Some questions to get you thinking… I’d love to hear your responses:

What would a ‘playful city’ look like to you?
How can the notion of play inform your work with communities or places or something else?
What are the questions you think I/we should be asking about playful cities?

Here are the details:

More info about creative maylands can be found here.

I’m excited to let you know that an early result of the community consultations we held in 2010 is that this year’s summer concert and film night at Banks Reserve has an Indigenous theme. The program includes the screening of a new short film about the wonderful Wadjuk/Noongar elder Doolann-Leisha Eatts who I quoted in my last blog post. I’m sure this will be a moving and fascinating film.

The concert and films are free and everyone is welcome to attend. The event falls on February 13th which is the anniversary of the national apology to the Stolen Generations, making it a fitting time to come together to celebrate the strength of local Aboriginal culture.

Here are all the details:

*Banks Reserve is a major park/recreation area on the river in Mt Lawley, just north of the East Perth Power Station.

These are some of the good things that kept me juiced up last year:

1. Developing the new Community Gardens WA website as a virtual hub for the WA community garden sector was a highlight. The site gives people easy access to information, connections and avenues of support for their community gardening initiatives. This should be your first port of call if you want to know about community gardens in WA!

The virtual home for community gardens in WA

2. After two years of working intensively in the community gardening sector through managing the Growing Communities WA project, I felt grateful to have the chance in 2010 to put some of my learnings about community gardens down on paper in the form of two new resources – Community Gardening Success Factors and Funding Your Community Garden – to help WA gardens grow. These are free to download at Community Gardens WA.

3. Working with the Vincent Reconciliation Group and the Town of Vincent on the Banks Reserve Reconciliation Place project and seeing the positive impact for people of being involved in visioning processes was truly special. The project aims to make a local contribution to fostering reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians by building relationships across cultures around a shared connection with a special place in the Town – Banks Reserve on the banks of the Biliya (also know as Derbarl Yerrigan or you might know it as the Swan River!).

It was particularly touching to receive the following feedback from Noongar elder Doolann-Leisha Eatts who has been closely involved in the development of the project: “I never thought I would see this day come: when people would be gathering together to heal the wounds of our past and present. I really feel hope now – I really feel that my grandchildren and great grandchildren have a future. I really feel that we are being heard and we can walk together”. Wow. This is the reason I do the work I do!

Community members talking about how Banks Reserve can be a place of reconcilation

4. In the course of working on a cultural plan for the City of Melville I had the privilege of chatting with a wide range of passionate and skilled community members who are contributing to creating a lively and inclusive arts and cultural scene in the area. I was blown away by the contribution all of these people are making to their local community, on a voluntary basis. And the people I met would just be the tip of the iceberg. Isn’t it awesome what people do to help build strong and vibrant communities?

Did I mention I also discovered possibly the best playground in Perth? You'll find it at Heathcote in Applecross.

5. Having a hand in helping Perth City Farm obtain funding to realise their 8-year dream of opening a training cafe on site was a real highlight. The café is generating numerous benefits for City Farm. If you haven’t already, make sure you cycle down there soon to check it out. The food and ambience is ace.

Soaking up the sun at City Farm's garden cafe

6. I enjoyed some travels within WA and interstate during 2010 and relished the opportunities to discover, explore and connect into local places and pick up some new ideas to add to my place maker toolkit. If you like travel diaries, you can dip into mine here and here.

7. Bringing a little piece of the East St Jetty to Eighth Avenue for the launch of creative maylands during the Maylands Festival was a lot of fun and reinforced for me how effective it is to take standard community engagement tools and give them a ‘flavour’ of the place where I am using them. We chatted to lots of people throughout the day about what they think is special about Maylands and recorded their ideas on colourful fish that gradually filled our ‘river’ to the brim.

We had lots of fun designing this East St jetty-themed interactive display and people seemed to love it

8. Building on my work with Growing Communities WA, in 2010 I began offering a new range of development support services for community gardens called How Does Your Garden Grow. This paved the way for me to support an exciting initiative to develop a new community garden in Armadale, under the auspices of a local Indigenous Corporation, that has the potential to bring significant benefits to the local community. Yay!

So, what about you? What community development or place making initiatives got you fired up 2010? I’d love to hear about your highlights for the year and how you plan to build on them in 2011. Let’s have your comments…

Love the solar panels on the roof of this church in the suburb of O’Connor in Canberra. Great example of how form and function can be successfully combined to add a quirky, interesting element to a local area. Cute.

Developing a community garden or another type of community place? These gloves provide an example of how really simple elements can add personality to a place, making it more attractive for people.

There’s lot of beauty in community gardens (like these lovely leeks). Can you perhaps design seating areas or gathering places that maximise opportunities to sit back and soak up the beautiful elements of the public space you’re working on?

