Lowcountry Blogs

Recapping Tuesday’s Event

Local roundup

Lyn Mettler organized a PR event for bloggers in the Charleston area, there was some secrecy as to the purpose of the gathering, but several locals joined her at 39 Rue de Jean.  Upon arrival it was revealed that the event was sponsored by the Charleston Parks Conservancy, a new grass roots organization modeled after the non-profit that cleaned up Central Park in NYC.

A short presentation followed by a Q&A session highlighted the goals of the new non-profit and some of the attending bloggers have posted their impressions.

Chuck:

I grew up a few blocks from where we were meeting and was amazed there were more than 100 parks in Charleston. It was explained that for every well known Hampton park or Colonial Lake, there are tiny pockets of greenery tucked into almost every neighborhood.

The CPC said that people can participate on many levels, even actual “digging in the dirt.”

Since I enjoy - and blog about - live music concerts, maybe this movement will develop new venues for outdoor events. I’m glad I was invited.

LabThug:

What CPC is trying to do is improve local awareness of the city’s 120 parks. They are planning on doing this through their website and a host of other “grass-roots” efforts. In addition to picking 5 Park Angels, they want to create a wiki with each park in detail so users can share stories, etc. They are loosely affiliated with the City’s Parks and Recreation Department. They also said they modeled themselves after the Central Park one.

There was also a small presentation hosted from a Mac. It had some sort of iPod hook-up to play relaxing Muzak.

There were questions, but I don’t remember them now. Overall this project has a lot of potential, I hope it pans out — we’ll see what happens.

JAZ:

I wrapped up the day at a press conference for an interesting non-profit with the view to boost public interest in local parks and greenspaces and recruit volunteers willing to put sweat equity into making those places all they can be.

It’s an all too common story these days, even with the national parks. Maintenance costs money and improvements to roads, facilities, et cetera, cost even more money. A lot of very beautiful spaces are falling into disrepair simply due to lack of funding.

I’ll be watching the progress of this effort with great interest.

Heather @ June 20, 2008