Why do we need a new skate park?
Interestingly through our journey we have spoken to people, who now have young children of their own. They’ve all told us that when they were teenagers all they wanted was a decent skatepark in Tewkesbury.
We have three skate parks in Tewkesbury, all of which are very difficult to use in different ways:
- Priors Park floods and is really old, worn down, slippery and unsafe. We tried to keep it clean but it is always littered with rubbish and broken glass is everywhere.
- Mitton coping is too big and the decks aren’t big enough.
- Northway is impossible to ride as the half pipe is too steep for the size, and the ramps are too tall with not enough room.
The bins are often overflowing and the site is covered with litter and broken glass.
Our Dream is to have a new, purpose built, concrete skate park to bring new people and families into our town. Health and well-being are very important and a new skate park would provide a safe, fun, self-policing, sociable area, which caters for all ages, experience and disabilities.
Unlike any of our skate parks in Tewkesbury, Churchdown Park is a brilliant park which safely accommodates BMX riders, scooter, skateboarder and skaters. Churchdown doesn’t have any problems with misuse, vandallism, litter and we have never seen any broken glass. Their park is respected by all who use it. We want that for our town.
We have researched several skate parks for ideas, inspiration and ridden other parks to help us understand what is available. We’ve met with four skate park design companies who were each offering something different. We looked at ramps for Priors Park where the sides could be removed to allow for the flood water there to flow through and concrete designs, should we be granted a new site.
We are working closely with Tewkesbury Borough, Town and County Councillors, Barnwood Trust, Severn Vale Housing and the Police, and we are being supported by HOPP (Heart of Priors Park) and Tewkesbury School. We presented at the Tewkesbury Business Breakfast on 28 June to raise Pump 17’s awareness.
We were asked by the Councillors to make a promotional video about who we all are and our vision. For that video, we successfully applied for a Barnwood Trust Small Sparks grant to fund the Pump 17 tee-shirts and hoodies. We have designed our own logos for the clothing and approached Tewkesbury School Business Enterprise students to produce them for us. We feel our designs, perfectly demonstrates what we are trying to achieve for our community and will help us to raise awareness around the town and at any events we attend.
We hope everything we are doing demonstrates our commitment and that you will support and help us with our dream for a new skate park in Tewkesbury.