Citizens to Collaborate to protect Green Spaces across London

Over 80 representatives of local Friends Groups from seventeen London boroughs gathered together for the first time for a major conference on Saturday October 10th.

The event brought together 500 groups from across London, including Haringey, to discuss ways to support each other in each borough and across the capital.

The conference, in launching the new London Green Spaces Friends Groups Network, unanimously passed the following mission statement:

The Friends and user groups at this gathering agree to continue to celebrate our efforts, share our ideas and experiences, and to support each other in valuing and improving London's parks and open green spaces. To that end we agree to launch a London Green Spaces Friends Network. We'd like to see the development of Friends Groups for all London's open green spaces, and borough-wide forums and networks of such groups in all London boroughs.

The conference themes included:

• Establishing strong Friends groups
• Developing good relationships with Councils / Parks Officers
• Organising Citizen Science projects
• Lobbying for greater funding and resources for green spaces generally
• Protecting parks and green spaces from urban development
• Ensuring greater Friends involvement in monitoring, maintenance and management
• Organising successful events
• Fundraising successfully for events, projects and improvement works
• Restoring and regenerating neglected green spaces
• Developing strong borough-wide Friends/Users Forums throughout London.

The new London Green Spaces Friends Groups Network will hold a follow-up meeting for Friends Groups on 2nd November at City Hall, SE1.

Borough/town/regional Forums of Friends Groups throughout the UK are networked through the National Open Spaces Forum. The next NOSF meeting, at which delegates from London will be attending, is on 31st October in Birmingham.