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Pitch

A free all-day local Indigenous and environmental holiday workshop targeting Brisbane’s school-aged kids in collaboration with the Turrbul Education group, Hacker Space and WildAction Education that educates children on Turrbul cultural practices, creative problem solving, and local flora and fauna in a fun and interactive way. The day begins with a half-day workshop run by the Turrbul group, then a provided lunch, a session run by Hackerspace and then WildAction brings native animals for the kids to interact with.

Skills required: 

- Digital design 

- Copywriter

- History with event management

- Administrative 

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Criterion 4: Feasibility, Sustainability & Enduring Significance

The event is very economically sustainable as the base cost is currently $31,579.65 for the first time it is run. It is then only approximately $6000 to run each time after that. This is well under the $40,000 to $70,000 budget, and it includes a substantial contingency fund. 

The event is designed to be repeated and refreshed overtime by either adjusting the content of sessions to fit other age groups or by swapping facilitators to meet different goals. The event is also notably environmentally sustainable as it has very few single use elements: the lunch does include plastics, the children are provided water bottles to fill up, the facilitators provide and remove their equipment rather than EDQ storing it. The potential single use items are the ‘prototypes’ the children make during the session. 

The primary enduring significance of this event is the tangible relationships formed between the children and their local Indigenous culture and their local environment. The secondary enduring significance is the repositioning of Northshore as a knowledgeable, sustainable and culturally aware site that actively acknowledges and appreciates Indigenous history and culture. 

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Criterion 3: Audience Engagement, Ethics and Diversity

The event is for five to ten-year-olds in Brisbane. However, with such a young audience, there is a secondary audience of parents. Ethically engaging this audience is paramount to the success of this event. To me, ethical engagement with children means creating respectful, safe, and appropriate interactions. Part of this is ensuring all facilitators have blue cards and are across the associated behavioural requirements of those. Furthermore, ensuring the event has spaces for overwhelmed children to step away too, as well as having parent’s contact details for any emergencies. All information and delivery will be age appropriate. Initially, the program could be marketed through schools and their means of media (assemblies or newsletters), and then marketing the event on ‘Ideas for school holidays’ websites and blogs. 

The nature and delivery of the event means it could be easily adapted for an older audience by adjusting the content of the sessions and marketing to high schools. As the event grows in popularity, it can be run more frequently across semester time. 

Hamilton and Northshore’s current demographic is primarily families (ABS, 2016), however, EDQ would like to shift this towards more youth, (5-25-year-olds) (Altun, 2022). Their current key stakeholders include the Queensland Government, Eat Street, Brisbane City Council and the onsite partnerships such as Hackerspace. My event directly engages with some of the onsite stakeholders in part to introduce the participates and their families to the other benefits Northshore offers the community. The event also encourages families to engage with their local environment and space at Northshore by introducing and contextualising the natural elements of the space. 

ABS. (2016). Hamilton Northshore Census Statistics. Australian Bureau of Statistics. https://www.abs.gov.au/census/find-census-data/quickstats/2016/SSC31301#:~:text=Of%20these%2049.1%25%20were%20male,up%201.0%25%20of%20the%20population.&text=The%20median%20age%20of%20people,up%2013.5%25%20of%20the%20population.

Altun, V. (2022). KKB285 Week 1 Lecture Slides. Queensland University of Technology. 

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Criterion 2: Originality

My concept directly engages with the Indigenous and post-colonial history (and future) of the site through the various educational sessions. 

Each element of the program follows a past, present future approach:

The Turrbul education program teaches children (an age appropriate) the history of the area, how the cultural practices have continued and how they are currently practiced, as well as how the children can continue supporting the continuation of the culture 

The creative problem-solving session with the Hackerspace and Mens Shed focuses on past, current, and future issues in Brisbane and gets the participants to think of potential creative solutions and ‘prototyping’ as an interactive session

The WildAction session introduces children to the native animal and flora history of the area, the associated environmental/sustainability issues and teaches the children how to care for their environment 

The event subtly teaches children about taking stewardship on for the future of the environment whilst acknowledging the traditional custodians and their customs for caring for the land. 

