A Million People: Black Country as an Urban Park – ambitious project makes shortlist for TV vote
Released: 23 October 2007
Leaders of ‘A Million People: Black Country as an Urban Park’ are celebrating after the ambitious environmental regeneration project was short-listed for a national television and website vote that could see it winning £50 million of Lottery funding.
A Big Lottery Fund (BIG) scrutinising committee has named it as one of four prestigious schemes that will battle it out for public votes in December both via the Internet and on ‘The People’s £50 million Contest’ programme to be screened on ITV.
Sarah Middleton, chief executive of the Black Country Consortium that led the joint bid, said: “This is fantastic news. For Black Country ambitions to be placed alongside other exciting projects of potentially international importance is a clear recognition of the great progress the region is making.
“Our vision is for a ‘green’ Urban Park (UP) that will involve and be embraced by a million people in the Black Country. But our world heritage is also for others to visit, enjoy and celebrate and that makes it a project for the whole country.
“Now we ask people everywhere to ‘Stand UP for the Black Country’ and vote for the Urban Park in December.”
‘A Million People: Black Country as an Urban Park’ includes four key elements – the unveiling of forgotten caverns beneath Dudley, a 12-mile ‘green bridge’ park linking Walsall and West Bromwich town centres, an inspirational visitors centre at Barr Beacon and widespread regeneration of Wolverhampton’s canal network.
More than 800,000 people will become within a 15-minute walk of safe and attractive green space.
The partners in the bid are the Consortium, Dudley, Walsall, Wolverhampton and Sandwell councils and the Wildlife Trust for Birmingham and the Black Country.
If successful in the vote, the £50 million of Lottery funding will support the first five to ten years of up to 30 years of Urban Park activity.
Councillor David Caunt, chair of the Consortium, said: “The whole Urban Park project is a £100 million programme that will transform the Black Country’s historic and natural environment based around our unique canal network.
“It will involve 300,000 children and 3,000 local groups in transforming their environment, provide 60,000 volunteer opportunities, deliver 500 local projects and open up 3,700 acres of green space – as well as save one of the world’s most important geological features, the limestone caverns at Wren’s Nest.”
The key projects are as follows:
‘Strata’: Major visitor and education attractions at Wren’s Nest, Dudley, including stabilising and refurbishing the Severn Sisters limestone mines and subterranean canal basin. Visitors will travel underground by boat and rise to the surface by a funicular train. A new interpretation centre will explain how 400 million years of geology led to the Black Country becoming the ‘workshop of the world’.
‘Canals and Waterways’: This will create new moorings, education and interpretation facilities along City Canals in Wolverhampton; improvements to open space and wildlife habitats, and making the canals safe and accessible to communities.
‘Green Bridge Park’: One of the largest urban open spaces in the region between West Bromwich and Walsall, including a new low carbon footprint visitor centre at Barr Beacon and expansion of the existing RSPB visitor centre in Sandwell Valley; also an inspiring new pedestrian bridge across the A41.
‘Living Landscape’: Enhanced and increased access to natural areas around the canal network; involvement of over three-quarters of the one million population.
Details of the when and how to vote will be issued by BIG shortly.
Issued by the press office.