Inclusion Matters - Emma, Lordship Rec Ground Junior Park Run

You should see the hard eye roll I do every time my boss tells me about his latest run and yet this was one of the most touching and enjoyable episodes I have had the pleasure to record. I think Emma is so incredible relatable in her different incarnations. All my blunt questions were genuinely because I didn't know and then always opened up these new avenues of storytelling.
 
I also really enjoyed her talking about the magic of McDonalds in Wood Green as a teenager, I think most of us get that :)

Here the promised links:
website: https://www.parkrun.org.uk/lordshiprecground-juniors/news/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lordshiprecgroundjuniorparkrun/
Art Trail: https://bigfunartadventure.org/art-trail/
ABC Parents: https://www.instagram.com/abc_parents/

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pod instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anybodyeverybodytottenham/
For updates on my latest projects, check pod website : https://www.anybodyeverybodytottenham.com/
pod twitter: https://twitter.com/AnybodyBody 

Transcript

[00:00:00] Jamila: Hi, I'm Jamila and Anybody, Everybody Tottenham is a monthly podcast introducing the good people of Tottenham to you. Hello, everyone. I hope you're doing well. Today's episode is going to be a little bit longer. We are going past my usual cutoff point of 39 minutes. It came about because of Supporter of the Pod, Sarah.

When I organized an event at my school in July, I suddenly needed a British Sign Language interpreter, and Sarah is somebody who knows people. So I asked her, and when I told her about the event, she was like, Oh, you have to talk to our Junior Park Run, because they're really inclusive, and they've got lots of different things going.

That's where I got the inspiration from to check out Lordship Rec Junior Park Run. So it's really interesting. You know, I think it's a, it's a really great story of Emma and how it all came about. And she's, I think she's a fantastic storyteller as well. So I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did listening to Emma.

Okay. Speak to you later. Take care. So today on the pod, I've got Emma from Lordship Rec Ground Junior Park Run. Hello, Emma. 

[00:01:39] Emma: Hello, it's lovely to meet you. 

[00:01:41] Jamila: Okay, Emma. Um, let's start with your connection to Haringey first, and then let's talk about how, um, the Junior Run evolved, etc. So, what's your connection to Haringey or Tottenham?

[00:01:54] Emma: Well, I have lived in Haringey for about 90 percent of my life, otherwise grew up in Muswell Hill, moved to Wood Green in my mid teens and ended up in Tottenham about 17 years ago. And I've been here ever since. And I really don't want to move, but as a private tenant, I am aware that every year my landlady may say. Thank you very much. It's time for you to go, but I'm still here and I don't plan on going anywhere anytime soon. 

[00:02:28] Jamila: And how has Tottenham or your perception changed over the time? Because you come from the, from the rich side of Haringey, isn't it? From the East and the West, from the West to the East. 

[00:02:38] Emma: When I, when I was a kid, I, uh, I lived in Muswell Hill, but I went to school in Wood Green.Um, my grandparents moved to wood green in the 1960s. So it was a case of my mom had grown up in wood green. Um, she met my dad at a pub, um, in Hornsey. They got married, had me got a nice little place in Muswell Hill. So yeah, it was really posh. It was a bit difficult to be like a posh kid in Muswell Hill in the 80s and going to school in Wood Green.

So, yeah, I got a bit of stick for that. But then we moved in the mid 90s to Wood Green to be closer to my grandparents. I was only in my mom and dad's house for a few years before I went to work away on the holiday camps, so I didn't, um, spend that much time until I had my own family and I moved back to London and I moved to Tottenham and, but yeah, I mean, I'm in my forties now and there's no point do I think I don't want to live here? It's not a nice place. The people aren't nice to the contrary. Some of the best people I've ever met, uh, People who live in Wood Green and in Tottenham, they're people who are giving back to their community and trying to make it a better place. Everywhere has got bad apples, so to speak.

You know, there's always going to be somebody who's going to graffiti something or break something. There's always going to be a noisy neighbour. There's always going to be somebody and, and that's down to the people, not the place. So when people, when I say to people, you know, my daughter went to school on Broadwater Farm and they make a funny face at me, or I say that I'm running a junior park run in the middle of Tottenham and they look a bit scared, um, I always say to them, you know, come down, meet the people, see the place, just don't go by the reputation because we are so much more than our history.

