Residents in a Bootle neighbourhood have taken art to heart in a bid to give their local park an attractive new look.
Boring Bollards have become beautiful bollards around Poets Park thanks to the input of local people and the skills of Merseyside-based artist Madeleine Pires.
The eye-catching painted bollards are part of the Our Beautiful Grotspots project, which is co-ordinated by local social enterprise Regenerus and supported by a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
At the start of the project residents in the so-called Poets Streets – named after some of the country’s greatest-ever verse writers – said they wanted to see more flowers and more colour in their area.
As a result 7,000 daffodil bulbs were planted in the park last autumn to create a sea of yellow this spring, and new wildflower borders have been installed at the three park entrances.
Now the project has gone one step further by decorating the bollards in the area, something highlighted by residents on the community walkabouts at the start of the project.
Everyone was invited to submit their ideas for the designs and the response was all about adding colour, with residents saying they wanted something that would brighten up the area, even in winter.
Subsequently everything has been co-designed and co-created, with residents cleaning the bollards and painting the vibrant background colours, ready for Madeleine to work on the final designs.
These include many images of flowers, and also poems written by members of the local community as part of the project, which give voice to issues that are important to people living in the area now.
Among the first bollards to be completed were one featuring a red poppy and another capturing the magic of sunlight on a bluebell woodland.
The third bollard featured a poem called Hope, and a range of wildflowers including blackthorn blossom, musk mallow, periwinkle and clover. In total, 26 bollards have now been painted in the area.
Ruth Livesey of Regenerus commented: “Since we launched Our Beautiful Grotspots it has attracted a lot of interest from local people keen to get involved in activities to green up their local environment.
“This has been equally true of the latest ‘beautiful bollards’ element of the project, which has seen residents making a lot of really good suggestions which Madeleine Pires has taken away and transformed into the exciting finished designs we see today.
“We’re delighted that feedback from the community has been so positive – as one resident told us ‘you’re doing such a great job’ and ‘the park used to be such an ugly place, but now it’s so much better’.
“A huge thank you to everyone who has put their time, effort and ideas into the many improvements that have been made to the Poets Park neighbourhood as part of the project,” added Ruth.
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