Spring Clean Hillhead

19th - 27th March 2016

ACTION HILLHEAD REVIEW

Introduction Action Hillhead (AH) is a volunteer-led initiative based in the Hillhead Ward of Glas-gow, Scotland. It brings together residents, businesses, community organisations, political parties and students to collectively tackle issues in the community, such as the growing issue of litter. This report outlines Spring Clean Hillhead 2016, a week of community-led clean ups across Hillhead, Woodlands and Partick. The initiative encourages different individ-uals to lead their own cleans up, supporting diverse and varied opportunities for the community to come together. Through social media and the schedule of events poster, Action Hillhead promotes and advertises the clean ups to local people, and invites them to join. These next pages detail how volunteers conducted the Spring Clean process, ex-plaining the inspiration for the initiative, what happened and who was involved. The end of the report will include an assessment, including comments from individuals who attended some of the clean ups, about what they felt worked and what did not. The AH team hopes that this report can influence and impact waste policy, and en-courage smarter and more resilient public services, and also to act as a guide for other communities to follow the initiative, and encourage local citizens to take ac-tion against litter. Since it's inception, at the end of 2013, the initiative has attracted over 500 follow-ers, arranged over 40 clean ups, engaged with over 30 public and private bodies, and collected hundreds of bags of litter. If there are any questions about this report, or if any readers would like to meet the organisers behind Action Hillhead, they can message the facebook page: www.facebook.com/actionhillhead The social media approach to local community organising has proved exceptionally helpful at reaching different people locally, as well as recording the work of the ini-tative, for others to follow. It also brings together locals facing certain issues, and acts a connector to arrive at solutions.

Background of Action Hillhead: At the end of 2013, the problem of street litter in Hillhead was a constant and increasing subject of discussion and concern in the area. Litter bins were frequently full to overflowing and all efforts from Glasgow City Council (GCC), volunteer residents and other agencies since the start of the Clean Glasgow initiative appeared to make little difference. The frustration of this resulted in an email to local councillors (appendix) The inspiration for Action Hillhead: The response from GCC outlined resource problems. Action Hillhead was instigated following discussions between Eric Kay, chair of GOW Triangle Community and David Walker, Com-munity Safety Glasgow. The plan which emerged was to establish a local voluntary group following a similar idea in Drumchapel. These volunteers would organise local clean ups, and in-vite other residents, businesses and organisations to join them as well. The voluntary group would co-ordinate the clean-ups via social media channels, such as a facebook page. Plan of Action and Ethos: Spring Clean Hillhead sought to encourage community action in response to the situation. Taking action was an attempt to break the cycle of acceptance and set a higher standard for the area. In addition it was hoped to raise expectations that this standard would subsequently be maintained. These outcomes were to be achieved by a series of co-ordinated community clean ups plus bet-ter local liaison with statutory services, other local organisations and with businesses. Effective joint working is a key aspect of this strategy. The intended outcome was to gauge if this approach would produce a sustainable force to bring about improved cleanliness in Hillhead.

The organising group The group comprised of Eric Kay, chair of Gibson Street, Otago Street and Westbank Quadrant (GOW) Community, Luke Evens, a Glasgow University Community Development student and Graeme Bald, Secretary of Bank Street Residents and Traders Association (BARTA). Ruth Broers (GOW Secretary) and Luke provided the skills for developing and updating the Action Hillhead facebook page and this was vital for keeping people informed and attracting new members. The main methods for promotion were the Action Hillhead facebook page and local posters. Meetings were held with the local High School head teacher, manager of LES services and Glas-gow University Student Representative Council (GUSRC). It was decided that a Spring Clean Week would be an ideal starting point and a few local activists were invited to join a core group to help plan and organise the action week.

The Activities The Spring Clean Week activities were planned across Hillhead over the course of the week, scheduled at different times to ensure that all groups of people could attend at least one clean up. The week ex-tended past the typical seven days, to include more support-ing groups, who wanted to contribute to the initiative but could do not strictly within the seven days. The week ran from the 19th until the 27th March, 2016. Existing local organisations and schools were contacted and invited to become involved. Action Hillhead worked as the binding body, and encouraged partners to put forward a specific time and date for their clean-up. The final compilation of the dates went onto one poster, as can be seen on the next page. Action Hillhead members delivered letters outlining the objectives of Action Hillhead to local businesses; together with the poster of the planned clean ups. Other agencies were encouraged to publicise the initiative as well. A series of individual meetings with officers from the council’s Land and Environmental Services (LES), University of Glasgow, Hillhead High School and a range of agencies was initiated by mem-bers of the organising group. At present, statutory services do not easily incorporate and engage with local involvement, how-ever Action Hillhead has been successful in establishing and developing positive links. These have begun to generate better understanding and co-operation and whilst this initiative did re-veal instances where joint action broke down, this can provide lessons for the future (see: Assessment)

The poster used

Saturday 19th March, 10am. Woodlands

In all, 28 people helped to clean West Princes Street, the side streets and the lanes. We filled around 40 bags and collected lots of old furniture. There were familiar faces but new ones too and by the end of the morning, we were cer-tainly ready for a welcome cuppa in the Woodlands Garden. This was the first of two Woodlands clean ups, the second being on the next day. One of the rea-sons for the success of the Woodlands weekend was the involvement of Woodlands Community Garden who duplicated the Spring Clean poster. Volunteers from Woodlands then put up posters in each close throughout much of the local area.