[00:04:26] Jamila: Yeah. Um, when you say Wood Green, you know, like when the queen died, they showed the pictures of her opening the mall. So. When was that? Was that during your, your childhood when you grew up? 

[00:04:38] Emma: That was during my childhood. I mean, it was a big thing when we lived in Muswell Hill to come down to Wood Green because Wood Green had all the big shops and the big shopping city and all the lights and, and had McDonald's, which we didn't have in Muswell Hill.

So it was a big thing to come down. I, it was open. If I remember correctly, it was open in the mid eighties. So I would have been about seven or eight, something like that. When it first opened, I wasn't there. But it's funny enough, there is still a plaque, um, in the upstairs of the shopping city on your approach towards the toilets.

You can see a plaque that tells you that the Queen came and opened it and it's all dated and everything. And it's quite nice to walk past and, you know, it's that little bit of history that is marked. 

[00:05:20] Jamila: And then also I didn't know until a few years ago that there was an IRA bombing on the mall. I don't know, did anything explode in the end or was it just a threat?

[00:05:31] Emma: I think it was just a threat, but I mean, I remember when I was in, uh, secondary school, uh, in Hornsey, that we used to get evacuated from school because there would be bomb threats and things phoned in. 

[00:05:42] Jamila: Oh, regularly? 

[00:05:43] Emma: Yeah, there was a newspaper offices not too far from where our school was. The school would get notification.It was a bit like doing, you know, the normal fire drill evacuation and everybody would be, you know, frog marched out of the building. The bell would go off. We would all head out of the building. Our parents would be phoned. If you could phone, if the parents had a phone, uh, you could, cause it was all house phones.

There were no mobile phones. And it would be, you know, we're taking precautions and not come. We are asking students not to come in tomorrow while the police investigate. And it was to us, it was just like, yeah, we're getting a day off school. But you think back on it and you think, wow, did anything actually happen?

Nothing ever exploded to my, to my knowledge. But it was one of those things that was always. It's an ongoing thing that you knew about, but as a kid, you, you weren't really bothered about it. 

[00:06:31] Jamila: Okay. Let's talk a little bit about the junior park run. So I don't know very much at all about park run in the first place.Tell me a little bit about how did everything evolve? 

[00:06:45] Emma: So for me, I, I joined Parkrun, which is, it's a global event, takes place every Saturday in, wow, so many countries around the world and continues to expand. It's a 5K event, completely run by volunteers. Nobody gets anything out of it apart from a sense of, uh, well being because you've, you've given something back to your communities, and it happens in green spaces, woodlands, car parks, roads, everywhere up and down the country.

Um, and It was primarily attended by adults. In recent years, you've had more families join. You'll have walkers joining. October is actually a big month, um, for Parkrun, where they introduced Parkwalk, to let people know it is okay to come and walk. And it was massive, and they realized that there was a, an opportunity to do something for the younger generation of our communities.

[00:07:43] Jamila: Okay, let, let me intercept. Why, why is it such a, such a thing? Why are people so drawn to this? Is it the, the doing something together? Is it that it's a little bit structured? What, why, what's the appeal of it? 

[00:08:01] Emma: I think it starts with the fact that it's free. 

[00:08:04] Jamila: Okay. But if I was running by myself, that would be free too.

[00:08:08] Emma: This is true. But then you go from, it's free to it. There's also a social aspect to it. So there is the meeting other people. Some people turn up to park run, they do their 5k, they get their results and they leave. For some people, it was a competitive thing. They wanted to see, they may have been somebody who ran by themselves, wanted to see just how good they were.

It's not a race, and we always say that. It's not a race, it's a run, but you will always get those people who are competitive, who will, you know, pick somebody out and go, right, I'm going to go faster than that person today. At one point, it did get very, very competitive for a lot of people, and Parkrun did have sort of, like, mini league tables and statistics.

But that became a bit of a problem for people who weren't particularly fast or didn't feel that they could join in Parkrun because they weren't fast and these statistics put them off. So Parkrun did away with the statistics, which did cause a bit of, um, a bit of a hoo ha, because all those people who were in it for the statistics and were in it for the speed and, you know, wanted to get the course records felt that they were sort of being pushed to one side. 

[00:09:18] Jamila: Okay, and how did you get involved? What, what made you, remember, tell me about your first ever park run. Why did you go? 

