Save Our Meadows
The Campaign continues
Consultation? What consultation?
We have seen a letter from the Parks Department which suggests that the Parks Events consultation responses will be ignored with respect to the Meadows and Bruntsfield Links, except in one very narrow aspect. You can see the letter here.
Parks Events Manifesto out for consultation
The city-wide Parks Events Manifesto has been published and is now out for consultation with Friends groups and Community Councils. This gives us another chance to influence policy, as the Meadows and Bruntsfield Links are listed among the parks covered by the document. The maximum time for an event stays at 4 weeks for the Meadows and Bruntsfield Links, although other parks are given considerably shorter maximum times. Included in this new document is a limit of five events per year - a figure that was not included in the earlier document.
Please read the document and prepare your comments for the consultation. You can access it from
Council Papers Online
Three briefing papers have been prepared to help consultees and give them some background information. They are available here:
Briefing Paper 1
Briefing Paper 2
Briefing Paper 3
The consultation paper is available
here
You might also be interested to read the article in the Edinburgh Evening News of 28/10/09 available
here.
The consultation period ends on 31 January 2010.
Green Flag
The Meadows has been
REFUSED Green Flag status! We have seen the report, which was highly critical of the management plan. We made sure the City Councillors all had a chance to see this report before their meeting on 20th August, but it didn't seem to have much influence on their decision about the Meadows events for next year. The report makes comments such as "...that this community [the Friends group] is becoming increasingly reluctant to become involved in the park due to what is believed to be over use by commercial activities. This issue must be addressed by the management team quickly because parks and green spaces are there for the community." Or how about their suggestion that "Part of the Meadows area could be developed into, because of the increased water logging, a conservation wetland."?
Management of the park is a critical issue, one we shall be concentrating on in the coming months.
Meadows Chamber Orchestra
The next concert of the Meadows Chamber Orchestra will be given in Greyfriars Kirk on Saturday 20 February, in support of Marie Curie Cancer Care, and conducted by David Watkin. The programme consists of Mozart's last symphony (no. 41 in C, the Jupiter), and Beethoven's first (also in C). Adrian Uren plays Mozart's popular fourth horn concerto, and the orchestra also plays the 'Representation of Chaos' from Haydn's oratorio 'The Creation'. For further information
see the website.
© 2010 FoMBL
