How volunteers with multiple disadvantage built a crazy golf course and found connection and purpose
Our crazy golf course in Blackpool is a symbol of our work — not giving up on people who felt everyone had given up on them.
If you’ve ever been on a weekend night out in Blackpool and been a bit worse for wear towards the end of the night you may have come across Blackpool and the Fylde Street Angels. If you ever snapped a stiletto, found your phone battery was flat, or lost your group, you could approach their transit van on Queen Square for help. On different days the Street Angels also provided pastoral outreach to people who were homeless, with food and essentials, but above all kindness, compassion and understanding. And Tenacity.
When I reflect back on the last three years of Blackpool Fulfilling Lives, ‘tenacity’ is the best way to describe everything we’ve achieved. The Blackpool Fulfilling Lives programme helps people living in Blackpool who have a combination of issues including homelessness, re-offending, problematic substance misuse, and mental ill health. Funded by the National Lottery and ending earlier this year, our aim was to present and evidence more effective ways of delivering vital services to people with multiple disadvantage.
In April 2018 when our team recruited people experiencing disadvantage to do a focus group on what help they needed, I never would have imagined that we would find, rightfully occupy and renovate, a crazy golf course and involve some of the people from that focus group in the running of it. But that is what has happened.
Blackpool is one of the most famous and historic seaside resorts in the UK. It was the first place to have electric street lighting. It’s been a destination for health and wellbeing since the mid-19th Century. The watering hole of the masses was its accolade in the roaring 1920s. Its fin de siècle decadence has been proudly restored by the council over the last 20 years along with the renovation of many of its famous landmarks, and listed buildings, as part of an ongoing programme. Just north of its most visible landmark (the tower) and the oldest (North) pier, is the Princess Parade Crazy Golf Course.
Back in 2018, following the focus group, we went out picking up litter. The 17 people we spoke to on that April lunchtime had said they were willing to do this and Paul Rawson from the Street Angels agreed to co-ordinate. It wasn’t really about picking up litter though, it was about the conversations. Do something alongside people and you find out what matters to them. Do something to people, for example, grill them via a formal assessment, and you may find out what is the matter with them, but there is automatically an imbalance of power. But while picking up litter as an equal partner, we stumbled upon an area known as ‘the sunken garden’, and when one of the volunteers suggested it would be nice to tidy the area up, we spent an hour doing so. He also suggested it would be nice to renovate it, as it looked like a crazy golf course.
At the end of that hour, we agreed to meet again the following week. We provided some refreshments and a £5 voucher for their time, and I headed back to the office to start what was an incredible journey of enquiries, emails, applications, drawings, business plans and securing funding. I was not alone on this journey. Paul from the Street Angels kept the group out picking up litter and the Blackpool Fulfilling Lives Strategic Board listened in amazement as I proposed that in order to help people who are experiencing disadvantage we should renovate a crazy golf course. These are some of my career-defining moments.
With the myriad bureaucratic cogs set whirring, Paul and the team started an intensive tidy up (with permission). I went down regularly to see what was going on, and on occasion got stuck into helping. To set the scene: the site is 210 metres long by 60 metres wide, sunken, and is ‘crazy paved’, with a tarmac path, and peripheral hardy shrubbery to offer some shelter from the sea breezes. There was a core of 6 volunteers, all of whom were experiencing disadvantage, some homeless, some recently in drug treatment with fluctuating mental health and well known to the police and courts. But here they were, getting stuck in.
One guy had a hoe in hand and was scraping weeds from the crazy paving. “Right buggers these are, look at it,” he said. Behind him was about 10 square metres of scraped grouting, with shards of moss and weeds still lying there. “It’s fantastic though, look at what you have done,” I said. He turned behind briefly before carrying on scraping frantically as though an invisible slave master were beside him with a whip. “Aye” he replied before carrying on, sweat pouring from his forehead. I had a chat throughout the next few minutes and he said his name was Bobby and that this was the longest (a few months) he had been out of prison in the last 30 years. He volunteered 4 days a week throughout 2019. He hasn’t been back to prison to date, and was at the launch on 28th May this year.