[00:09:29] Emma: Oh, I went to Alexandra Palace. I actually signed up for my park run barcode a whole year before I actually used it because I was, I ran by myself, um, and I was comfortable running by myself and I'm, I'm not fast.

I'm one of these people who's like speed is totally irrelevant. I just I finish when I finish, I, I'm not competing with anybody. I've always said I'm a completer, not a competer. And I was happy with that. But, um, my husband had said to me, you know, there's this thing called Parkrun. Why don't you give it a go?

Signed up for the barcode, left it sitting there for a year. Um, and then I started signing up for big events and I thought, well, I'll go along to Parkrun and I'll see what I am like compared to other people. You know, am I as slow as I think I am? Are there other people like me? I drove up to Alexandra Palace and I parked my car up and I, I walked over to the start line like everybody else.

Um, I listened to the briefing where they explain, you know, this is our course. This is what we do. This is what you need to look out for. This is what you do at the finishing line. Somebody shouted three, two, one go. And like 500 people just zoom straight past me. And I thought I am as slow as I think I am, but you know, that's okay.

It's fine. I've just got to do my own thing. Like I would do any other day of the week. And because it's a lapped course, those faster people were lapping me. And because they were much faster than me, and the paths on this particular course in Alexandra Palace are quite narrow, some of them were like pushing me off the course.

I was getting elbowed into the grass verge so they could get past and it really, really put me off. I thought, okay, I know I'm slow, but am I that slow that people need to nudge me out of the way? And I went back and I visited that particular park run, I think two more times and it continued to happen.

And I thought maybe this park run thing isn't for me. I'm obviously not fast enough, it's gonna be difficult for me to not get nudged out of the way. And I mentioned to a friend, yeah, I don't think this is for me, and she said, maybe that particular parkrun isn't for you, maybe you need to try another one.

And she recommended that I go to Pimms Park in Enfield with her, give it a try. Come with me, I'll look after you, it'll be fine. And I went and I really, really enjoyed it. For one, the course didn't have any hills. So I was like, really, really happy. It was like, yeah, I'm one of those people. I don't run anything higher than a speed bump if I can get away with it.

I like a nice flat course. I mean, I just thought that the people were really friendly. They were really nice. Everybody was really welcoming. And I just kept going back to that one. And I, I kept going and I kept going, but I was one of those people who sort of turned up, did my run, got my barcode scanned, and then I went home.

I didn't talk to anybody, I didn't really interact with anybody because I was quite nervous. And I didn't know, I didn't know anybody. They weren't local to me. I had driven to this park in another borough in order to do it. My friend had moved on, she was doing other events. So I was literally just turning up by myself, doing it and going home.

It wasn't until I signed up to do the Ealing half marathon, I trained for it. It was going to be on on a Sunday. So park running was on on a Saturday. So I turned up and I said, I'm doing a big event tomorrow, so I won't be running today. Do you need any volunteers? And they said, Oh yeah, that would be great.

We always need volunteers. They plopped me into a high vis jacket and stuck me on a corner and went, right, this is your corner and left me to it for an hour. And I really, really enjoyed clapping and cheering for other people and helping to motivate other people, especially those who like me are further to the back of the pack.

I mean, I'm in awe of how fast the human body can go when people speed past me, but I always find inspiration from those people who are at the back, who may be finding it difficult, who may be slower but keep going and they don't give up. That's where my inspiration comes from. And I loved the volunteering so much that I ran less and less at park run so that I could volunteer more.

And in about four weeks time, I will hit my 250th volunteer milestone. So volunteering is where my heart is at. I'm, I'm. I still go out for a run every now and again and I've, I have run other events. I've done the London Marathon. I've done the Derby Half Marathon dressed as a Christmas elf. I've done the London Landmarks Half Marathon, but I would much prefer to stand on the side and clap and cheer while other people do those things.

[00:14:00] Jamila: But you've moved then on from volunteering to getting the kids involved. 

[00:14:05] Emma: So I volunteered at the Pimms Park Run for quite a long time. They asked me to join the core team and become a run director. So on certain weeks of months of the year i would be in charge and through that i started talking to run directors from other park runs. I knew that they were trying to create a 5k park run on a saturday at the Lordship Rec so i went along to a couple of their meetings and i had a chat with them and i said you know this is great but i'm more interested in a junior park run. 

