Our Mission

Sunderland Green and Open Spaces Forum (SGOSF) aims to give a collective voice to Friends groups, committees and volunteers who are working on green and open spaces in the city of Sunderland in all their forms including their supporters who oversee these valuable community assets. We also support anyone wanting to create an environment or green space etc. such as pocket park – so we are not just here for medium to large organisations.

This includes parks, allotments, heritage sites, rivers, watercourses, community gardens, pocket parks and any other ‘green’ or ‘blue’ spaces whom we see all as valuable connectors with our city and our planet. Just like the English Oak we hope that we will assist in a growing use, interest in these community assets and the need to support them.

About Sunderland Green and Open Spaces Forum

The Victoria Hall disaster memorial in Mowbray Park, Sunderland – On 16 June 1883 a fire killed 183 children in a concert hall. Many were crushed due to restricted fire exits leading to a change in the law requiring venues to have ‘push bar’ emergency doors.
There is a Friends group for Mowbray Park which can be found using a search on Facebook.

The Forum came together in the Spring of 2017, as groups across the city are facing a number of challenges. Coming together as a group we can share ideas, knowledge, support each other, create new partnerships, and hopefully have more influence on decision making across the city. It should also make it easier to contact each other and make communications between groups easier.

The Benefits of everyone working together are:

  • Providing help in setting up a Friends Group
  • Develop and share good practice among the membership
  • Maintain a consistent public-facing social media presence to encourage use and appreciation of Sunderland’s green and open spaces
  • Help to strengthen local organisations by having a co-operative and coordinating function
  • Encourage involvement in Friends groups and signpost where necessary
  • Providing a first point of contact for groups who wish to highlight issues
  • Influence and shape green and open space decision making in the city and, as appropriate, regionally and nationally
  • Alert and respond to issues impacting on open spaces in the city
  • Sharing Equipment
  • Create new partnerships
  • Sharing of great ideas
  • Increase lobbying power

Sunderland ‘Area’

Please note that for our purposes ‘Sunderland’ incorporates Sunderland itself AND Fatfield, Hetton-Le-Hole, Houghton-Le_Spring, Penshaw and Washington as well as all the other areas. This is despite what some people from those areas might say! That is, until the day they gain the independence that they keep asking for (only joking).