Or maybe you have a spectacular view of your surroundings (like this view of our national parliament from the Cook Community Garden) that you can make the most of? A seat, a sign, a viewing platform or even providing some binoculars would all provide a simple invitation for people to stop and notice what’s special about this place.

Ah, public artwork that you can interact with, it’s so great isn’t it? If you’re a drover on Brisbane’s city streets, be sure to watch out for small children with umbrellas! This artwork was originally created as part of a temporary exhibit at Brisbane’s Expo in 1988, but was later re-cast and installed on the street as a permanent feature. Perhaps there are some temporary artworks in your local area that could become permanent, endearing aspects of the place-scape?

When is Perth getting it’s own ‘citycycle’ network (like the one in Brisbane’s CBD)? Hopefully soon. While we’re at it, a car sharing vehicle parked at each of Perth’s train station would be awesome too. Is it easy for people to get to (and get around in) the community place that you’re working on? Improving accessibility will increase use of your place and introducing sustainability measures will build the resilience or your place.

These local residents of Obi Obi Creek in Maleny, Queensland, remind me of how important it is to think about the non-human users of our public spaces and to find ways to make our community places welcoming and safe for our furry, feathered and slippery friends. What’s the ecology of your public space? How can your place making activities enhance biodiversity, provide habitats for wildlife or help to reconnect people with the natural environment and systems?

Have you been travelling recently and been inspired by places you’ve visited? Send me a postcard with your ideas or, better yet, write a comment and share your thoughts with everyone.

Then I’d love you to join in a cafe conversation about how to support and grow cultural vitality in the City of Melville.

I’m part of consultancy team currently working with the City of Melville to develop a Cultural Vitality Plan that looks at how best to use local cultural resources to promote social and economic development and consequently enhance quality of life. These cultural resources could include visual, performing and literary arts, heritage buildings, festivals and events, community values and traditions, recreational facilities, café strips, creative industries and much more.

We want to know how well the arts and cultural needs of young professionals and creatives are being catered for in the City of Melville. Your opinion is important and will help the City plan for a culturally vibrant future.

Join me for a café conversation about cultural vitality:

Date: Saturday, 30 October 2010
Time: 2pm to 3pm
Cafe: Coffea Fine Espresso, 31a Ardross Street, Applecross
Light refreshments provided.

Please register your attendance by Wednesday 27 October by contacting me at anne[at]annegoodall.com.au or on 0407 441 822. If you’re interested in contributing your ideas and are unable to attend the café conversation, please contact me to arrange an alternative means for input.

Feel free to pass on this invitation to any other young professionals and creatives you know who live in the City of Melville.

Check out the website for more information about all the ways that City of Melville residents, workers and visitors can provide input to the development of the Cultural Vitality Plan.

*City of Melville includes the following suburbs: Alfred Cove, Applecross, Ardross, Attadale, Batemen, Bicton, Booragoon, Brentwood, Bull Creek, Kardinya, Leeming, Melville, Mount Pleasant, Myaree, Murdoch, Palmyra, Willagee and Winthrop.

So for father’s day this year I decided to pass over the standard presents of socks, chocolates and wine; wanting instead to share with my dad some time out in our local community, exploring together some recent place making developments and (hopefully) getting a bit of a dose of cultural vitality. I chose Northbridge for our Sunday afternoon place making adventure. It was to be a bit of test really: would there be enough going on to keep us amused on a father-daughter date?

Well, we wondered down William Street through Chinatown, ran our eye over the construction of the State Theatre building, peeked in the window of The Bird bar and sampled a little rocket and lettuce from the Perth Cultural Centre’s Urban Orchard. My dad passed on the options of checking out an exhibition at the Art Gallery of WA, the ‘A Day in Pompeii’ exhibition at the WA Museum, browsing in the State Library bookshop or attending a contemporary theatre performance at PICA that were all on offer. He also wasn’t quite game for a traditional chinese massage from my favourite masseuse on James Street. Instead we wandered down to the Northbridge Piazza to soak up the dying moments of a footy final showing there on the big screen. (Did you know you there’s a daily TV guide to what’s screening that you can check online? You can also find Northbridge Piazza on facebook.)

Watching the footy at Northbridge Piazza

A relaxed Sunday feel at the Piazza

From a place making perspective, there were some positives to be seen at the Piazza. Community places thrive on having activities and uses to pull people in. It’s evident that the footy final screening had attracted a range people to the space – groups of friends, couples, families, people who’d come prepared for the event and others who’d obviously just ‘stumbled on the fun’. The cafe is also working as a drawcard for people. Now, imagine if there were another 5 activities on offer in the space – an interesting artwork that kids could play on, some board games that you could rent from the cafe, free wireless internet, a roving street performer, or a long table lunch served up by Valentino’s Restaurant across the road perhaps?  Additional activities and uses would help to attract more people to stop by and stay awhile at the Piazza and these people in turn would attract others who just want to soak up the vibe of a buzzing place. I’m hopeful that we’ll see more and more activities and uses layered onto this space in the coming months.