[00:14:38] Jamila: But why? Why were you more interested in a junior park run?

[00:14:42] Emma: I had, I have a younger daughter and she was a junior park runner, um, and we were having to travel from Tottenham to Priory Park in order to take her to a junior park run. She loved it and the people there were great. It was really nice. It's a lovely park, but it was so far away. So I ended up driving her and her best friend every Sunday.

And I was just really, I just thought this would be a great initiative to have on our side. You know, this was, it was very much that divide again, where it was in Priory Park, you know, you had all the Muswell Hill, uh, Crouch End kids, they were all going, but if you were from Wood Green or Tottenham, it was a bus ride or a car ride to get over there.

You're going to have to really make an effort to go. And I thought, wouldn't this be great if we had something like this. closer to home. Where we are here in Tottenham, you either had to go to Priory Park or you had to go to Enfield Town. So there was a massive great big hole right where we are. Then COVID came.

I was very aware that my daughter was going to school in the middle of Broadwater Farm, and I was very aware that a lot of her friends lived in the high rise blocks of flats. They had no gardens, they had no outside spaces, and they lived in multi generational families who were all cooped up together.

And, we couldn't invite my daughter's friends to come around and play in our garden because we weren't allowed to mix. And it was one of those things where if anybody went out, they would go over to Lordship Rec, do their hour of exercise as we were allowed then, and then they would be back home. And I just thought, I just could see this idea forming in my head.

So when I knew that there was a team of people who were trying to put it together, I wanted to be involved. And I said, you know, I'll come over and I'll help get the 5k off the ground, um, but I am really, really interested in the junior park run initiative that you want to put forward. So it was my understanding that Haringey Council wanted to see a 5k park run in that space working effectively before they would consider a junior park run.

The second hurdle with starting any kind of a park run, whether it is a 5k or a 2k junior park run is the funding. There's a startup fee. It's a bit like, I suppose the easiest way to describe it is paying into a franchise. So to become part of the park run community, the junior park run, I think the fee is now 4, 800 pounds to buy in.

And for that, you get all the startup equipment. So the high vis or the sign, the finished funnel spikes, all the cones. Yeah. And the most important thing, the defibrillator, every park run, whether it's a junior park run has to have a working defibrillator at the finish line, uh, or available for use should the worst ever happen.

So the 4, 800 pounds is the startup fee for that. And you can't just pay that. You can't just go around to your friends and say, you know, I want to start this. Let's get some donations together and pay into the park run. It doesn't work like that. It has to be companies and local businesses who make pledges and corporate pledges to, to get that, that money.

We were really, really lucky that Haringey Council wanted, they wanted to do more for the children of the community. It was a health initiative, it was a mental health initiative, physical and mental health, and they could see that it would be a real boom for this, our area in particular, because it's considered to be, their words, not mine, impoverished.

So they paid the whole fee. We didn't have to do any fundraising. We didn't have to do any kind of donation drive for it. We were really, really lucky that they were like, okay, we've seen that the 5k is working really well. Yes, we will give you the funds to start up a junior team. There's a few things that we want.

They wanted to know that we had a team of people who were willing to run it on a regular basis. There had to be a name attached to it, the event director, who would be willing to, that's me, who would be willing to oversee it. But it wasn't me originally. Um, I was asked, there was two of us who were asked if we would be co event directors.

And at the time I had volunteered, I had done run directing, but I didn't know what it would mean for me to be an event director, so I talked to people that I had volunteered with before. I talked to people who had been involved in starting up other park runs and junior park runs and I said, you know, what do you think?

You know me. Do you think this is something that I could do? Do you think this is something that I should do? Because initially I thought I would just be another volunteer at a junior event. 

[00:19:24] Jamila: Can I just quickly ask, what is your professional background? 

[00:19:29] Emma: Practically nothing, to be fair, because went to college, I studied media, uh, studied photography.

My whole, the whole idea was I was going to work in television. I had jobs way, way back in the day working for GMTV when I was in college. And then I went off to work, um, on the holiday camps. I was the, uh, public relations manager for, uh, Butlins in Minehead. Then I met my partner, started a family and pretty much that was the end of my career because my eldest daughter was diagnosed as autistic.

Um, and she required more care than I ever realized that she would. And I decided that 

[00:20:12] Jamila: So you're not doing nothing. You're a carer. 

