Somerset charity wants better park facilities for teenage girls

Make Space For Girls wants to make parks and sports areas more accessible for teenage girls

A charity is calling for more play spaces to be designed with teenage girls in mind.

It comes after new research showed 90% of facilities in local parks are used by boys or young men.

The Parkwatch report took place in May with volunteers in 90 UK council areas noting how many teenagers were using facilities in their local park.

The government says it has invested more than £9m to create more than 100 parks.

Susannah Walker, the co-founder of Make Space for Girls, said: "People have always known that these spaces are dominated by boys, but until now there has been no real data to confirm this."

The Parkwatch survey found 95% of people using multi-use games areas were boys and young men

The research also found in the south west 95% of the users in multi-use games areas and 89% of those in skate parks and BMX tracks are boys or young men.

Imogen Clark, co-founder of Make Space for Girls, said: "What this research shows is that for every £100,000 a council in the south west spends on a multi-use games area, is actually £95,000 spent on boys, and just £5,000 on girls.

"And there is little else on offer in parks for teenage girls and young women."

Ms Clark said girls often end up with nowhere to go, which impacts their physical and mental health.

Charlee Bennett from Your Park Bristol and Bath has been researching the different ways that girls experience parks

Charlee Bennett, the chief executive for Your Park Bristol and Bath, has been working on developing Brickfield Park for two and half years.

It is one of the only parks in the south west to make changes to the park to make it feel safer, more welcoming and inclusive for teenage girls.

Ms Bennett said most parks have been around since the Victorian times, meaning the knowledge about the different ways that boys and girls experience the world has changed since then.

Your Park Bristol and Bath have conducted workshops and surveys to find out how teenage girls feel about parks.

Their observational findings revealed that the basketball court was used by boys and men 89% of the time.

During their studies, they never saw girls using the football pitches and 25% of girls they spoke to through the survey said they would not feel safe to come to Brickfield Park at all.

The campaign group wants more parks to be built to cater for girls like this play park in Oxford

Emma, 17, from Frome said: "It's very telling when you walk into a park and there's sports activity, sports activity, more sports activity and there's no seating."

She said she found it "infuriating" when the seating is designed to watch boys play, claiming that park seating is designed to put "girls into a subservient place where they're expected to spectate at what boys are doing".

"When we spoke to girls, we heard a lot about how the park doesn't work for them at the moment and the park's got some sport areas," said Miss Bennett.

"But actually, what teenage girls really want is for the park to feel safer.

"They want the park to be full of nature as well, so they can go out and explore and discover biodiversity."

Make Space for Girls has produced a set of recommendations as part of the report, which includes consulting teenage girls to find out what they want to see in parks and asking councils to evaluate their provision and address the inequalities.

A government spokesperson said: "We have invested £9m from the Levelling Up Parks Fund to create more than 100 parks on unused, underdeveloped or derelict land.

"That's on top of the more than 110 projects across the country that received funding through the Levelling Up Fund to deliver parks and green spaces."