Living Streets Association | 2024 July
Our community has recently had a big win! The Inner North Play Space has released its final design, and the destination-style playground will begin construction to be completed sometime in late 2025.
The whole community has been actively involved in the consultations for this space since 2018 thanks to two ladies who live adjacent to the park alerting the community about the government seeking suggestions for the future of the site. In partnership with the Watson Community Association (WCA), the WCA Planning Subcommittee, and YWAM, we delivered community consultations on behalf of the local people so that everyone could contribute their opinions. We want to especially acknowledge Mary Beveridge, Prue Gaffey, Joani Cornish, and Hal Judge for their work contributing to this campaign.
Living Streets had previously conducted community consultations about block Section 76 in North Watson in 2018. In the winter of 2019, we set up at Watson shops again during the school holidays to raise awareness and collect feedback on the needs of the local community. Through these consultations over multiple weekends and weekdays, we often heard the same concerns again and again from residents of all different demographics. With the help of Living Streets Youth, the international university design force was able to better understand the needs of our community and came up with the following guidelines for their design of the green space.
This community consultation process was extremely long, but there were many small wins along the way. To us at Living Streets, the government becoming responsive to the community’s opinions was very encouraging, as it was the first time that we realised that our opinions can be heard and that our commitment can influence what happens in our community. This project also gave us faith and confidence in the power of community, propelling us forward in the campaign for Section 76 that we ran from 2019 onwards. This campaign included work such as running events and holiday programs, doing more shop-front consultations, and even creating a documentary to tell this incredible story of bottom-up community consultations.
A young person’s reflection on community consultations
One of the youth volunteers who was involved in the project since 2018 shared their thoughts in an interview;
How did you feel when you were first doing these community consultations back in 2018?
I was young and I was scared because it felt like such a complex task at first. When we were setting up the easels with the designs outside the shops, lots of people were staring at us, which made us feel like we were doing the wrong thing. I was scared of passing on false information to residents or saying the wrong thing to make people angry.
Did people get angry at you? What were they saying?
Yeah, some people had thought we were the government or developers, or protestors trying to stop the development completely, so if they thought we were “on the other side”, they were more aggressive in how they communicated their views to us. They thought we were advocates for one side or the other, but really we were just acting as a platform to inform and collaborate.
How did you guys handle the situation when that happened? What did you tell them?
We would say that we are Living Streets Association, a community group that aims to raise community spirit and volunteer for causes that benefit everyone. We are out doing consultations because we want to spread awareness and give everyone the opportunity to participate in the conversations about the future of the suburb. It turned out that most people were very interested to know what was going on, and wanted to have their opinions heard too. After meeting us at the shops, many people sent emails or submissions to the government’s Your Say page.
Did this turn out to be a positive experience for you in the end?
Oh yes definitely. It was a really positive atmosphere. Most people were so friendly, and we had a lot of good chats. Many of us young people gained a lot of confidence in our speaking skills, and we realised that our voices have power, which is a really important lesson to encourage more of us to participate in community advocacy. The experience helped us make friends in the process of volunteering, and the skills we gained even helped us get new jobs.
How do you feel now, knowing that the work you did in the past has helped the development of the park in some way today?
I don’t think people should judge us young people by our age, because teenagers can also be responsible, and we are able to do things that adults are doing as well. We teenagers helped to collect feedback from residents in Watson, which could then be communicated to the government, which means we contributed our part to this result. It feels like the government has listened, and had considered some of our ideas, and applied what the residents wanted into their plans, which is really great. I am glad to have been able to participate in this process.
Our residents have fond memories of the site, calling it their dog park, the green space next to the Academy of Interactive Entertainment (AIE), Section 13, or the old Watson High School site. With the growing population of the area, we are glad that more people will be able to make memories in the upcoming community space.
Header Image sourced from: https://yoursayconversations.act.gov.au/inner-north-play-space
Living Streets Association 