[00:20:14] Emma: You know what? Yeah, I suppose, uh, some people say, you know, you don't have a job. I like to think I have all the jobs. Um, it's, it's hard enough being a mum and I have two kids. 

[00:20:28] Jamila: I was just trying to, to, to gage why you were questioning if you could do it, because you had background in organizing other people, especially in regards to children. 

[00:20:39] Emma: Yeah, I had been out of work as so to speak for so long. I think I was questioning my own ability. Am I more than just a mom? I had been mom for so long that it was like, and my kids were like, well, you don't have a job.

Daddy has a job. You don't go to work. And my husband would always say, you know, mommy does more work than I do. You know, let's give mommy some credit. Um, But I suppose, yeah, after a while, you know, you think, well, what do I do? I take the kids to school, I come home, I cook dinner, I do the washing. It was only when I agreed, other people said to me, you know, you've got, you've got the right personality.

You've got the right motivation to really make this happen. So I agreed. I said, yes. I will at the time I was agreeing to be a joint, um, co event director. Um, as it turned out, the other gentleman was unable to take up his role due to some family issues. And they said to me, are you happy to do it? And I was like, yeah, I've agreed.

I've done all the background work. I, I had been there for the risk assessments. I was pretty much learning as I went along and it was, it did wonders for my own self esteem and my own confidence because suddenly people were coming to me and talking to me about something other than, is my school uniform ready?

Did you make my packed lunch? Have you done the shopping today, Love? Those sorts of things. People were, you know, really quite generous with their time when it came to teaching me something new that I didn't know. And they were really enthusiastic about things that I wanted to put in place. And that's probably my whole driving force.

I wanted to do something for the kids in the community because of what I'd seen during COVID, but it wasn't just that it was also. As a mom of somebody with a special, of a special needs person, I had taken my daughter to many, many events and been turned away because they didn't have the right support in place to deal with her.

They didn't have the time, they didn't have the patience, and a lot of it was they didn't have the understanding. She's 23 now. She was diagnosed when she was four, so it's been a long journey. So I wanted to make, I knew that if I was going to get involved with this Junior Park Run, that I was going to make it the most inclusive Junior Park Run that I, of any kind of event that I could possibly make it.

It sounds really, really weird, but there was some backfire on that. Not from Park Run itself, because I'm pretty much, I pretty much thought, I'm just going to do it. And if they don't like it, I'll ask for forgiveness rather than permission. It's only, it's, and it's like the tiniest little tweaks that you make to things to make it inclusive.

So I know from my experience as a parent of somebody with special needs, that sometimes she finds it difficult in loud places. I know sometimes she finds it difficult to have that confidence to join a crowd of people. I know that sometimes language can be a barrier when you have no verbal skills, but it doesn't mean you don't have a voice.

You can just talk to people in different ways. So, I started implementing little things into our junior park run and putting out communications to local schools and local people saying, you know, this is what we can do for you, particularly if your child has special educational needs, they will be welcome.

Everybody is welcome. Please come to that. I, like I said, I did get some pushback because some people thought that I was making life more difficult for myself. But my whole feeling was if I put all this stuff in place now, before we start, it will always be there. We, there's no more hard work to do. You, you do it right in the beginning and then you've got that structure forever.

So it was nerve wracking to say yes. And I remember. We had a test event before we launched and I didn't know how many kids would turn up to our test event But I was pretty much of the opinion that if just one person turns up we will put on our test event - we'll see how it works. We had parkrun ambassadors come to visit the test event I was waiting for the feedback, you know, like, well, you need to change this or you need to change that, or you need to do this.

And I got a glowing report and that made me feel really, really good because I was so nervous. I'm thinking, I had proper imposter syndrome standing there in front of everybody thinking, like I said, I'm just a mom. I don't do anything. And I felt that on the day, but I thought, you know, this is, this is what I'm good at.

I know special needs. I know what I want to put across. So I've just got to be confident enough. and get everybody else to believe it. Even if I don't quite believe it yet, I just got to let everybody else believe it. The test event went really well. And we had our inaugural event. Oh, it's over a year ago now - we had the, the mayor of Haringey at the time, Lester Buxton come, um, our very first event. We had 56 juniors appear with their families and I, I was, I was walking around at eight o'clock in the morning setting everything up thinking I'll be happy if I get 10. I'll be happy if I get 10. So for 56 of them to turn up was absolutely amazing.

