Skatepark Litter Louts
Posted by Peter Ford
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Calder Holmes park a number of months ago became the site for a newly built skatepark. A great facility which is utilised by many.
Unfortunately the skatepark is not all good news. Since the skatepark was opened there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of graffiti, and more noticebly, litter across the who calderholmes park site.
I have noticed that council workers have attempted to paint over the graffiti but it soon reappears. If you walk through the park in a morning the amount of fast food litter, and especially beer cans and bottles, is a very sad sight to behold.
I know that young people will drink and that the extra graffiti is tied in to the skateboard culture but has common sense and respect gone out of the window? Does anyone have any ideas how we can get the message across to the skaters to respect Calder Holmes and the people who use it.
Posted by Eric Hall
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
In response to Peter:
The young skaters who fund raised and petitioned to get the skate park are highly unlikey to be the graffiti culprits.
The council should put litter bins there and actively encourage the use of them.
But a better idea would be to have a wall painted white where the young people who do the graffiti and putting their tags could use the wall to do urban art and every few weeks the wall is repainted white.
Surely a tag wall would be cheeper in the long run to the council as it does not involve the council's graffitti removal team there every few weeks. And the labour cost for the painting could be minimal as you could get people on community service to do the painting as part of their punishment for doing crime.
What do other people think of this? Is it a good idea?
Posted by Janice Sayer
Wednesday, June 2, 2004
In response to Eric:
At the risk of being shot down in flames, having a graffiti wall does sound a good idea.
As for litter louts, adults are as bad as kids at littering (if not worse). Yes, I get kids throwing their crisp packets in my front yard (empty ones, unfortunately) but I also see car drivers throw litter from cars, empty their car ashtrays on car park floors, etc. Unlike adults, kids don't dump old mattresses, fridges and tyres in the countryside either.
Posted by Kate
Sunday, June 6, 2004
Frankly, if I were the young people who had to wait 16 years to have something so simple because we adults were so crap, I'd think it was a bit rich on our part to complain about their grafitti - and yes, I agree with all the rubbish we adults create in our personal and business lives being far more of a problem than the rubbish in the park, it's just we have systems to hide it.
Would be nice to avoid the litter in the park, yes. (After all, in the landfill, we adults don't have to see it, it'll just pollute the soil, air and water we leave these young people with when we die, because in our wisdom we've failed to take action on our overconsumption.)
I am more inclined to think, what could we do to show the skaters some respect, in the hope they might show us some back and pander to us by putting rubbish in the bin where we can pretend it no longer exists?
Anyway. Setting aside the long term things mentioned above, I would like the council as our representatives to STOP painting over the graffitti actually painted onto the skate park itself. It's the skater's space after all, not ours. If they want it multi-coloured, good for them. Beats gray concrete.
So yes - let's provide a graffitti wall, stop making their skate park gray, and challenge the real rubbish problem with those responsible - ourselves. Only 7.5% of UK rubbish comes from private households. The rest is produced by industry. That's US, the grown-ups.
Posted by Cllr Jo Beacroft-Mitchell
In response to previous posters. It is unfair to put all the blame for litter on the users of the Skate Park, unfortunately at present there are far too few litter bins in Calder Holmes, and bin emptying takes place on Monday, meaning that the bins have all weekend to overflow and become too full to use, especially in the summer months (note that they are very well used when available).
The graffiti on the skateboard park itself is part of the purpose for building it - the skate boarders felt that if they and others were allowed this area as 'their area' the level of graffiti around the town would drop dramatically (notwithstanding the odd rogue tag)
Hebden Royd Town Council are working in conjunction with Calderdale MBC and the skateboarders to provide more bins, weekend collections and hopefully input from local urban artists to help get the park decorated. So the message in the short term is watch this space.
Posted by Peter Ford
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Why has this message thread turned into a debate about who creates the most litter grownups or kids?
The initial point I was making was that there was a problem with litter and graffitti on Calder Holmes park.
It doesn't matter how old people are who creates litter or rubbish or industrial waste, the problem is the mess it creates.
A bit more respect for the town we live in, and yes on a wider scale the environment wouldn't go a miss from all quarters regardless of age or whether you skateboard or not.
Posted by Paul Brewer
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Come on now, let's not get things out of proportion.
This sort of attitude, to something that has always gone on serves only to cause division between the young people of Hebden Bridge and the adults in the community.
I think that possibly some of the new influx of well of profesionals want to sweep the youth of Hebden Bridge under the carpet.
As a teenager whos family has lived in the Calder Valley for many years I'm here to tell you that that is not likely to happen.
If you want to live in the town you have to take all that comes along with it and that includes the young people who live here and their skatepark.
I would just like to add I've seen many adults falling out of the many pubs in the town to know that any problems that may associated with drinking are certainly not confined to the young.