Sarah Royal and her mission to get Birmingham to love its parks

Jul 2 2009 By Jo Ind

Sarah Royal is the first people's tsar for Birmingham's open spaces. She talks to Jo Ind.

The difference between a park that is loved and a park that is not is the difference between reduced crime, children who are more active, rising house prices and a longer life for those who live nearby.

When a park or an open space has a group of friends who make it their business to care for their patch of green, all sorts of good things start to happen. "It makes a huge amount of difference. It puts that park on the map," says Sarah Royal, who is the first community open spaces development officer for Birmingham.

"There's a finite amount of maintenance money that gets spent on a park. If there's nobody interested in it, or no one to love it, then just the basic stuff will happen.

"If there's a 'friends of' group keeping an eye on their park, they get onto the council if it's not being properly maintained. They look at what improvements they can make, they apply for extra funding for things like play equipment and benches. They bring in things like a wildflower meadow or sensory planting.

"As the park will be being used more, a 'friends of' group will look at running little events there. The park will look and feel more loved which will attract more people to use it.

"When a park is used by local people, it lifts the whole area. An unloved park attracts antisocial behaviour, so people don't go there because they develop a fear of crime.

"A loved park does not attract crime because there are so many people there. Research has shown that people's health and longevity is improved just through living by a well maintained open space."

Sarah, aged 43, does not have to talk for long to reveal she is passionate about the open spaces of the city. She has recently been made the first paid officer of the Birmingham Open Spaces Forum, which was set up four years ago to bring together "friends of" parks and open spaces groups in a network.

Before the forum was established by Emma Woolf, who is chairman, the community groups were working in isolation. Now the network has 147 groups as members, ranging from big nature reserves and cemeteries to pocket parks, allotments and playing fields.

This year, for the first time, the forum received funding from the EsmÈe Fairbairn Foundation, which aims to improve the quality of life throughout the UK through education and learning and the natural environment, to employ a part-time development officer for two years.

"I was a voluntary member of the forum before," says Sarah. "The vision of having a paid officer was to the Birmingham Open Spaces up to that next step. There's a limit to what everybody can do in their spare time.

"We've come a long way in our four years. We've built up a really good working partnership between the groups. Our message is that it's good to have fun in parks but it's never good to do it in isolation. When you get together as a community voice for Birmingham's open spaces everybody benefits.

"We can send out useful information about funding, we can advise them on how to set up a 'friends of' group, we can put groups with similar challenges in touch with each other."

A common challenge is where a loved open space is under threat from development, such as the former playing fields in West Hill Close, Selly Oak which have been earmarked for a 70- home development. The Friends of West Hill Playing Fields have campaigned for the site to be awarded village green status, which would protect it.