We have our 2K run, which happens every week. 

[00:25:54] Jamila: And I've seen, um, that you're apparently going to do something for Halloween, because this is going to come out hopefully next week. So it's, so what, what, what are your plans for Spook O Ween or something? 

[00:26:08] Emma: We actually have two events in the next month. So the 16th of October is Restart the Heart Day.

So I've been in conversation with ABC parents. I actually went to do their first aid course. 

[00:26:24] Jamila: What's ABC parents? 

[00:26:26] Emma: ABC parents is literally it's a group of parents and clinicians and doctors who have created this program to teach local people, particularly parents, um, life saving skills. So CPR, um, what to deal with a child, or even you can use the same methods in adults for choking or basic first aid thing, first time parents.

I went along, because I was working with children at the junior park run, I went along for this course, um, spent the whole day learning about what to do in the case of anaphylaxis, choking, CPR, um, and it was great. And I, I learned things, even as a parent of 20 years, I learned things that I didn't know. I didn't know CPR.

I didn't know what to do in the event of choking. Learned all of those methods. And I was really lucky that I did because about three weeks after I took that course on one of my ultra events, because I'm an ultra walker and we were out in the middle of nowhere and a woman on the path ahead of me started choking on a packet of Haribo's and her friends all panicked and got nervous.

And I remembered everything that I had learned on the course three weeks ago, dropped my walking tool, went over, administered the choking methods that I had learned to this woman and she threw up all the Haribo's. And I just went, are you okay? She was, yeah, I'm fine now. Left her with her friends and just sort of walked off like a superhero.

Never said, never said anything. Didn't wait for anybody to congratulate me or anything like that. I just carried on my way. I was like, yeah, okay. See you later. Bye. And I was gone because of, um, the skills that I'd learned. And I had created this relationship with ABC parents. I, I was talking to them and I was, your course is amazing.

Uh, would you like to come to the junior park run and meet some parents? Because I've got a captive audience of families with children. Junior park run is for four to 14 year olds, but they also come with their younger children in buggies. Some ladies are pregnant and about to have their first babies.

And I said to them, you know, I've got a captive audience. You can give out leaflets. You could maybe do a little mini demonstration or something like that. So they said that that would be great. So they told me about restart the heart day, which is the 16th of October. And I said to them, why don't you come along around about the same time?

And we'll have our usual 2k run with the kids. And then you could put on a little demonstration and encourage parents to come along to your course. And it's all about just spreading that information. So. And everybody learning those skills. So the more of us know, the more of us who are out there in the community, who will be able to save lives, if anything happened, you know, it's, it's all about time while you're waiting for that ambulance to come, you can be administering CPR.

You can be, you can potentially save somebody's life. So the 20th of October, ABC parents are coming to us. They're going to do little demonstrations. They're going to give, teach the kids some CPR and the families and show them, um, they're bringing like an interactive game and some little pump up dollies and all the dolls, babies and toddler resuscitation dolls so that everybody can have a go learn these skills.

And it's, I mean, it's entirely free. The following week is what we call our spooktacular. It's Halloween. It's completely silly and stupid. We had one last year. Um, and it was, um, a lot of parents described it as the safe alternative to trick or treating. We all get dressed up. It's not just the kids, the adults get dressed up.

The volunteers get dressed up. Parents come along, dressed up. We have our 2k run and then afterwards we have our treat table. So we ask the people in the community and all our little amateur bakers to make or bake something and bring it with them. And then everybody shares it out. So everybody gets cake for breakfast.

We try our best to make sure that there's a gluten, vegan, vegetarian option. 

[00:30:20] Jamila: No nuts! 

[00:30:21] Emma: Yeah, that's right. No nuts, please. We try to make sure that something that's dairy free so that everybody gets something. Okay. But we also have Reggie, our friend Reggie, who is, he's well known in the community. He teaches our juniors circus skill workshops.

So he comes along and he will teach them how to do plate spinning and how to juggle. He puts on a demonstration. And they all get to have a go afterwards. So he's, he's been to us twice in the last year. He's coming for a third time and the kids love it. The parents go along, they watch, they join in and it just turns into a little mini morning of fun, um, for everybody.