Saturday 19th March, 10am. Ruthven Lane

The clean up in these lanes was organ-ised by Sarah Riggs who manages several properties in the lane and John Hood, a local resident who is also a member of Dowanhill Community Council. A clean up poster for this event was de-signed and produced by Sarah and John and distributed via the factors to resi-dents. 27 local residents and business proprietors took part in this clean up. We collected 60 bags of litter, mud and de-tritus plus a variety of large items which had been dumped.

Sunday 20th March, 10am. Woodlands

Day 2 of the Spring Clean and we were back in Woodlands for a clean up led by Fiona Hart, a local resident and Neighbourhood Improvement Volunteer. We had another great turn out with 35 people helping. Some people helped finish off lanes and streets off West Princes St that hadn’t been completed the day before but most worked around the St Georges X Subway, Grant St and the area towards Charing X Road. Around 50 bags were filled and old microwaves, bar-b-ques etc gathered for collection. Volunteers gathered again at the Woodlands Garden for tea at the end of the after-noon.

Monday 21st March, 6pm. Lilybank Gardens

Our first evening clean up was at Lilybank Gardens and was led by Bill Glover from the Friends of Kersland Lane. In the time before darkness fell, the 16 volunteers did a great job in cleaning not only the car park and gardens but local streets and Cranworth Lane too. Passers by were very appreciative of our efforts and we filled 23 bags and gathered together, mainly lit-ter plus assorted discarded items for pick up.

Tuesday 22nd March, 6pm. Belmont Street and Colbrooke Street

There were only 8 of us at this evening clean up but we still managed to make a big difference in Belmont St and around the Glasgow Academy entrance. In addition we tackled the shrubbery down the steps at the Kelvin Walkway. We filled 12 bags and re-duced the volume in overflowing street and pole mounted bins.

Wednesday 23rd March, 6pm. Belgrave Terrace

This clean up was organised and led by Luke Evens a Neighbourhood Improve-ment Volunteer, with publicity support from Councillor Martha Wardrop’s local da-tabase. There were 15 local residents and friends who removed litter from Bel-grave Terrace, Oakfield Avenue, Southpark Avenue and that section of Great West-ern Road. Focus was given to the Hillhead Steps in particular which has become a problem area. The team filled 20 bags of litter before darkness descended.

Thursday, 23rd March, 3.30pm. Glasgow University Union.

The disco clean up is now a tra-dition of the Action Hillhead Spring Clean and this event was another great success. There were 20 of us in total- lo-cal residents and students, ac-companied by disco music on a ghetto blaster. We filled 35 bags. The team were very happy to sit down in G12 Café at the end for a welcome drink provided by Glasgow University Union.

Friday 25th March Kelvingrove Park Eight attendees attended this Good Friday clean up- enough to tackle all of the park’s litter. We collected 12 bags of as-sorted waste.

One major benefit was the interest and in-volvement of many children having a family day out. They were keen to take part using the litter pickers and working together coop-eratively.

More of the local children joining the campaign, alongside our Spring Clean banner.

Saturday 26th March, 10am. Park Road and Gibson Street

This clean up was led by Will Knight, a local GOW resident and 17 people took part including sev-eral local politicians. We tackled Park Road, South Woodside Road, Woodlands Road, Eldon Street, Gibson Street and Cliff Road behind Burnbank Bowl-ing Club. The rainy weather did not detract from the effectiveness of the event. 20 bags plus miscellaneous items were collected and these were picked up particularly promptly at the end by LES staff.

Sunday 27th March, 10am. Byres Road and side streets

This Easter Sunday event was led by Elaine Docherty of Par-tick and Thornwood Action Group. A sunny morning with 15 bun-ny-ear-wearing volunteers participated. Elaine also organ-ised chocolate eggs for the public. As well as being effective in clearing litter, the event creat-ed a visual spectacle which was well received by passers by. We collected 25 bags of rubbish from the top to the bottom of Byres Road and nearby side streets, ending up back in Mansfield Park. Sunday 27th March, 10am. Queen Margaret Drive This clean up was led by Rhonda Fraser and Karen Longmuir of Queen Margaret Drive Communi-ty and attended by 12 people- proprietors, residents and friends.

