Small acts of heroism…
Before & After
Over the last few years at Street Space we’ve been involved in conversations with local people about how to improve the footbridges over the railway lines in Barking Town Centre. You can read more about these here.
These bridges are well used by school children, parents with prams, people on bikes and from our survey responses a whopping 79% of people don’t feel safe using them.
As a team, this is the kind of challenge we think is worth tackling. Unloved infrastructure affecting quality of life — we love to bring our creativity and experience to reimagine and overcome funding or other constraints to harness energy locally and improve these assets.
We formed a small community design team of local residents at the start of the year to develop some low cost interventions to reimagine the footbridge. We poured our energy into these online sessions, involving as many local people as possible, voting to name the bridge and on the colour and style of the painting.
We managed (second time around!) to get a small NCIL grant from London Borough of Barking and Dagenham to cover the cost of implementing lighting, colour, mirrors and planting (thanks Tim for all the support!).
The council lighting team have been encouraging, they receive so many complaints about the state of the bridges and the anti-social behaviour they attract but have failed to get traction or productive discussions going with the asset owners Network Rail.
Half way through the transformation! Photo Credit: Julia Forsman
Perhaps naively we set about tracking down the right person to contact to get the conversations moving forward with Network Rail. It’s been really tough and many, many hours have been spent filling out lengthy, hard to understand risk registers and forms. Being a community organisation we were told that we wouldn’t be liable for anything beyond £1 if something went wrong… but the pressure of all the risk and responsibility on us, as a small start up, felt totally out of kilter with the imagination, creativity and people power we were bringing to the table — to improve a hugely uncared for asset, owned by Network Rail.
Anyway, we went through the proper channels, got our permission and have spent the last month or so working hard with community members to implement the changes. Many who walk past say “It’s nice, but won’t last”.. some plants disappeared on the first night they were installed… but we won’t give up. These small and potentially heroic acts, taken by a small group of local residents, supported and enabled by us is what brings hope in a time of uncertainty.
Local volunteers pitched in to help paint and give the bridge some much needed love! Photo Credit: Julia Forsman
It’s not perfect, it has cost us a lot, but it’s the right thing to do. And maybe, the transformed bridge will act as a spark for more hope and more community driven projects in a town centre that is rapidly changing but needs to remember the importance of safe and accessible routes to work, school and leisure are central to establishing a good quality of life.
Interventions include adding colour, naming, solar lighting, greening and mirrors. Photo Credit: Julia Forsman
With huge thanks along the way to our fab Street Space team and all those locally who’ve helped out!
Hope for the future.. Photo Credit: Julia Forsman