[00:31:03] Jamila: One of my questions is, what do the parents do while the kids run? And how long does it take for them to run 2K? 

[00:31:09] Emma: The kids, some of the parents will join in with the kids, so they are welcome to join in. They can run as families, but because we have marshals every hundred meters, the children are always in sight of an adult.

So they are allowed to run by themselves. It all comes down to whether or not the child is comfortable to, and whether the parent is ready to relinquish them, to let them go. But we run round in laps. So they keep running past their parents anyway. So some parents will join in. Some parents will stand at the finish line and clap and cheer for all the juniors while they're waiting for their own.

Some will disappear into the Lordship hub for a coffee. But in recent months, when the juniors are like, mom, I don't need you anymore. Dad, it's okay. Granny, I don't want you anymore. That's usually when I step forward and say, I'm going "You look a bit bored, can I give you something to do?" And then I encourage them to volunteer with us.

Okay. So I will give them a job. Um, and now I'm really, really happy to say that it's turned into such a wonderful community of parents that we have a little WhatsApp group. And if I need volunteers, I can put a message on there and say, okay, I need timekeepers. I need barcode scanners. I need marshals for the course.

We have to have seven marshals on our course every single week. before we can go ahead. It's our number one safeguarding. We have to have that Marshall because they're a hundred meters apart. If we take one away, it breaks the chain. I haven't had to cancel touch wood, a single event because I've always been able to get parents and local volunteers to come out and join us.

And our marshals, we have three different types of marshals. We have our sound marshals, so they're armed with a tambourine or some jingle bells or a speaker playing music. Um, we have our bubble marshals, which is exactly what it sounds like. I arm them with a bubble gun or a bubble wand that they blow at the kids as the kids run past.

And then we have our quieter areas, which are our cheer stations. And they're on our, they're specifically designed on our course for children with special needs. It's just a little quieter area for them to run through. So the marshal will clap and point them in the right direction, but it gives a chance for children with special needs to self regulate before it starts to get a little bit too exciting.

[00:33:25] Jamila: Yeah, that's, that was going to be one of my other questions. It's like, what have you put in place to make it as inclusive as possible? 

[00:33:33] Emma: So our course has got seven marshals on it. So we named each station after a color of the rainbow. We're known as the Rainbow Course, which obviously they're now looking for colours, they're looking for names.

We have the Interactive Marshalls, so we have the bubble guns to get the kids motivated, which is a great sensory thing for those with special needs. They literally move from station to station. Our stations always stay the same, so the kids always know. 

[00:33:59] Jamila: Predictability. 

[00:34:01] Emma: We keep, yeah, exactly, we keep that routine, we keep that structure.

In terms of communication. We have a social story, which is basically the story of Parkrun and how we work told through pictures so that we can explain to children and families. First, you're going to do this, and then you're going to do this. We keep it in the bag. We email it to parents in advance if they need it before they come to visit us so that they know what's going to happen.

We have a series of widget symbols, which are little It's a bit like an emotion con, and they're little symbols that say things like toilet, water, sad, happy. And those children who have no language skills at all can point at these so that we know what they need, uh, or what they're trying to tell us if they're hurt, if they're happy, that they've had a good time, if they're sad, if they need to go to the toilet so we can show them where it is, um, if they want to drink or anything like that.

Oh, if they've had an accident, they need first aid, they're able to tell us what they need to tell us with those symbols. Um, I also have quite a few volunteers who are fluent in Makaton. They work in the special needs school, the Brooks school, which is right next door. They are trained to work with special needs children.

So they are more patient. They are more understanding. They're not going to take anything personal if a child says or does anything that is out of the ordinary for most people. We also have, um, a parent who is fluent in British Sign Language. She has, um, deaf children herself. She's pretty much our, when she's with us, she's our resident sign language person, our interpreter.

So she will interpret our briefing to explain to our deaf runners what's going on. If there's anything new that they need to know to explain our course, which has been an absolute boom for us because we now have a relationship with the local deaf school and they tell parents about us so that they can bring their children so that they feel included.

We celebrated British Sign Language Week and we all learned and we had a lovely lady on Instagram designed us a little finger spelling alphabet chart, and we gave them out to all the kids and they were all, when they'd done their runs, it was so heartwarming when they'd finished their events, they were all sitting on the bench and they were learning how to spell their names.

