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Must we punish park’s drinkers?
• IT is a real shame that often the solution to complex community issues is perceived as being resolvable by punishment (‘Ban drinkers from park’, April 20).
Is banning one social group the way to breed tolerance and respect? I have just spent almost four years making an hour-long film about Elthorne Park, portraying the space over the seasons.
I hope our film shows something of the true nature of this precious space and the people who enjoy the park’s nature. Despite its sometimes dark reputation, this is a lovely park and there is much more community spirit inside Elthorne Park than people realise from the outside.
Perhaps a family area or zone should be created so people feel safer, or it could have more active wardens and rangers, gardening clubs, jogging groups and lots of activities for teenagers, who are always complaining of boredom and neglect.
The costs of maintaining an exclusion zone are quite high. Instead, if these resources could be put to imaginative, positive and less punitive use with longer-term benefits, surely this would nurture community spirit rather than break it?
Last week, I was told the pitch lighting had not worked for nine months and even fixing such a simple facility could bring enormous benefit to teenagers who seem to have so few facilities.
I’d personally love to see many of the people described as drinkers rehabilitated and living positive lives, but it’s difficult to see how this can be achieved when the two centres frequented by many of these individuals, the Irish Centre in St John’s Way and St Mary’s Community Centre, have had their funding cut and been shut down.
The article asked why this park attracts groups of people drinking together. In our cities today, the majority of places to go cost money to enjoy and parks are gloriously still free. For poor people, parks are a godsend.
It’s sad and thought- provoking to see one social group intimidated by another, particularly when both have a degree of vulnerability.
It’s a shame that some of the groups don’t communicate. To be intimidated suggests fearfulness of difference and otherness. Urban culture comprises diverse people with different values and experience.
In a community with few gardens and great demands, this space is vital not only for recreation, but to meet people outside our own small circles who are also part of our community.
To ban one small group seems completely against the spirit of what parks are about. Many of the existing community live locally and have done so for years. One or two were builders who helped to build the existing peace garden and know how many bricks it took to build each row of the walls.
Once someone tried to rob me and it was a park drinker who intervened and saved the day. There are as many positive stories, if not more, than the negative stories one hears.
Park – The Documentary was originally made with the hope that, by portraying the diverse groups, this would not only make an interesting film, documenting British urban culture, but also help to facilitate greater understanding and debate, precisely to dispel fear and consequently intimidation and to empower the community to make full use of their precious park.
The more the park is used and we all get to know each other, the stronger and safer our community will become. Park will be screened as part of the Holloway Arts Festival at Holloway Odeon on Sunday, July 8.
Full details can be found at www.hollowayartsfestival.co.uk. Please email info@hollowayartsfestival.co.uk to be added to the mailing list.
JUSTINE GORDON-SMITH
Producer-director Park Documentary Project
Ilex House, N4
• THE Lib Dems in Islington wish to ban drinkers from Elthorne Park.
Drinking and drug use in the park has been a major concern to Elthorne Park Life group and Labour councillors. However, just banning alcohol is not enough. The council needs to fund services to assist drinkers and those dependent on drugs who use the park.
The woman interviewed by the Tribune lost her job five years ago. Why people congregate in the park is therefore not a “mystery”, as the Lib Dem councillor suggests.
What are needed are decent health services, benefits and advice on jobs for these people, not just an alcohol ban.
However, I would be very surprised if the council established such a service as it failed to help St Mary’s drop-in centre when the voluntary service could not cope with the demand from park users and had to close its doors to the drinkers two years ago.
The council failed to step in and provide a proper service for park users then, so just slapping an alcohol ban on the park is not going nearly far enough.
CLLR CATHERINE WEST
Labour, Tollington ward |
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Cllr Catherine West, a Labour councillor for Tollington ward, has inadvertantly misled your readers in her letter of 27th April ("Lib-Dems wish to ban drinkers from Elthorne Park".)It is not the Lib-Dems (we have never discussed this as a group) but local people who have called for the ban. Local residents here in Hillrise Ward have formed a group called "Park-Life", with help from Elthorne Regeneration, and are campaigning for improvements to the park, both visually and for amenities. It is this group, together with the excellent local police Safer Neighbourhood Team, who have asked for a ban, and as their local ward councillor I am backing them. I have recently attended an environmental audit in the park with council officers and police, and the council's outreach workers who are working with the street drinkers to help them engage with support services. In the meantime, local users are re-claiming the park, but need help in tackling anti-social behaviour. On a positive note,the park has will also benefit from the recently launched KICKZ football project, which has injected a huge grant to improve footballing facilities and provide coaching for youngsters.
If your readers would like to learn more about Park-life group, or join, please contact me on greg.foxsmith@islington.gov.uk, or write to chair Carol Clinton c/o Caxton House, St Johns Way, N19
Yours faithfully
Cllr Greg Foxsmith
Hilrise ward |
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