Another father-daughter date perhaps?

And so the final verdict on our father’s day visit to Northbridge? Whilst my dad and I certainly weren’t overwhelmed by the life and activity on the streets, I was pleased to find there were a variety of activities on offer and enough to keep us happy on our sunny Sunday afternoon sojourn. Things are getting better in Northbridge – why don’t you explore for yourself sometime soon and write a comment letting me know your thoughts on current place making developments in the area.

I’ve blogged previously about how small bars can help solve the world’s problems so you can imagine my excitement when I learnt this week that there’s been an application lodged to change the use of 188 Whatley Crescent from an office to a small bar!

Will this be Maylands’ first small bar? I hope so. We need more after-hours venues to build the level of night-time activity in the Maylands strip. I’d love to be able to cycle down to a local, intimate and friendly bar to catch up with friends, bump into acquaintances and meet some new peeps.

When a group of us got together to run the Goodbye Dullsville campaign back in 2006 to support the passing of the small bar legislation this was just what we were hoping for. It will be great to see my local area reaping the rewards of the legislation change through enhanced cultural vitality and economic development. Bring on the bar, I say!

Centre for Sustainable Living (CSL), Denmark

I arrived at the centre and was greeted by the enticing smell of an Indian feast being cooked up in the centre’s kitchen, in preparation for a fundraising dinner being hosted their that night. No surprises I came back that evening to support the cause!

The centre is managed by Green Skills and a lot of great stuff happens there. I was visiting specifically to check out the community garden that’s been started (I think) in the last 6 months. A feature of the garden is a bush foods area where plants that will provide food during each of the six Nyungar seasons are being grown. I was struck by the ephemeral artwork that has been created as a centrepiece for this garden.

Ephemeral artwork made using natural materials

It’s not a new idea I know, but I’m currently feeling really excited about how community artwork (including ephemeral, impermanent works and performance) can help bring life to public places and I’m finding ways to incorporate more of this sort of process into my work with communities and places. Check out these lovely urban nests inhabiting the scaffolding of a building being renovated in Madrid for example.

A highlight of the CSL is a special place called the Sanctuary. Look at it – don’t you just want to spend time there!

The Sanctuary, Denmark

Inside the Sanctuary

I love the garden on the roof and, again, the artwork interwoven into the place that imbues it with story, life and colour.

The Tip Shop, Denmark

What’s a trip to Denmark without a visit to the Tip Shop I say? Some other time I’ll have to tell you about why I’m excited about waste and creative reuse. On this visit though, the thing that stayed with me most was being reminded of the diversity of types of places in our local communities that can become hubs where people can meet, connect and make interesting things happen. And how the principles of place making can be used to enhance such very different places – main streets, community gardens, small bars, public parks and tip shops!

At this one in Denmark, they’re working to expand the range of activities that happen there – one of the key strategies for attracting more people to visit and stay awhile. There’s a children’s sand pit play area, an education and training venue, the Tiporium Teahouse Sunday Session events, ‘junk’ musical instruments to play with, a casual tip shop ‘cafe’ and outdoor eating area is being set up and, of course, plenty of shopping for reuse goods and bits and pieces. Having this diversity of activity and uses bodes well for the future of this developing community hub.

Need a bike?

Rainbow Coast Neighbourhood Centre Community Garden, Albany

It was a rainy afternoon when I visited the Rainbow Coast Neighbourhood Centre Community Garden. Arriving on foot, I actually walked past the garden because it’s set back from the road, but I was lucky enough to score a lift back to the right spot by a friendly staff member of the youth centre at the other end of the street (otherwise I would have been soaked!).

Only around a year old, the garden already has a lovely feel. Those involved in developing it have paid attention not only to getting the veges growing but also to creating a vibrant and interesting community place (again the contribution community artwork can make to building a sense of place is evident). The garden is one of the few in WA that I’ve heard have managed to grow enough surplus produce to warrant selling some off for fundraising (what a difference climate can make).

Communal garden bed enlivened with simple mosaic crazy paving

The old wheelbarrow adds interest to the garden and extra growing space

Decorated bicycle tyres add colour to the fence

At the garden I met Mitch, who’s currently supervising Green Corp participants in the building of a large circular garden bed cut into quarters by pathways. One quarter will have a children’s sand pit and another a covered socialising area. Mitch mentioned that the following week he was booked to deliver his first public talk on what we need to do about climate change. It reminded me of how being involved in places like community gardens leads people to feel more inspired, empowered and interested in being active citizens. This is one of the reasons hubs like these are so important and special.

I’d love to hear about community hubs in your local area and why they work; how about posting a comment?

Established in 2005, Anne Goodall Consulting is a place conscious community development consultancy providing services to local councils, community organisations and groups, government agencies and private companies. Check out Services and download Capability Statement for more information.