The end of October and beginning of November has been a busy time for our ‘Dementia friendly parks’ project with two important announcements, both of which we were lucky enough to link with the Green Flag Award Academy Conference which took place earlier this week in Birmingham. We were delighted to be invited to be part of the conference which started with a great introductory video about how the Green Flag Award has developed over the past 30 years, although it did make us feel very old when we were reminded of other events that happened during that period.
There was also a session by Paul Todd, Accreditation Manager for the Green Flag Award, sharing the growth of the Green Flag Award and how the number of sites receiving the award is increasing. We also appreciated him introducing the ‘Dementia friendly parks’ project to the attended, as Green Flag Award are one of our project collaborators. It was great to meet Paul and his colleague Michele Walde in person as we’d only seen them online previously at our Project Working Group meetings.
We enjoyed the sentiment shared by Access & Inclusion UK during their session as they said that it’s about progress not perfection, which aligns well with our project as it focuses on ‘working towards’ becoming dementia friendly rather than promoting an all or nothing approach.
In the afternoon we were one of four parallel sessions on offer to attendees, where we ran a workshop around the project on creating dementia friendly outdoor spaces. Our interactive activity seemed to go down well and generate a lot of interest and discussion. It was lovely to meet one of our other Project Working Group members during the workshops, as well as representatives from two of our case study sites (see below) and people who had been involved in testing our resources or been unsuccessful with their own case study applications (sorry!).
During the workshops we were able to launch our project resources:
- Environmental self-assessment tool
- Accompanying guide
- Introductory video
All are available to access for free from the resources page on our project website.
We were also very pleased to announce our 6 case study sites after contacting them with the good news last week. A huge thank you to our Steering Group for making some tricky decisions. We’re looking forward to working with the sites over the coming months, but can confirm that they are:
- Bradgate Park National Nature Reserve, Leicestershire
- Countess of Chester Country Park, Chester
- Rosliston Foresty Centre, Derbyshire
- Royal Victoria Country Park, Southampton
- Rufford Old Hall, Ormskirk
- Victoria Park, London
So that’s two main activities sorted out on the project, and we were grateful to the Green Flag Award Academy for inviting us to be part of their inaugural conference and giving us the opportunity to share our news with such a lovely group of attendees.
This project is funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Using money raised by National Lottery players, The National Lottery Heritage Fund supports projects that connect people and communities with the UK’s heritage. Our project on ‘Working towards creating dementia friendly parks, outside spaces and nature reserves’ is made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Thanks to National Lottery players, we have been able to develop a guide and environmental self-assessment tool to improve access to outside spaces for people affected by dementia.
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