Moving Things Forward...

Don't know how many of you noticed the poster up at the goon advertising the meeting regarding activities at the park, but I do know nobody went along. Me and a few other heads I personally didn't recognise went down and had a brief discussion about development of the goon. In charge was Ricardo, the Hove Lagoon Skatepark Development Officer (yes, that job exists).

The main discussion was events at the park, since there have been so few and nothing has really topped the Vans GSD event just after the place opened 3 1/2 years ago, we tossed around some ideas to make something bigger this year.

Ricardo then invited me back for a one on one discussion yesterday, where we took the ideas further to begin to put them into action. The main thought was a big event the Saturday after Go Skate Day this year, the same weekend as the Brighton Take Part festival (June 25th) . We discussed keeping them skater run, due to a few forgettable events in previous times, and Ricardo is basically down to support us all he can in doing just what we want. This means our ideas and organisation, but with his help we can look at sponsorship, permission to use certain areas, prizes etc. The initial idea was something incorporating skating in the streets at points, and then heading to the lagoon. It's early days but there's some ideas there.

But basically, if we want to move anything regarding the lagoon forward, we need some more support. So if you're interested in helping with this, want to put some ideas forward, or would like to be a part of anything that happens at the park, please get in touch because this is the chance. We talked about the idea of creating a steering group like the Level or Crawley park. From there we can look after the place ourselves, and apply for funding for things like further events, or even improvements or extra obstacles for the park(!!). If you want to help out contact me (Liam) as soon as possible. If nobody bothers then don't go bitching when nothing happens.

Other points of interest -

Lessons: Talk of this years lessons for the younger kids came up, and the fact that they didn't go down too well with the locals last year has been considered. They're looking at possibly moving to a more user friendly timeslot, and exercising a little more consideration.

Scooter infestation: It's hard to get the point across of how real this problem actually is, and it's hard to think of anything that realistic to do about it, but it was discussed and the idea of some sort of official education of parents and children through talk, leaflets or signs came up. Unfortunately it is a public park, it is in a very family orientated area and it is maybe aimed slightly more at younger users, but self regulation seems to always help so keep telling them what they're doing wrong and maybe if there is a god eventually they'll learn.

Lighting: This has been a long time coming. I'm sure you worked it out for yourselves, but basically due to several factors, mainly the lack of funding for things like this, it's not too realistic to pursue. Lighting requires ongoing funding and is more expensive than you'd think, and due to things like budget cuts and the development of other things like the Level, it's an unlikely scenario. Although looking back at the initial contract for the park, there's no official line on it being disallowed, so perhaps one day we can go back to it. Thanks to everyone who signed the petition, fuck you to anyone that couldn't be bothered.

Thanks for reading, share this shit around (that's what that Facebook shit is for I'm told) and get talking. Keep checking back for further developments.

GET INVOLVED