On the last remaining bench (at the time) sat a lady watching. From under a crop of auburn hair and the shade of a hooded coat I could see her looking over in my direction. Under the bench was a bottle of cider. I meandered over. “I’m just watching, I’m not doing anything wrong,” she snapped. “I know, it’s great to watch isn’t it,” I replied. She told me how she wasn’t able to stay at home during the day. I didn’t pry as to why. “Do you know Paul (Rawson)?” I asked. “Yeah I know Paul, known him for years,” she said. “Well if you want to get involved just ask him, he’d love to have you on board”. She seemed surprised. “Whenever you feel ready,” I said “He is here every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday so just pop down. Maybe don’t bring the cider though.” She smiled and nodded.
A few weeks later I visited and she was weeding the borders. “You that guy from fulfilling lives?” she asked. “Yes I am, can I help?” “Yeah I’m trying to get hold of my navigator.” (Navigators were the frontline workers in my team). I found out the name of the worker and made a quick call. Within 15 minutes they had come down.
I said hello to Bobby who was still hoeing crazy paving.
And so this continued throughout 2019. Connection and a sense of purpose for those who felt people had given up on them. Incredible.
We also had another visit from Richard Gottfried, who is a crazy golf enthusiast having visited over 900 crazy golf courses. We first heard from Richard following a Fulfilling Lives Facebook post that got 49,000 likes, when we announced that the course was going to be renovated. I imagined Richard to be from Michigan, USA. He actually lives in Stockport. He’s been an advisor to the design of the course and has taken part in many meetings to help progress things. We gave him an award at the launch. He advised us to keep it traditional so Paul and I planned to repair the course accordingly. This fit in nicely with our permission to ‘restore’ the course from the council. Richard has a photo of his mum playing on the course in its heyday in 1980. In the photo, she is pregnant — with Richard! Maybe that explains why he is such a fanatical crazy golfer now. Maybe it was a ‘womb with a view’.
July 2019 saw a mini heatwave which had seen the course reduced to a dust bowl and Arizona temperatures. This was the day I had booked with Paul to rebuild a couple of holes that had been weathered and worn. Bear in mind the course had lain unused for 30 years, some holes would have looked at home in the Acropolis. We decided that as neither of us had any experience in restoring crazy golf courses we may as well have a go. I had an eye-watering stack of emails back at the office, but a promise is a promise. Plus, there is nowhere better than Blackpool on a hot sunny day.
Of course, and it does say this on the cement sacks, don’t use above 25 degrees. So once we had got used to the fact that we had literally 90 seconds from mixing the concrete to it going light grey and setting in the bucket we worked quick. Some old plastic guttering downpipe was sawn to mould the tunnels. We also ran out of builder’s sand. As there was a ‘bunker’ on the course we dipped into until we realised it was, at the time, a local cat toilet. Having strong Christian roots, Paul rarely swore but I more than made up for it. We had just finished rebuilding two holes when a thunderstorm lashed down. The holes survived, but one succumbed to vandalism that weekend. Although upsetting this was the only time that happened.
Later that year, with all the weeding done and the course looking tidier but still very tired we asked Blackpool Council Parks Department to dig out a huge diseased palm plant and trim the peripheral shrubs. I was slightly alarmed to see the shrubs reduced to stumps but they grew back with the same enthusiasm as Paul and the team had with the course.
The end of 2019 was marked with some drone photos of the course by the light of the world-famous Blackpool Illuminations. The weeded areas were sprayed with weed killer to suppress any winter growth and Paul and the team went down on any days when weather and temperatures allowed throughout the winter, with a plan to open the course in spring 2020. Paul was also asked to run a winter shelter for disadvantaged people, which he and the street angels did to good effect.
Behind the scenes, there was a whole industry of planning applications, meetings, legal discussions and business planning, that I led. I can’t really bring it to life as it was tortuously tedious and dull, but it is reassuring to know that Blackpool Council do protect the town by ensuring the rules are followed. There are also a lot of really helpful Blackpool councillors and officers in Planning, Estates and Parks.
