Interview Date: 7th August, 2024
C: Clara Cheung, G: Gum Cheng, S: Sarah Durling, Y: Yonatan Shemmer
| I: | G: | How and why would you join the friends group? |
| S: | The friends of the park or action? | |
| G: | Oh, maybe both. | |
| S: | The action group, I think we, I think we heard about it, and there were all these new people, and there, so there was sort of a mumbling, rumbling, of people talking about it. And I think we actually said we'll have a meeting here. And so one of the first meetings was here. And then people just started saying, the next one can be mine, and the next one could be mine. And then I think the more people that came, more people realised we can maybe do things that make a difference. Yeah, we can organise. And it wasn't, rather than just sort of getting together and saying, Oh yeah, I don't like this, or complaining about this or that. There were people who were given tasks, and I don't know who… I think Laura was taking the minutes of these meetings, wasn't she? Someone was taking the minutes, and might still have… | |
| G: | It was serious, even taking minutes? | |
| S: | No it was serious. It was serious. And we all got them on the Gmail so that would be something that would be easy to find. If you wanted, you know, I can, I'm happy to look through my like, if you said, can you find this or that, I might be able to look through my email. | |
| C: | So was there a particular agenda at the beginning to to call a meeting, I mean, to address something? | |
| S: | There were usually two or three or four items that were: so we're going to talk about this. And if anybody has anything they want to talk about… | |
| Y: | I'm trying to remember what were the first issues. | |
| S: | So one of the first… well, no, the church was later, wasn't it? | |
| Y: | The church was later. Cleaning was always on the agenda. Student noise was always on the agenda. The garbages were early on on the agenda. So the garbage here is unbearable, at least on the other side. Just the whole sidewalk is full of garbages, in part because these houses are uphill, so it's hard to pull them up. So people leave them on the street. So on this side of the street, most people take them away, and the other side, it's kind of hard to lift them. So there were a few suggestions for a while, maybe even again in the Harcourt News… Definitely, for a few years, there was a lot of designs Anne will remember, because she had some of the suggestions of maybe making small islands, for bigger garbages instead of those small ones. And then we thought, maybe we can cover these with some wood so they're nicer. It turned out that that wasn't feasible, because the city has some rules that once you cover them with wood, it's a permanent structure, and you can’t put the permanent structure on the side. So kind of complicated regulations. We were looking at designs from, I think, from Holland, how to make it beautiful, how to make these kind of garbage islands more beautiful. At the end, nothing happened. But that was a big topic for a while that was discussed. But I think answering your question: part of what made it, I don't know if that's why we joined, but one of the things that made it sensible to join was the sense that it was very democratic, and that was related to the fact that it was new. There wasn't any establishment. There wasn't anyone that was already governing anything, it was just people coming together to talk… |
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