Father Nature wants to build a mobile art garden or parklet for people to sit in, surrounded by nature. Father Nature will teach the work-less to build the parklet and plant it up. All Summer the mobile art-park will travel around Lambeth and stop outside shops. Kids and pensioners alike are all welcome to drop-in when we pop-up; make art together, take bulbs away or linger to enjoy the shops and streets of post-COVID Lambeth . Art4Space teachers will encourage children and adults to get messy and create; make mosaics in-situ, or take their art away, Relax in the art-park when it's not being used for teaching. Father Nature's friendly electric milk-floats will pick-up and drop-off the art park in new locations, bringing a much needed attraction to the returning shoppers and families of the high-street and shopping centres of Lambeth. Having helped create Lambeth's Low Traffic Neighbourhoods with their planter-boxes, Father Nature will now help Lambeth's residents decorate them.

What we'll deliver:

• Inspire with our sustainably designed modular parklet
• Skill-up potential landscapers and environmentalists when building our parklet
• Colour Lambeth with high-street art sessions twice a week for 4 months
• Promote the post-COVID economy by providing seating, beautiful greenery, street-art/mosaics, and energetic instruction
• Encourage growing with free seeds, seedlings and bulbs
• Raise morale when transporting the art-park in our colourful milk-floats around the streets of Lambeth

Why it's a great idea:

This joint venture will provide a space for the community to reconnect with one another in a Covid-19 safe way. We have consulted the shops and communities in many parts of Lambeth, and they believe these parklets, as a further development of the LTN's, will benefit by helping combat social exclusion, support businesses with passing trade and provide invaluable insights into art and climate change. The Mayor’s fund would enable us to directly help people engage, improving mental health and well-being, as well as teaching new skills and crafts with the example of food growing and leaf sketching. We also work within the Lambeth Natural Health Service, a service where the NHS can provide patients with a holistic approach such as planting or outdoor sessions on the parklet. This network would have a great effect on how people in Lambeth can seek health and better well-being through this parklet.

Steps to get it done:

• Building our Portable Parklet
• Rolling out our Portable Parklet
• Teaching our first Art session on the Parklet
• Sourcing our sustainable materials to build the Parklet

Alongside promoting health and well-being, the parklet will also support our current Low Traffic Neighbourhood initiative across Lambeth. These structures will coincide with lowering the traffic around residential and shopping and recreation areas, allowing more children and young people to access these roads in a safer way. Preventing parking outside schools and helping aid anti-social behaviour is another way parklets will create more harmony within Lambeth. Pollution will also be reduced through developing more green pockets throughout Lambeth, providing cleaner air and reducing health concerns that Londoners are facing currently. This Parklet will also offer up planting projects, allowing local people to learn and understand sustainability, how to grow and look after their own greenery and garden with confidence. These skills are invaluable and the more that become involved, the more knowledge around climate change and how to make our streets greener will be adopted.