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Wildlife Friendly Winter Decorating


To brighten up Winter 2020 the Young Ideas group teamed up with Park People to create some outdoor holiday decorating resources for the community. Due to the COVID-19 public health guidelines the group had to be creative in how they brought people together outdoors.
This resulted in a series of blog posts and a free virtual crafting event to provide space for sharing knowledge and tips around decorating public parks and parklets in a wildlife friendly way.
This project aimed to encourage people to get outdoors into our shared spaces to celebrate the season while also raising awareness of some simple ways that we can incorporate environmental stewardship into our decorating.
The free virtual crafting event took place on December 14th with twenty people in attendance. Participants were provided with free craft bags so that they could join in crafting along at home. All the crafts were bio-degradable and some supplies could be safely used by birds as food or nesting materials. Crafts were demonstrated by members of the Young Ideas group and they included snowflake paper cutting, needle felting, willow star weaving, and pomander balls. The event was open to everyone and suitable for all ages and crafting abilities. Participants were able to converse with each other while they completed their crafts and many stayed to chat and craft for two hours.
One participant had the following feedback – “Thanks so much for the crafty zoom meeting! It was my first zoom meeting – the crafts were great and well explained. I really appreciate the time the women put into organizing all of it.”
After the workshop the participants were invited to bring their creations to a designated tree in the neighbourhood which was located in the parklet in front of Gordon House. Due to the public health guidelines the participants were not able to gather to decorate all at once, but by coming to decorate the tree at separate times the group was still able have the experience of decorating all together but in a safe and social distanced way.

Over the month of December the group also publicly posted some other easy and affordable crafts ideas to the Gordon House blog and social media accounts. These posts highlighted different ways of using natural and low cost materials and all community members were invited to join us in decorating the trees around the parklet.
Links to crafting blog posts: