• Home
• -System
• Articles

Lachie, Roving reporter

The step-by-step guide to getting your town a skate park - PART TWO

In the first instalment of this how-to guide you learned how to organise the troops, settle on a common goal and set up a meeting with your local council, all with the eventual result of scoring your town a shiny new skatepark.

If you have followed the advice from the last article, and have made progress with your council, good on you! No doubt you are itching to see the process through until its final result, so without further ado, youthcentral presents the remaining steps of the step-by- step guide to getting your town a skatepark!

Step three: Problem solving

In part one it was mentioned that there may be some kinks in your otherwise perfect plan, like:

• Lack of interest
• Lack of money
• Lack of co-operation
• Lack of communication
  

However, don't be discouraged.

All of the above points, as well as any other problems you may run into, can be easily overcome. Often, when your council seems uninterested it is because they cannot see the value of the skatepark - after all, they have things like roads and hospitals to build. To overcome this, you must make sure you show them just how valuable it can be, and the good it can do for the community. For example, it can keep youth off the streets, reduce childhood obesity, and so on. Be creative.

If all of your efforts still don't produce much of a result, don't give in. By persevering you will show the council that you really do want a new skatepark, and you will reassure them that six months from now it won't be an unused waste of their funds. Remember that local councils have other things to do than just build skateparks, so it may take some time.

If you can, it's a good idea to get someone's parents to come along to the meeting. It's a sad reality that adults are more likely to listen to other adults than kids, so this is another angle you should think about.

Another way to show that the skatepark isn't just for you and your mates is to start a petition and have it signed by lots of people in your town. This can be used as further proof that your skatepark idea has lots of interest.

This leads onto the next step, an integral part of the process that helps generate local support (and therefore council interest) and helps to ease the strain on the local council's coin purse-strings: fundraising and awareness.

Step four: Fundraising and awareness

Skateparks are not cheap. Even the most basic concrete slab with a box dumped on top can cost upwards of $10,000, and a larger professionally made concrete park can cost somewhere in the hundreds of thousands. It's fair to say that councils do not have that kind of cash just lying around, so it's up to you help raise the funds.

There are many ways you can do this - again, be creative. If creativity isn't your thing, however, here are some ideas:

• Ask local businesses for money in exchange for advertising space at the park
• Put on a skate demo or a concert with all proceeds going to the park
• Get businesses and individuals to sponsor the park
• Look for and apply for government grants
• Hold raffles
• Ask the local skateshop (if there is one) for a donation

If all of this fails to produce a satisfactory result, you could always resort to door-knocking.

Tied in with fundraising is raising local awareness about what you are trying to achieve. Letters to your local newspaper, skateboarding magazines or local businesses can help to increase the pressure on the council. Flyers posted around the town and in the local skateshop can help to alert other to your cause who may be able to contribute time or even money. If you get really ambitious, you may even want to hold rallies or do TV/radio ads or interviews.

If you get this far through the process, you've come a long way, and are so close to the final result that you can almost smell it. That brings us to the fifth and final step: success, and a new park.

Step five: Success!!

Eventually, if you persevere, your council will give you at least something, be it a bare slab of concrete or a full-blown $300,000 park. Congratulations! You've been through countless meetings, written innumerable letters, and raised the necessary funds. Now, after all your hard work, you can kick back with the knowledge that you have made a difference and shred the hell out of your town's very own skatepark.

BACK TO MORE ARTICLES