They were learning how to say hello and goodbye to each other. And then afterwards, I found out that they had gone to school with these little charts. They told their schools about it. They told their teachers about it. And it just helps to grow that community and grow that inclusion, particularly.

amongst the deaf community that they have a safe space that they can come and join in. And we all have a little bit of skill in terms of being able to say well done and hello and you're welcome and fingerspell our names. And we put up some videos on our Instagram to show how to sign certain roles and tasks from Parkrun just so that everybody just felt a little bit more included.

[00:36:58] Jamila: Are there any, um, future plans for other inclusion, like maybe wheelchair, I don't know, or 

[00:37:06] Emma: Well, wheelchairs are allowed at Junior Park Run. It is, there's certain rules that we you know, in order to complete a parkrun, you can't use your scooter, you can't use your roller skate, you have to be active and you have to move.

But wheelchairs are allowed and they will get, receive a parkrun credit the same way as all the other juniors. So that's always been the thing. We haven't had any wheelchair users yet. But we have had, uh, we've had our deaf runners, we also have a visually impaired runner. Yeah, we will happily welcome visually impaired runners.

And the fact that we've got sound and we've got bubbles and all those sorts of things makes it easier for them to understand where they are on the course. It's the same with when we do our warm ups. If we have our visually impaired runner in attendance, we describe the warm up as well as jumping up and down. And things like that. 

So, yeah, I mean, if we come across anything new that we think will be inclusive, I always jump on it and say, this is one more thing that we can add. 

[00:38:08] Jamila: Nice. Okay, Emma, I think it's time for some top tips. Tottenham. 

[00:38:13] Emma: To be honest, if I get any time, I'm outside. I love to walk. I love to be in nature.

I think we have some fabulous green spaces in Haringey. We're really, really lucky with our green spaces in Haringey. Other people may not think so, but as an ultra walker, I do a lot of training walking around London and I love to take in as many parks as I can. For me, the Lordship Rec is always going to be my favourite park.

I have run laps around that thing when I've been training. I taught my kids to ride their bikes in that park. And now I'm there every single Sunday. watching juniors taking on our course. We've built an amazing community of people. The hub is a fantastic space to get together for a coffee afterwards. But yeah, the Lordship Recreational Ground has got a special place in my heart.

I'm also a big lover of Bruce Castle Park and the museum. I think that's a fantastic, it's such a small space and it is such a wonderful little space. with the paddling pool, the tree, it's the oldest tree in Haringey, and it constantly gets vandalized and I cannot understand why anybody would take offense to a tree, but the museum is brilliant.

I mean, I've taken my kids to that museum to see the exhibitions that they have on there, but also they do some fabulous little workshops in the half terms and the summer holidays, little crafty things, Easter hunts, stuff like that. That is just, it's just, it's just really, really nice and it's another space that is run by volunteers and it's just, it's just so well looked after and it's so loved and at the moment, it's, Bruce Castle Park is the home of one of the owls on the big fun art adventure.

I was a little bit disappointed that we didn't get an owl on Lordship Rec. I'd have loved to have had an owl there, but um, that is, that's been, it's been lovely to go and see that. I mean, I saw the owl, I've actually seen all 53 owls across the boroughs. I did it on Tuesday last week. It took me 17 miles and 7 hours to walk round all of the owls.

Um, the owls are only going to be on the trail until the 13th of October, so I would recommend anybody who's got time to get out and see as many of those owls. 

[00:40:30] Jamila: So you overachieved, you've done, you've finished it two weeks or three weeks early. Nice. All right, thank you very much. 

[00:40:38] Emma: Thanks for having me. 

[00:40:39] Jamila: So you heard we have three upcoming deadlines or events.

So on the 13th of October is the end of the art trail. I will put in a link to the event. I didn't actually know about it. Then on the 20th we've got Stop the Heart. Day and ABC doing some training and then on the 20th, the spooktacular, the Halloween thing, which also sounded like great fun. So I will link in the usual social networks, etc.

And I hope you feel inspired to volunteer maybe or to create more inclusion. Always close to my heart. So, slowly we are entering autumn. I hope you feel cozy and embrace the change of the season. All right, all the best to you and see you soon. Bye. I hope you enjoyed today's episode, learned something new, and let that Tottenham love grow.

Take care, and until next time, bye!