For the final show, I designed a ParkPal. It is a digital-based map service that young people can easily know interesting places and activity events in green spaces in Walsall. It aims to encourage people to access green spaces more by showing more diverse aspects of the green spaces in Walsall. People can easily check the information about local gems in green spaces shared by other local young people, and community events, micro-events in green spaces.
Suhyeon Jo
High rates of inactivity in Walsall — The ranking of inactivity of people in Walsall is located 9th out of 371. I did second round interview to know what are the barriers of accessing places and activities in green spaces. I found that people don’t know well about green spaces near them. And, finding good place is inconvenient.
About the activities, it is hard to find event information due to decentalised and out-of-date information. And, some community activities are not available in their area.
What is ParkPal? — Parkpal is a digital based map service that young people can easily know interesting places and activity events in green spaces in Walsall.
It aims to encourage people to access green spaces more through showing more diverse aspects of the green spaces in Walsall.
It shows Local gems in green spaces shared by other local young people, Community events in green spaces offered by communities(charities), Micro events in green spaces offered by private instructors, local people.
How to use the service — The Walsall Council will offer the map as the base layer. It includes information about big and popular parks and small and local parks and nature reserves on the map.
When the users put their interest, the places or activities they might interest in will appear on the map.
Encouraging young people to access green spaces
Green social prescribing is the practice of supporting people to engage in nature-based activities. It can help to reduce stress, anxiety, and depression. Due to the covid situation, the importance of green social prescribing rapidly increase.
The project focusing area is Walsall in the UK. And, I searched about young people’s situation in Walsall and realised that the unemployment rate and the level of education and income deprivation are higher than the UK average. For them, the park takes an essential role as an outlet to release their stress and feel relaxed.
However, they had less access to the park than in other areas. Therefore, I researched how to make them more accessible to the park during the project.