Various programs exist in Queensland that teach wildlife education or local Indigenous culture or creative problem solving to children, such as the Bulu Yabun Aboriginal Cultural Workshops or the Australia Zoo. However, these programs are typically singular concept, school based and not necessarily a location-specific education. The benefits of the Northshore program are that is free, Brisbane and Northshore specific, and incorporates three different educations into one program. The program is also capped at 30 participants each time its run, which allows for a much more hands-on, engaging, and personal experience. 

My role within the event would be managing the cross coordination and organisation between different stakeholders and companies to successfully meet the event’s goals.

Sources:

Australia Zoo. (2022). Education. Australia Zoo. https://www.australiazoo.com.au/education/

Bulu Yabun. (2022). About Us. Bulu Yabun. https://buluyabun.com/about-us/

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Criterion 1: Response to the Site & Client Brief

Dreamtime Storytime at The Shed is an all-day educational program for children that, as the name suggests, would be hosted at The Shed at Northshore. The event directly addresses EDQ’s identified key challenge in bringing youth to the Northshore site as the event is designed for and will be marketed at primary school children (5-10 year-olds). Furthermore, the event runs during a weekday which brings the audience to the site during the off-peak/Eat Street time.  It also provides for “shared moments of play, learning, interest and engagement” through direct links to the site’s Indigenous history and native flora and fauna. 

The event reflects EDQ’s objectives, vision and brand by offering a free, educationally enriched event that engages with both immediate stakeholders at Northshore, as well as the site’s Indigenous and environmental history through local groups. EDQ emphasises the importance of acknowledging the site’s history whilst also looking to the future potential of the area. This program follows that line of thinking in each section of the program, implementing a ‘past, present future’ approach in each session. 

This program introduces an educational experience that does not currently exist at the site, or in Brisbane more broadly, whilst also creating an experience that could be expanded to include other sites at Northshore for future activities in the workshop. A perception issue Northshore faces is that they are seen as quite an industrial area that hosts Eat Street (Altun, 2022). This event addresses this by bringing children and families down to Northshore for a specific event during the day to see the potential of the space for other purposes; picnicking, cycling, enjoying the river frontage (which Eat Street does not showcase as it is a night event). It also repositions Northshore as a culturally aware and developing space to keep an eye on. Furthermore, for EDQ, this event builds a rapport and relationship with the Turrbul group that could be very beneficial in the further development of the site as the Government looks to reimagine the space for the olympics. 

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In the pursuit of placemaking...

Rapson’s four principles of creative placemaking:

1. It is grounded in the particulars of place;

2. It employs authentic and ongoing community engagement

3. It embraces existing community development systems

4. It assumes the willingness and capacity of arts and cultural organisations to take an outward orientation. In the process, artists at community-building tables can realise a new catalytic role in their community.

(Obtained through Tom Borrups’s Creative Placemaking: Arts and Culture as a Partner in Community Revitalization)

 Event 1: Dreamtime Storytime at The Shed

1. This event is completely grounded in Northshore, Brisbane from each facilitator being Brisbane-based, to the content of the session being specific to the area. 

2. The content of the sessions is designed to encourage organic and continued engagement with Northshore, the local Indigenous culture and the environment.

3. The event engages the site’s existing community through the Hackerspace and Mens Shed, whist also incorporating the Turrbul group which is an existing community that does not currently have a specific link to EDQ’s development of the Northshore precinct. 

4. The program encourages the facilitators and broader stakeholders to consider and engage with the younger demographic as future stewards of the area. The sessions involve asking the children how they see the future of Brisbane and how they would address potential future challenges for the area. The sessions encourage creativity and connection on both the facilitators end, and the participants. 

Event 2: The Local Concert 

1. The event makes use of the Maritime Green area by using the Hangar as the stage, the area to side for the food trucks and then the green space as seating, but it is not specifically required to be hosted at Northshore to go ahead. 

2. The concert introduces young people to an area they would likely not associate with free concerts by local artists on the river and would help establish an association between local artistic culture, this demographic and Northshore, with the hopes this would encourage repeat visitation.

3. The event incorporates local artists, the local university (QUT) and local foodaries to bring attention to Northshore. However, it does not incorporate the current onsite stakeholders, and could be seen to rival Eat Street, a major stakeholder at Northshore. 

