A successful park or green space can be the making of a place. An unsuccessful one can help ruin it.-
Start with the Park, Cabe Space, 2005

Woodvale Park is one of the oldest parks in Belfast, and a tremendous natural resource for the Greater Shankill. There are playgrounds for children, comfortable benches overlooking large open spaces, football pitches, comfortable dressing rooms and well-kept bowling greens. Yet the park is perceived by many people as dirty and dangerous. Local residents often express concern about public drinking, drug use, and other “anti-social behaviour” in the park, particularly at night, and council staff wage a constant battle against vandalism and litter.

In response to these concerns, the Friends of Woodvale Park (FWP) has been working to reclaim the park as a safe, attractive public space for all to use. In 2006 ‘Friends of Woodvale Park’ approached Building Initiative to engage in discussion about the potential opportunities of the park and to develop the idea of a HUB- a Hybrid-Use Building- a space that could be used in many different ways and by people of all different ages, interests, abilities and backgrounds. The proposed site was the disused pitch in a corner of the park beside a high-traffic shopping centre and just below a traditionally volatile interface between two communities.