Queen Margaret Drive and lane were thoroughly cleaned and swept. All litter was removed. In addition, street furniture was washed and cleaned, abandoned bicycles cut from the stand and old posters removed.

Assessment Action Hillhead’s Spring Clean Week is a completely volunteer-led initiative using few re-sources. Despite this, it has had considerable success locally, creates a positive impact and has helped identify lessons for future similar events.

A Difficult Task to Co-ordinate, with Little Statutory Support

Organising the Spring Clean is a substantial task but creates a positive impact. As an or-ganising group, we encouraged individuals to lead each of the clean ups and conduct their own neighbourhood publicity about their event to add to the Spring Clean Hillhead poster with its menu of options.

In a few cases; Ruthven Lane, Queen Margaret Drive, Byres Road, this worked really well and AH played a supporting co-ordinating publicity role. With many of the events, howev-er, AH resorted to taking on additional leadership in supporting named individuals. This was partly due to the absence of GCS at clean ups and the added undertaking of admin-istration duties.

There were instances where people heard of the Spring Clean initiative and asked for it to be held in their street. This expectancy of service provision rather than active participation is an issue which has clearly emerged this year. This needs to be addressed when taking similar initiatives.

Schools

School liaison was primarily undertaken by GCS in previous years, however, lack of re-sources meant this became the responsibility of organisers this time. Working with Hillhead Primary School brought some positive results as well as considerable community involve-ment where local residents worked with Primary School classes litter picking, bringing a new educational and community contact aspect to Spring Clean Hillhead.

Hillhead High School were very positive in their initial response but we do not know if they took action. Glasgow Academy did not respond and when a visit was made to the school, the re-sult was no participation again this year.

Planting of Spring flowers and bulbs both by Hillhead Primary School and in Ruthven Lane has been a welcome addition this year adding a new aspect to the concept of Spring Clean Hill-head.

Liaison with schools and joint action with residents was further enhanced by this initiative and there was tangible community participation in the week. More understanding of the joint bene-fits of tackling the problems of litter by being involved and taking action and thus achieving positive outcomes.

Glasgow University

Student liaison and participation has been greatly improved as a result of this initiative and this was the event (disco clean up), which generated press interest. There is now a platform to build on this success for future years particularly by linking to environmental issues.

Engaging Businesses

Similar to previous years, AH drafted a letter to businesses asking them to advertise the initia-tive and clean the pavement in front of their own premises. Following the experiences of previ-ous years, the letter included the Clean Glasgow logo, to indicate broader partnership working.

There was some discussion about whether this could be done without going through traditional council bureaucratic processes but it was approved and GCS agreed to print the posters. Byres Road Traders Association advertised on their social media and in their shop window but were unable to deliver hard copies to Byres Road traders.

Organisers hand delivered posters to Gibson St, Park Rd, Bank St and along Great Western Road.

Responses from Businesses varied considerably. the effectiveness was generally limited to in-dependent traders, some of whom were extremely supportive and positively promoted the ini-tiative. Corporate concerns, such as supermarkets, some of whom generate a sizeable percent-age of street litter, had no interest.

This is an area which requires considerable input and effort.

Several of the most effective events over the course of the week were organised and led by business people who cared about their area and brought innovative ide-as to their events . These were the businesses of Ruthven Lane, Byres Road and Queen Margaret Drive.

Ae Fond Kiss and Kelvin Hair showed notable leadership in bringing together the community of Queen Margaret Drive

Involvement from Statutory Bodies In previous years, Land and Environmental Services (LES)’ role has merely been the uplift of col-lected litter bags following clean ups. Two senior managers attended the first two clean ups– this is a significant and positive step towards partnership working. The provision of a cleaning barrow helped considerably to lessen the impact of the absence of GCS. The pick up of bags was prompt in almost every case and one of the workers was complimen-tary about the initiative and very supportive. Graffiti Removal Tagging and street graffiti was reported prior to the event and was speedily removed. On one site beside the River Kelvin, across from Kelvingrove Park, limited access resulted in GCS referring the matter to parks despite the fact that it had been painted over in previous years by the GCS graffiti team. The parks department generously accepted responsibility and completed the work within one month. Litter Fines As in previous years, organisers attempted to co-ordinate the work of litter wardens with the Spring Clean Ups. The plan that litter wardens, possibly working in plain clothes, would introduce themselves to participants to support the initiative and increase impact by imposing fines in are-as which had been cleaned. Similar to last year, the effort to control litter through fines was dras-tically minimal in comparison to the work of AH. The team are still awaiting a comprehensive breakdown of results and fines. We know that one fine was imposed on Hillhead Street. Public Outreach and Engagement Action Hillhead engaged with the public through a variety of methods. This included the face-book page on which actions for the initiative to take were discussed publicly and conversations with pedestrians on the street. These different approaches helped to gain volunteers. Especially on social media, Action Hillhead was able to increase the reach of the initiative. By paying facebook to ‘boost’ certain posts, a greater number of the local public were reached who shared common interests with the initiatives such as air pollution, environmental issues and transport. Diversity The diversity of the Action Hillhead volunteers demonstrated that the common goal for a clean and healthy environment is one is shared across all ages and cultures. Through successful social media campaigns, Action Hillhead reached volunteers of different nationalities, ages and back-grounds. The clean ups provided an opportunity for new Glasgow residents to meet locals.

