Love your park? This week is for you

This year’s national Love Parks Week will start on Saturday, July 21 and run through the week leading up to the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Love Parks Week has always aimed to raise awareness of the importance of parks and green spaces, showcasing the benefits they bring and highlighting the need for continual investment and engagement.

This year’s event will be putting the spotlight on access for all to healthy green spaces. The campaign will be highlighting what a healthy green space looks like and will begin to assess the nation’s parks by encouraging people to give their park a simple health check.

To keep up with the rapidly growing campaign charity GreenSpace has launched a new website for Love Parks Week with a fun mascot called Rootz.

The site will still provide resources and tools for running successful, well promoted events and will include new features to help people get more involved in campaigning for and improving their local green space.

Greenspace chief executive Paul Bramhill said: “As the benefits of parks have become more recognised, unfortunately the future of green space management is at risk.

“Local authority budgets are being dramatically reduced and we cannot expect community groups, that already identify they need more funding, training and volunteers, to be the only solution.

“Parks need to be properly financed to remain healthy – accessible, safe, lush, full of life, welcoming and a hub of the community. I cannot stress enough how important this year’s campaign is, please start to think about the future health of your park.”

The campaign hopes to grow on the success of last year’s numbers which achieved one million people taking part. Circus skills workshops, Nordic walking, art in the park, military fitness, and music and theatre performances were just some of the 1,200 events people attended.

By holding an event in a park or by simply attending one, you will be helping to drive the message that our parks and green spaces are essential to healthy, happy and strong communities.

See the new site and find out more at