Indian music festival and Africa Oyez, the African music festival to offer parklets at their a cultural and music festivals.