Facebook Statistics

Action Hillhead’s facebook page—www.facebook.com/actionhillhead

Conclusion and Review One week on from the Spring Clean week, Volunteers from AH visited the sites of the clean ups, to inspect the lasting impacts of the clean ups. In the appendix are some pictures of the visits. This functioned as an evaluation of the initiative, to influence future AH planning. The initiative works with essentially no resources, but under a growing amount of difficulty amongst a diminishing level of support from statutory bodies. Taking all things into account; the number of people who attended the clean ups, engagement via social media (the posts reached 4000 people on one particular day following the week), volume of litter collected, and clean ups organised, the week was very much a success. This model of community action demonstrates that in the face of reducing public funding, re-sources and efforts can be re-evaluated to empower communities to take action. Very little sup-port from public bodies proves to go a long way in reinforcing the work that the community does. Cleansing services worked well in sync with Spring Clean Hillhead, whereas Community Safety Glasgow were unable to attend most of the clean-ups, leaving a larger burden on the AH team and organisers. Public services such as GCS and Clean Glasgow should work directly alongside communities who wish to make a change, and adapt to the changing economic climate. They can do this by har-nessing social media and empowering their key contacts to become community connectors (organisations, businesses, students and residents) to bring people together and incite local change. Future Plans The facebook page will still continue to function as a community asset– bringing volunteers and active local citizens together in one virtual place. The page will promote and advertise other local initiatives, such as the ones happening in Woodlands and Partick. Due to the success of the Spring Clean Week 2016, the organising group would like the progress to continue into 2017, and ensure Spring Clean 2017 happens as well. Local volunteers indicated they would like litter pickers to manage better recycling of the collect-ed waste– AH believes that they could partner with organisations such as Zero Waste Scotland to improve insight into achieving this. AH offers its support to other community groups and individuals who would like to start their own community action scheme. For more contact, check out the ‘Action Hillhead’ facebook page, and get in touch via the messaging function.

Appendix 1 —Pictures of the Action Hillhead

Evaluation Walk

Appendix 2— Email sent to Local Hillhead

Councillors, 26th January 2014

From: ERIC KAY Date: 26 January 2014 at 22:36:42 GMT To: MarthaWardrop <Martha.Wardrop@glasgow.gov.uk>, Ken AndrewCllr <Ken.Andrew@glasgow.gov.uk>, "McKeeverPauline Ann (Clr)" <PaulineAnn.McKeever@glasgow.gov.uk>, "McElroyMartin (Clr)" <Martin.McElroy@glasgow.gov.uk> Subject: street litter in Hillhead

Dear Councillors

I thought I should write to you all after going to help BARTA clean up on Saturday morning ..... Cleaning up the gardens and streets around Bank Street. These observations are nothing new & you have heard this before, I am sure ‘ but it confirms the recurrent problems.

It was raining heavily on Saturday morning and there were only 4 of us who turned out. But, despite the numbers, the results of the clean up were good and the streets and surroundings were noticeably cleaner when I waked round the area today.

Given the time spent (4 people for a couple of hours) with out only litter pickers and bags it is puzzling that litter gets to be so very bad.

Good will is in increasingly short supply (few younger people come out to volunteer unless it is organized by schools) and with the amount of discarded litter on the street, it has no signs of diminishing.

There is also a stubborn culture of dropping litter in Glasgow. A zero tolerance campaign in Hillhead (including the Universi-ty?) as a pilot might be timely?

However, unless a far greater enthusiasm comes from council staff those of us who care and take action are fighting a losing battle. I do not have a clear idea of the place enforcement plays but my perception is that fines are very unusual (except per-haps in the city centre?)

I frequently carry a litter picker in local streets but its use is limited by the fact that street bins are commonly full to overflow-ing or missing due to vandalism and not replaced. The most demoralising aspect is that there is a growing sense of resigna-tion that unless volunteers (often via you) report items for action nothing happens. Council workers are very commonly seen in the area but almost always (several at a time) in vehicles on the move to do specific task perhaps parked on a break.

I know that Hillhead Area Partnership will be focusing on this problem and perhaps fresh ideas will come from there.

Eric