Alien Nation - Trespass #2

There is only one culture and that is OUR culture (Abdelmalek Sayed in his book ‘Double Absence’ - the suffering of the immigrant)

I was ready. I had spoken with Anna and Jo, the engagement rangers based in Edale in the Peak District National Park. We had tested the 5km walk from the railway station, through Edale village, along the path below Kinder Scout and back to the Discovery Centre in Edale. We had talked about how we could welcome a group of 4 women and their families, refugees from Turkey, who I had met at the Dialogue Society in Sheffield and worked with in an English conversation class. We had set a date in September, booked the wellies, planned the time table and had given ourselves 4 months to allow the pandemic to die out. The idea was that we would enable the women and their families to get to know the Peak District and then propose to learn from them how the Peak District National Park could do things differently to become more welcoming to people from diverse communities. Ultimately, we wanted to enable them, give them the skills and access to professionals, to design and create a resource that would reach communities that the Park currently fails to reach.

Between March and August we had all noticed how people from diverse communities had ventured out into the Peak District. The sound of different languages spoken by people mingling on Ladybower dam, gathering around the reservoirs of Howden, Derwent, Agden, Damflask and Broomhead. The mouth watering smells of foreign food being cooked on mobile barbeques. The groups of young Chinese people, arriving at Bamford station and traipsing up to Bamford Edge, posing for selfies and groupies on Canon Rock. The virus had driven people from the cities into the countryside in drones. It was busier than ever before.

It was wonderful but there were problems too: Too many cars, too much litter, overcrowded villages and anxious comments on community facebook groups - sometimes outright hostile towards anyone who wasn’t recognised, who dressed or talked differently. This area, so dependent on tourists and regular visitors, did not feel as welcoming and it wasn’t so different in other parts of the country’s country-sides and national parks.

One of the areas of priority for the Peak District National Park is to make it more accessible and welcoming to diverse communities. This can of course be marked out as a priority but it will not be addressed if this is not encouraged by the communities, businesses, amenities and institutions within The Park. It needs a bigger effort than setting it out in an audience development plan and attach graphs and targets to it. I get excited about the potential of exploring this.

As soon as an area is marked out as having a National Park status it becomes bordered. Even though the name implies that is a ‘Park for the Nation’, instead it starts to behave like a museum piece, something that has a defined cultural heritage that warrants preservation. It takes on a ‘static’ position and yet, it was never that. There is a rich cultural heritage that changed over years and years like the rest of the planet. A geology that is shaped by years of flow, crushing, sedimentation, growth, death. You can still find pre-historic spear heads along the beaches of the reservoirs in dry periods. There are stone circles that have been carved out and placed carefully, deliberately. There is a long history of changing boundaries made of stone walls around parcels of land, intersected by Roman roads. There are the guide stoops like Hope Cross that tell you what place lies to the right of you. Coffin roads and inns, churches and mills sit alongside contemporary visitor centres with bike hire places, cafes, souvenir shops.

With yet another lock-down planned, starting this week, I am so aware that people are beginning to feel locked-in and locked-up. In my role as volunteer for City of Sanctuary I can hear the anxiety in the voices of people who are waiting to hear if they have a right to remain so they can begin their life here in the UK - their locked-in/locked-up condition has often lasted many years. Maybe this Park can be an example of how you can host with compassion and enabling people to feel that they are part of this, its ongoing story, their place, their Park. It is not something be preserved like a museum object, it is a place that still evolves, breathing air into the lungs of those struggling to inhale. It is a place to be enjoyed, to provide everything everyone needs every day. Sure, it needs protecting, but it can only be protected if everyone feels it belongs to them. It’s no place for the chosen few.