DPU's Liza Griffin receives Bartlett Innovation Fund for a project on Healthy Parks Petal Framework

Liza Griffin was awarded almost £10,000 from Bartlett Innovation Fund for the proposed project titled 'The Healthy Parks Petal Framework: rooting, testing and growing a new healthy greenspace framework with policymakers' in partnership with Gemma Moore and Ruth Hynes. The aim of the Bartlett Innovation Fund (BIF) is to provide funding for activities that generate, or support: enterprise collaborations, impact-related activities, and innovation learning initiatives.

The Framework of the successful proposal is a visual assessment tool designed help urban park managers connect with local communities and manage and appraise park spaces with improved health objectives in mind. Their project builds upon needs identified in the UK Funded Future Parks Accelerator ‘Parks for Health’ project run by Camden and Islington to consider the impact of parks on health and to reduce health inequalities.

The proposal aims to develop partnerships and impact acceleration by testing, rooting and growing a new healthy greenspace Framework (the Petal Framework, codesigned by the delivery team, described below), with and for local authority green and public health officers who are interested in integrating health and wellbeing into the design, planning and management of public urban greenspace. The multiple connections between greenspace and health are known, with an emerging body of research and policy addressing links. 

Urban parks have been particularly important during UK lockdowns. Within ‘Parks for Health’, there is a desire that health will become the golden thread that flows through parks’ services and the lens through which the investment, design and management of the boroughs’ parks are implemented.

The Bartlett Innovation Fund will be used to support the testing and embedding of the Petal framework within two local authorities, taking an action research approach, focusing on two case studies.

The objectives of this innovation project are to: (1) Share new knowledge through the Petal Framework gained by testing its application in Camden & Islington; (2) Build capacity amongst local authority officers in Camden & Islington by supporting the application of the framework and rooting it within policy systems/processes and governance; (3) Develop partnerships and future research collaborations with a wider group of stakeholders, growing the framework