Background

Council resolved at its meeting of 22 June 2020 to run a pilot ‘street play program’.

Street play involves the temporary closure or streets/road areas to allow the area to be used for public or ‘play’ space. The temporary closure of streets to vehicles to allow ‘opening and access to people’ already takes place across the world on a range of different scales, examples being the ‘Open Streets’ program in North America, ‘Ciclovia’ in South America which has been running since the mid 1970’s or the “Play Streets” program running in Victoria. Activities can range from informal play to community art projects, sports or activities and take place at a range of scales from individual streets through to road closures over several kilometres.

In August 2020 Council was successful in obtaining a grant from Department of Industry Planning and Environment (DPIE) of $40,000 to contribute to the program. The success of this application triggered a sperate part of the resolution made at the 22 June 2020 meeting:

4. THAT should Council be successful in obtaining a grant for the program, that staff commission the design and construction of a mobile ‘parklet’ to support the program.

It is envisaged that Council will play a major role in the development and management of the five (5) pilot projects in close collaboration with the local community. However, in the longer term, the intent is that the program will transition to being community led, and that individual streets or community groups initiate, plan and conduct the “Street Play” events with Council in an enabling/supporting role. Councils enabling and supporting role may include a future “Matching Grants Program” whereby the community can contribute time - materials or money which Council places a value on. In turn Council will match the community’s contribution on a dollar for dollar basis.

UPDATE 8 OCTOBER 2020

Council sought feedback on proposed streets and provided the opportunity to nominate streets for the pilot program in September 2020. Council received a large number of requests to participate in the program and preliminarily identified streets for the first 5 street play days in areas where there was high levels of interest. Notification and further feedback opportunities is to be provided to each of these streets.

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