March 2020 arrived. Covid-19 was on the news, creeping across the globe and eventually here. The Golf course had to be abandoned while we all stayed at home. The weeds came back. My working day and evenings involved helping with the tactical response to support disadvantaged people in Blackpool to stay at home or in some cases find a home. As Fulfilling Lives was due to end in 2021 I did wonder if we would ever get a chance to open the course. In the odd moment amongst the chaos, I had to think about such things.
Paul and I kept in touch. The Street Angels had been asked to extend their winter shelter to an emergency bed unit to help with the lockdown and stay at home directive. It was late summer 2020 before he could get anywhere near the golf course. They had to start all over again — weeds, weeds and more weeds. A few of the volunteers kept in touch but some had drifted off. We rekindled the meetings with Planning, Estates, Parks and Councillors. A frenzy of ordering benches, involving the Civic Trust in piecing together the history of the course for storyboards, painting things, rebuilding some of the holes, replacing lost Victorian coping stones and trawling the whole country’s reclamation yards to find those that matched. And all the boring legal stuff.
Then the Northwest was put into the highest tier of Covid-restrictions and eventually a national lockdown until March 2021. Everything was put on hold again. The winter seemed to go on forever, every day was 4 degrees C and raining. Too cold for weeds to grow thankfully.
In March 2021 we picked a date for the opening of 28th May 2021. The course wasn’t anywhere near ready. The behind the scenes work continued, at pace, often requiring meetings to remember where everything was up to. The slight distraction of a pandemic had derailed lots of plans.
Cue frenzy. Paul was down there every day with volunteers. My team slowly disappeared as they found other jobs before the end of March. Fulfilling Lives had been going for 7 years and helped over 1200 people, 529 who regularly engaged. A few of them stayed with the golf course. I cannot emphasise how brilliant the National Lottery Community Fund were and still are, and the Fulfilling Lives Strategic Board. The Board had agreed to the refurbishment and funding to do so, and above all, they shared Paul and my vision that this could become a reality.
We organised a launch on 28th May, and I had to select the 30 people who were permitted to attend an outdoor event.
In preparation, I went down one evening in mid-May and it was quite moving to see a beautiful, clean, brightly coloured and clearly loved crazy golf course, with new benches, repaired walkways, and playing surfaces. I sat there a while and imagined crazy golfers back in the 1950s when it first opened. I thought of all the volunteers that had been involved and hoped they had made it through the lockdowns ok. Covid is an awful illness and so many have been affected by the heartbreaking illness and deaths of loved ones. The impact of lockdowns cannot be underestimated, especially if you are experiencing multiple disadvantage. For some of the volunteers, this was the only reliable social connection they had. I wondered what had become of Bobby the ‘weed maestro’.
Cue launch day, and with the Mayor of Blackpool kindly agreeing to open the event, local broadcaster Andy Mitchell covering the story on the radio, and a Blackpool Gazette press release, all that was needed was a fine day. I got down there early to tie a ribbon across the course for the Mayor to cut, and cursed the fact I had instructed the benches to be bolted to the floor as the pack of ribbons were only 9 metres each and we needed 10. Quick innovative knot tie, job done.
It was just after the speeches that a middle-aged chap in a suit came up to me. He seemed to know me and only after a few seconds did I recognise the accent. It was Bobby the hoe wielding ‘weed maestro’. No scruffy clothes or intoxicated eyes. He produced an iPad and asked me if we could keep in touch and could he work on the course. I said, “Yes but don’t come down with that suit on or you’ll ruin it.” I later found out from Paul that Bobby (who had changed his phone number inadvertently meaning Paul couldn’t contact him) had come back a few weeks earlier demanding to know where the hell everyone had been for the last year.
I guess it wasn’t just the Street Angels and the Fulfilling Lives team who lived by tenacity on this crazy golf course.
Blackpool Fulfilling Lives was a partnership between With You and representatives from a range of statutory and voluntary agencies in Blackpool. It was one of 12 projects across England funded by the National Lottery Community Fund under their initiative to improve the lives of people experiencing multiple disadvantage. The programme ended in March 2021.
