Friends of Pollok

Back in June I attended a meeting of Friends of Pollok park. From my time establishing Pollok parkrun, it’s a group I’d always hoped would appear: It’s a stunning park, and in the climate of cuts and reduced expenditure, really would benefit from an advocacy group to work constructively with council, park managers, and nearby groups/organisations to support the park.

The council is helping support it, but the attendance at the June meeting was a bit… sparse. So I got home and registered a few domains (friendsofpollokpark.com), popped a basic Hugo site together, and got in touch with the owner of the current facebook group to get some of the content updated.

A month later, and a big uptick in the number of followers on the facebook group, the next meeting was standing room only. A fantastic result, and shows what social media can help achieve. Fingers crossed it’ll help get things progressing.

Slightly tricky part is the group is in a bit of an odd place just now: The council is trying to help the group to form (as an unincorporated group), so it can move forward under it’s own committee. Understandably attendees want to raise many of the issues with the park and see it progress, but it’s hard to see that happening without a committee making decisions and working with members.

Hopefully the next few weeks will see some progress and an enthusiastic park user or two taking on the fantastic challenge to form a much needed advocacy group in the community.