News on Deptford Parks Proposals

On Tuesday 30th July Sustrans delivered the first engagement event at Woodpecker Youth Club, where we bought huge maps of the area, art supplies, and local artist Tom Berry to run a fun workshop with local young people. We wanted to hear from them on what they thought about the street environment along Woodpecker Road.

We followed this up with a second workshop on Thursday 8th August, where, via a series of sunny led walk along the street, we encouraged young people to write on the installed board and think about solutions to some of the issues they had raised.

In all of our community engagement projects, we often find that, when it comes to original ideas and creative problem solving, it’s hard to beat speaking to young people.

For example, while talking about improved play provision for younger people along the street Robbie (aged 10) said; ‘Why can’t we design play features for older people too – like my grandad?’ Great ideas like this were popping up throughout the event, making for a fun and exciting few hours along Woodpecker.

After this event, we spent the evening on the street inviting people to write their views on the installed board. It has been brilliant to see so many people contribute in a constructive and thoughtful way to this board, and through this exercise we have gathered a huge amount of information.

We are now really looking forward to the next stage of this project, which will involve accumulating all information gathered so far and breaking it into themes (e.g. lighting, play features etc.) and then using these themes to shape our co-design sessions.

The on-street map will be replaced with a new one, showcasing what people have said so far and asking people what they think solutions to the issued raised should be.

This will be promoted with more events in the area – watch this space to find out when!

In the meantime, you can continue to contribute to the Woodpecker map on Commonplace here .