Northern Ambiguity

Notes on walks, listening, and who really gets to use space

Picture this.

We’re known locally for activating community spaces.
We’ve even been held up — slightly awkwardly — as examples of how to do this kind of work well.

We do things properly.

Risk assessments.
Insurance.
Safeguarding.
Cross the t’s. Dot the i’s.

All sensible. All necessary.

But it starts to feel faintly ridiculous when you realise what we’re actually planning.

Not a residential.
Not climbing or kayaking.
Not anything high risk.

Just a walk.

—

We’re taking a group of Year 4 children from Eskdale Primary School to visit a nearby space and ask what they think.

What they notice.
What feels good.
What doesn’t.
What they’d change.

Nothing fancy.

Just a walk and a conversation.

Some of them have never been to this part of town before.

Which always surprises me, because it’s not that far away.

But that’s how place works.

You don’t know what you don’t know.

Even “free” destinations aren’t really free once you factor in buses, lifts, parking, lunch money, the small costs that quietly add up.

Your world can become — or stay — very small without you realising.

Sometimes the most useful thing you can do isn’t build anything new.

It’s just widen the map a little.

—

And yet, before we even step outside, there’s paperwork.

Risk assessments.
Liability conversations.
Public liability insurance.
Emails about who is responsible for what patch of grass.

Listening, apparently, carries risk.

Then comes the stranger question:

Who actually owns the land we’re walking on?

Not fenced-off fields.
Not private property.

Just the everyday bits of town hundreds of people use every day.

Paths. Verges. The edge of a park. The space between school and shops.

Public in every practical sense.

But once you need formal permission, things get fuzzy.

Council?
School?
Housing?
Someone else?

No one’s quite sure.

It’s strange how quickly “just a walk” turns into emails, phone calls, and a small detective story about land ownership.

All before you’ve even stepped outside.

—

The irony is, the reason we’re doing this walk at all comes from the insight we’ve been gathering with young people and families.

And the story isn’t what most systems expect.

At Eskdale, the children helped design the questions themselves.

What came back wasn’t “we’re inactive”.

It was something else entirely.

Families walking the dog twice a day.
Kids scootering to school.
Parents on their feet all shift.
Grandparents walking to the shops.

Movement everywhere.

Just not the kind that shows up in participation statistics.

Barriers weren’t motivation.

They were time, confidence, dignity — and narrow ideas about what “counts” as activity

One conversation our community researcher Gareth shared has stuck with me.

Three girls talking about PE.

Not “I don’t like sport.”

“I don’t like PE because we’re not allowed to wear a hoodie outside.”

Not performance.
Not effort.

Dignity.

Feeling comfortable.
Feeling exposed.

Small things that quietly say:
this isn’t really for you.

—

With the Wadokai group — slightly older kids — the lens shifted again.

They didn’t talk about facilities first.

They talked about signals.

Litter.
Broken glass.
Noise.
Dog mess.
Spaces that felt uncared for.

Places that technically exist… but don’t invite you in.

You could almost hear the calculation happening as they described their doorstep:

Is this place for me or not?

Positive memories were often somewhere else in town.

Not the spaces right outside their front door.

Nature — trees, grass, green bits — was one of the few things that consistently felt welcoming

—

The more we listened, the more a simple idea kept surfacing.

Not access.

Not provision.

Permission.

Permission to step outside.
Permission to hang around.
Permission to try something.
Permission to feel like you belong.

Most people are already moving.

They’re already doing their best with the conditions they’ve got.

The work isn’t persuading them to change.

It’s making spaces feel like they’re theirs in the first place

—

Which brings me back to the paperwork.

Because here we are, as adults, needing permission too.

Permission to walk.
Permission to listen.
Permission to ask children what they think about their own streets.

Different level.

Same pattern.

It’s hard not to be bemused by the symmetry.

We spend weeks talking about helping young people feel confident enough to use space…

…while we’re filling in forms just to step into it ourselves.

—

Maybe the first step in place-based work isn’t a programme or an intervention.

Maybe it’s simpler.

Maybe it’s just removing friction.

Making it easy to step outside.

Making it obvious you’re welcome.

Sometimes that starts with a park.

Sometimes with a conversation.

Sometimes with nothing more complicated than a walk.