Andrew Crowley of Capacity Consulting worked creatively with Kingston City Council in Victoria, Australia as local young people to get more youth involved in a conversation about recreation planning.
A recent initiative of Kingston City Council has been attracting attention from young people in the local community. As part of the Active Youth Spaces consultation, the team brought an old couch to life at the Skate of Mind event in Chelsea. The concept was to have your say through graffiti on the couch. This was a great form of consultation for young people and particularly girls.
A Youth Crew was established for the event that facilitated the graffiti couch, recorded the comments and photographed people participating in the engagement. At the event the project consultants (Capacity Consulting) and Kingston City Council staff gained comments from the young people and loaded them onto IPAD’s the Active Youth Spaces online forum. Over 60 comments were posted at the event on the day and the graffiti comments off the couch were also posted live on the web.
Over 1,000 people have visited the site and 224 comments have been made. Other community engagement methods undertaken have been visits to each of the skate parks where we talked to young people and posted their comments on the online forum and an Open House day at the key skate park in the municipality.
The Active Youth Space community engagement is being coordinated and delivered by Capacity Consulting in partnership with the City of Kingston.
Andrew Crowley of Capacity Consulting stated ‘We were wanting to try a more innovative approach to engage with young people in place in the community, so we decided to spend lots of time out and about with young people. By connecting feedback gained from young people out on with the online forum it allowed the young people to see other people’s comments and contribute to the strategy’.
To learn more about the project contact Andrew Crowley, Capacity Consulting on 0430 486349 or andrew@capacityconsulting.com.au or Hannah Croughan, City of Kingston on 03 9581 4608 HannahCroughan@kingston.vic.gov.au
10 Tips for Engaging Young People
Photo Credits: Brandon McCarrell
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