Yellow Banners!

One of the issues that came up at the LCSD Workshop was those horrible, huge, yellow banners in parks. Everybody hates them, including senior management in LCSD apparently, but nobody seems to know how to stop them appearing so in order to help and encourage the LCSD in their efforts to eradicate the yellow banner disease we're going to start a league table for yellow banners. Next time you're in your park, count how many yellow banners there are, tell us the name of the park, and we'll put together a league table of the best and worst parks when it comes to yellow banners.

Post as comments her or at the Facebook Groupand we'll pull the league table together.

LCSD Workshop

Well, we had the workshop with the LCSD on Wednesday and it was ......interesting. It was encouraging in some ways in that there was support for much of what Freedom Ball has been talking about - removing fences, opening up space, creating open accessible parks and tackling over-regulation and signage. However, as is the nature of these things in the early stages, things tend to break down when it gets down to specific action.

So what we'd like from the public is specific examples that we can work on. If we work on specific sites and situations we can find out where the real barriers to change lie. So if your your local park has a fenced off space that you can't access, a lack of open, grassed space or overzealous enforcement of rules, let us know. Please include as much detail as you can, including park name and photos if you can.

You can post it up on the Facebook Group: Freedom Ball

If you're not on Facebook, by all means e-mail to me at the get involved e-mail contact on the right.

Shatin Survey

I forgot to post up the results of the survey we did with park users at the last Freedom Ball event in Shatin, so here they are!

100% enjoyed Freedom Ball

97% thought ball games should be allowed in the park

90% thought there should be more grass

77% thought there should be more free areas for play and relaxation

64% thought there are too many rules

62% thought more variety of activities should be allowed

A Happy Sunday

Well I'd been worried about what the weather would be like but woke up to a perfect sunny day on Sunday and we headed off to Shatin where our biggest Freedom Ball intervention so far went off really well.

Many thanks to everyone who came along and especially to those who came and helped inflate the balls, you guys worked really hard and we couldn't have done it without you. Also the team of interviewers who did video interviews and filled out questionnaires with the public.

The park users who came to the park that day were great too and helped make the day the fun and positive event we were hoping for. Many people even stayed behind and helped us deflate the balls when it came time to pack up. We're starting to process the feedback from the public and I will edit the video footage in the next few days (thanks Violet!) and link to it. In the meantime check out the photos that are coming in to the Facebook Group here: Photos.

As well as the interviews and questionnaires we had a lot of interesting conversations with press, public and even park management, who have responded positively to the issues raised by Freedom Ball. Rest assured that we will be working on keeping the momentum going and on exploring how to turn words into real action to make Hong Kong parks better places for Hong Kong people.

SCMP article

The SCMP ran an article about Sunday's event on the front of the City section of today's paper, which is great. However the last paragraph was slightly misleading in that it suggested that the new park in Ap Lei Chau had been built taking into account Freedom Ball's concerns about park design.

I want to make it clear that this is in fact not the case. We have been talking to the LCSD about changes to park design and as part of that process we visited the new park in Ap Lei Chau to see where the LCSD is going in in terms of park design but the park was designed and indeed built before we started talking to the LCSD.

I just want to make that clear because:

a) We don't want to take credit for any improvements in park design that there may have been at Ap Lei Chau as we weren't involved until after the park had been built.

b) Whilst there have been some steps in a positive direction at Ap Lei Chau (there are no fenced-off sections and there is a small open grass area for example) it isn't our idea of an ideal park design either.

Facebook

Just wanted to let remind everybody who came along to Shatin today that we have a Facebook Group where you can share pictures, video and comments or feedback about the event or about parks in general.

The Facebook Group is here: Facebook Group

A big thanks to everybody who helped out today, I'll post more about it tomorrow.

The Big One!

Well, we've finally confirmed the details for the big Freedom Ball event we've been planning. It will be at Shatin Park on Sunday 22nd November from 11.30am to 2.30pm.

The event will be on a much larger scale than those we have done before so if you can come along and help out with interviewing, recording, photographing or just helping to inflate and distribute balls we’d really appreciate it, just get in touch via the e-mail link on the right. We’re expecting that the scale of the event will generate a fair amount of press coverage and stimulate debate on the issue within the community.

One encouraging development is that in recent meetings with the LCSD they have indicated that they are prepared to take on board feedback from the public on the key issues so please come along and express your views about Hong Kong's parks and we’ll try to see if we can get real changes implemented.

Or just come and play ball!

See you there!

各位朋友:
大規模的自由波行動己籌備妥當! 將於十一月二十二日(星期天¬)沙田公園舉行.

由於規模大了, 您的參與更為重要: 您可協助採訪市民; 錄影; 攝影; 充氣及派發自由波等, 有心的朋友請電邮右角的邮址報名吧。熱切期望此行動能引發大量媒介的報道及激發大眾對公共空間的討論。

另外一個好消息是康文署愿意收集各位的意見, 請您們就香港公園的使用各抒己见, 共同爭取真正的改善。
一齊過來玩波啦！

到時见！

We're back!

Stocks of Freedom Balls have now arrived from the factory in China and we're ready for a summer of fun!

The balls are pre-printed and quicker to inflate than the old Freedom Ball and we have 1000 of them. This will allow us to do two things initially:

The Big One
We can now organise the large-scale Freedom Ball event which I have been wanting to do for some time in order to involve more people and generate more debate about the issue. 'The Big One' will involve a large number of balls in a location to be revealed later and we also hope to carry out a number of other activities such as recording the event using video and photography as well as recording interviews with members of the public in order to have more opinions from the community. These will be gathered together for a subsequent exhibition and short film to further stimulate debate. We'll need a bigger team of people for this so send me an email if you want to get involved.

Releasing The Balls to the Community
We also have enough Freedom Balls to be able to give a set of Freedom Balls to people to organise their own Freedom Ball Events in their local park. If you're interested in this just let me know.

New Logo

Things have been a bit quiet on the Freedom Ball front recently but all that is about to change so stay tuned! In the meantime here is the new bilingual design for the Freedom Ball, stocks of which should be arriving shortly.

City Speak IV

I'll be attending City Speak IV on Saturday which will also include a number of other far more knowledgable speakers discussing various issues around the regulation of public space, so come along and join the debate.
Details here: City Speak IV