(Parks and Leisure Australia Open Space Management Award QLD 2006)
Logan City Council is taking a highly proactive approach to improving the lives of young people in the city by developing an ‘Active Youth Spaces Strategy’. The Logan Active Youth Spaces Strategy is about innovative, exciting and engaging recreation infrastructure, events and activities that will:
- Encourage youth that are not currently using Council’s parkland system to do so
- Establish Logan City Council as a leader in the provision of innovative and exciting youth recreation infrastructure in South East Queensland; and,
- Provide a range of opportunities appropriate to young people of both sexes to participate in regular physical activity.
This landmark project won the 2006 Parks & Leisure Australia ‘Open Space Management Award’ for Queensland. We congratulate Logan City Council for taking such a proactive approach to improving the lives of young people in the city. |
(Parks and Leisure Australia Inclusive and Connected Communities Award Finalist 2009)
In 2007, Plan C were engaged in consultation with the broader community to conceptually develop and design skate and BMX facilities for young people in Knox, outer Eastern Melbourne.
As part of this engagement, Plan C undertook multi stakeholder workshops drawing out broad concepts and arrangements of elements and presenting possible design options. Plan C also engaged the professional capacity of established skaters and BMX riders in order to benefit from strong technical knowledge to garner the best possible product outcome considering trends and local requirements.
Plan C considered the importance of environmental factors and conducted grounded on site consultation through entertainment, live music, professional demonstrations and activities in order to engage a diverse range of young people.
Plan C prioritised an inclusive approach allowing a wide scale adoption of plan and design recommendations from the community, improving understanding of the needs of all skate and BMX stakeholders and allowing a greater communication between parties to improve community attitudes toward the development of these new facilities.
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Some of the Plan C team come from rural and regional backgrounds, so we have a high level of awareness of the specific needs of young people in these settings. We loved working out in Warwick Shire to produce the Warwick Shire Youth Activity Plan.
The Warwick Youth Activity Plan (WYAP) sets out Council’s vision, objectives, key drivers and processes to deliver a consistent and coordinated approach to the delivery of structured and unstructured events and activities for young people. The plan differed from conventional activity development, in that we adopted a community-wide approach that involved mapping the skills and infrastructure of service providers and individuals and locating this within the available public spaces and facilities within the Shire.
The engagement process for the WYAP also included creative, fun and highly participatory processes for engaging with young people. One such method was the production of a ‘Laneway Event’ which was dreamt up by the Shire’s young people. These young people helped transform an ordinary public space - an empty laneway in the Warwick CBD – into a lively youth event with music, audio-visual projections, skate school, ping pong, mocktail bar, bike maintenance workshop, zine making, mural painting and outdoor art exhibition.
We also used short film as a tool to directly engage young people in the project, through film-making and interviewing techniques, and assisted young people in documenting the consultation stages of the Warwick Shire Youth Activity Plan on film. This short film has assisted in gaining funding and support for the implementation of the WYAP, which has received strong support from Council.
The WYAP was an example of how collaboration between government, organisations and young people can provide opportunities and assist in growing young people’s participation, knowledge and skills for the betterment of the community. |
