Uplands Living Streets is a volunteer-run local group, campaigning and collaborating for a greener, cleaner, happier & more walkable Uplands & Brynmill (Swansea).
We want to bring some love and attention to our area, making our back lanes into safer, more walkable and more friendly spaces, with planters looked after by local residents and edged with wildflowers. We want benches and new planting to encourage biodiversity, as well as information boards to highlight local wildlife.
This project will be shaped and maintained by local neighbours, providing spaces to meet, chat, learn and share skills - growing food, tackling isolation and making Uplands greener!
What we'll deliver:
- 2 new benches in the centre of Uplands
- 6 raised planters for biodiversity and/or food growing
- Information boards highlighting local wildlife
- Wildflowers planted in the back lanes
Why it's a great idea:
Our goal is to make Uplands a greener, cleaner, happier and more walkable area, with more opportunities for the community to come together and get to know each other. We want to create a sense of local pride and celebrate the love that we have for our area, whilst also creating more spaces for nature and community.
Uplands is home to a lot of students, as well as lots of people from BAME backgrounds, alongside older residents, families and young professionals - people who have lived in the area for 60 years and those who have only been here for a few months. Sometimes this leads to community tensions and misunderstandings, as well as problems of loneliness and isolation - particularly in the wake of the COVID lockdown.
By making the most of our green spaces across the ward, we hope to create safe, attractive spaces for people to get to know their neighbours whilst improving the environment, making the place feel loved and looked after and helping everyone feel welcome and included.
Steps to get it done:
- Community meeting to co-create / finalise the design for the raised beds
- Community competition to design the Onwards & Uplands artwork
- Community workdays to prepare the site
- A facilitated community workshop to assemble the planters
- Community workdays to plant up the beds
- A community event to celebrate the project
- Regular weekly meet-ups to look after the gardens and socialise
- Ongoing monthly meetings of Uplands Living Streets to coordinate long term
We have co-created the ideas for this project with a diverse group of residents from across the community. Uplands Living Streets has brought together around 80 people for online meetings, as well as talking to people at Uplands Market, to collect ideas and opinions from a broad cross section of residents. We also hosted an online meeting about Community Growing, which attracted around 60 people who were keen to be involved in bringing green spaces back into beneficial community use.
Our ideas depend on the involvement of the community, so we have connected with the churches, schools, local councillors, student groups and others, to ensure we are involving everyone in the discussions. We are confident that our ideas will be supported by the community - financially and practically for the long term.
