From Trashed to Treasured: El Parque de los Niños in La Campana
The photos keep coming in. As each day passes, the neighbors of El Cerro de La Campana continue sending updates of their project of creating a pocket park in a trashed empty lot in their barrio. The chat group they created to coordinate the project has, over the past few weeks, become an archive of their efforts, and a space where they cheer each other on.
“Todos los vecinos excelente trabajo,” one vecina wrote. “Good job to all of the neighbors.”
This continued progress of the project that we helped the community plan in March has shown us one thing: community engagement works. And in this case, it has empowered the La Campana neighbors to take complete ownership of their pocket park plan, and organize with each other to make it a success.
“Gracias, saludos a todos y les estaremos enviando los avances,” another neighbor wrote in the group chat. “Thanks, and hi to everyone. We will be sending the advancements.”
The La Campana community has been working with neighborhood nonprofit Barrio Esperanza to get the pocket park effort off the ground. They wanted to replace the lot with a resource for the neighbors. It had already been done higher up on the hill. They asked for our support.
A grant, which connected us with the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo Leon in Monterrey, allowed us to form a team of students and head down to La Campana for one week in March to meet the community, learn more about the effort, and provide planning assistance. We were to engage the community in participatory action research in order to truly understand and support their specific wants and needs in terms of the park.
Through workshops and visioning sessions, community meetings and planning discussions, we worked alongside the La Campana residents to slowly develop a plan of action for the park. Our goal was to make the park a community-based effort – it would belong to them and be up to them to design, implement, and maintain it. In turn, we’d also (ideally) help strengthen the bonds between neighbors.
The week was fruitful, inspiring, and challenging. The weather in Monterrey was rainy and gray, leaving the park site consistently muddy and, in some parts flooded. The nature of the project meant that we’d have to first consult with the community upon arrival in order to then plan our workshops for each day. We had to think on our toes and maintain open hearts and minds as we let the project unfold, so that our efforts would be in line with the community’s vision. We had our work cut out for us.
Getting to Know La Campana
We started the trip with a neighborhood meeting right in front of the park space, where we’d introduce ourselves to the residents and have them show us around the community. We hoped neighbors would see us and join the meeting, but we were unsure if they would. One lesson we learned that week was to trust in the process: at every workshop and meeting, despite our worries that they’d be a flop, neighbors always came.
This first meeting was key in making the week productive. It was an opportunity to be transparent with our mission in engaging the community and for more residents to get familiar with the neighborhood work of Barrio Esperanza. It also was an excellent chance for us to get to know the community, both as people and as a space. As a group, the La Campana residents took us on a tour around their barrio, showing us their homes, businesses, places they were proud of, and places they thought needed attention.
But along the way, we realized that we weren’t the only ones who were seeing parts of the neighborhood for the first time. We learned that some of the neighbors hadn’t explored La Campana much outside of their usual route from home to work and school. Those who lived on the lower part of the cerro generally stayed in that area. They, too, were seeing the community with fresh eyes, which made the experience all the more meaningful for everyone. And the fact that they got to see the pocket parks that the nearby residents and Barrio Esperanza created higher up on the cerro was significant. It proved that such a project in La Campana was possible.
The Work Begins
The location for the pocket park was a small lot underneath a bridge that connects La Campana to the rest of Monterrey. The space was trashed and muddy. Heaps of rubbish and building debris dotted the uneven landscape, adjacent to a creek that flowed with rainwater runoff and garbage items.
For any passerby, it would be difficult to see the space’s potential to be anything else. Besides the community participatory planning to imagine how the park would look, there was a lot of work to be done just to get the space ready for construction. Celina Fernández, founder of Barrio Esperanza, reminded us that joining in on the project had created a lot of expectations in the community. We knew we had to leave the community with something concrete before the week was over.
Over the next few days, we organized several creative workshops with the neighborhood kids. We used art to determine what sort of activities they’d like to do in their new park once it was finished. They drew slides, swings, canchas de fútbol, and trees, among numerous other things. Later in the week, they painted vibrant colors and designs on small wooden squares that would be used to make a small mosaic table for the park. We found that art was an effective and interesting way to engage and excite the kids, and to ensure that they would feel a sense of ownership over the park.
Perhaps one of the most meaningful achievements of the group was when they brainstormed a list of potential names for the park and – along with the adults – voted on which name they liked best. The park, they decided, would be called El Parque de los Niños – The Children’s Park.
To help seal the deal, we had the children design the park’s letrero – it’s name plate – which we would later hang from the bridge that crosses over the lot.
Creating the artwork with the kids was an important step in getting the project going, but the adult community members also wanted us to help them create a strategic implementation plan with technical advice for the effort. Neighbors who were reluctant to participate or who doubted the community’s ability to work together to accomplish this goal quickly changed their tune as they watched the effort unfold with community support.
Knowing that the adults were fully on board with the effort was motivating. A key moment that proved their commitment occurred about halfway into the week. One neighbor who lives in front of the space, Lety, told us that the park needed a drainage system for rainwater runoff, to prevent the water from pooling around the edge of the space. The week’s rain confirmed this. We had already helped nearby neighbors dig a drainage path for the water to flow into the nearby creek below the lot, but the path needed a more permanent drainage method.
We arrived to La Campana one morning, a day after we met with the Barrio Esperanza team and explained our suggestions for the park’s implementation. To our surprise and delight, two neighborhood men had installed a large PVC pipe in the drainage path overnight and covered it with dirt to secure it in place. It was inspiring to see this grassroots effort happen so quickly.
The same day that we hung the letrero, we also painted the hands of the local kids and they plastered them all over a large white post on the edge of the space, connected to the overhead bridge. It was one of the last activities we did, and it drew in new faces of all ages to participate. It was the perfect ending to our trip.
The Work Continues
We left La Campana more than six weeks ago, but the work to create the park continued full steam ahead. Every week, we’d receive more photos and messages showing how the space was evolving. They built a retention wall for the back end of the park, created a trail there along the creek, and even put up a chain-link fence to partially enclose the area. Soon after, they installed donated playground equipment in the park, and even planted a small, new tree.
As we watch from afar, keeping track of the progress with every photo, we know that this park belongs to La Campana.
Click the image below to see the video showcase