4. The concert definitely encourages local artists to consider how they are shaping the future of artistic and performance culture in Brisbane. I think in a ‘post-lockdown’ context, the performance scene in Brisbane needs some support to be reinvigorated in the community. 

In deciding which of the two events to pursue,  consideration is given to Tom Borrups ‘Outcomes for successful creative place-making’. These outcomes identify the importance of creative placemaking being site specific and establishing connections between people and places (Borrup, 2016, p.2). The educational experience is grounded in Northshore and its history, specifically drawing upon the location and its history for the session’s content. Furthermore, the educational event actively encourages connections between the environment, between participants and between different cultures in the hopes of developing a sense of local stewardship of the area, another identified outcome of successful place-making. The local concert, while it targets the desired demographic and targets local artists, could be repeated at any outdoor concert venue and does not create any meaningful connections between the participants and Northshore specifically. However, the concert does do more to further establish Northshore as a cultural forefront than the educational experience. Alternatively, the educational experience could be adapted or included alongside another concept to meet that goal of developing Northshore as a cultural forefront. 

Dreamtime Storytime at The Shed is the concept I will continue to pursue. 

Borrup, T. (2016). Creative Placemaking: Arts and Culture as a Partner in Community Revitalization. A Chapter in Fundamentals of Arts Management, University of Massachusetts. 

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Stakeholder map: Dreamtime Storytime at The Shed

Sources:

Department Economic Development Queensland. (2022). Northshore Client Brief. Department Economic Development Queensland, p 3. 

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Event #2 Local concert budget

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Event #1: Educational Session

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Idea #2 Local Concert

Description:

A Thursday afternoon spent by the river listening to local bands, eating local food and drinking local beers. The event aims to capture the attention of local university students with a free concert on the Maritime Green, offering the opportunity to enjoy local delights with friends as the sun sets over the river. The concert would be in collaboration with QUT’s Vermillion records and other local performers. The event has potential to team up with Translink to run ferries directly between Northshore and QUT. 

While the event acts as a stand alone event, it has the capacity to form into a ‘CreatorFest’ that boasts a variety of talents, like Flipside or creations from the Men’s shed, as well as art shows from visual artists. Currently, Brisbane does not cater for university students to exist as young adults outside of campus for free. This event would allow for young adults to enjoy their friends company without paying for full concert tickets. The event would run on a Thursday at the end of semester from 5-10pm. 

Pros:

- Repeatable event

- Targets untapped demo

- Engages with local artists

- Builds into bigger event

 - Avoids heat

- Could turn into a fundraiser

- Engages with stakeholders

- Helps build the reputation of Northshore as a cultural hotspot 

Cons:

- Costs of licensing 

- Costs of security 

- Costs for hiring food and drink trucks

- Creating traction with university students who can have lots of other events 

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Idea #1: Dreamtime Story time

Event description: 

During school holidays, primary school (5-10 year olds) come down to The Shed to participate in a series of activities that introduce them to the rich Indigenous history of the area. These activities would include an interactive storytelling session ran by the Turrbul Education group, engaging with the hacker and Mens sheds to help run an interactive creative problem solving session, and a local Wildlife session. The Turrbul education group runs activities that are age appropriate and specific to the Turrbul peoples; activities include “participating in boomerang throwing, dancing, creating traditional arts, and learning songs in Turrbal language”.  Furthermore, a creative session with the Hacker space or Mens shed would be a fun way to involve the groups with younger generations to get them introduced to potential future opportunities. Finally, the WildAction’s wildlife program specialises in teaching children the importance of sustainability and protecting local flora and fauna, including an interactive session with some native animals. 

A coffee cart would be available for parents (the secondary audience) if they choose to stay present during the session.

The idea also lends itself well to marketing the program on vacation care and ‘holiday idea’ blogs. 

Pros:

- Engages with a variety of stakeholders

- Engages with local Indigenous history

- Brings children to Northshore in the off peak 

- Engages a target demographic from the brief 

- Repeatable event 

- Closest similar event is in K’gari (Fraser Island) or the Gold Coast 

Cons: 

- The age group is already catered for

- Strong reliance on the availability of the Turrbul education group 

- Lots of safety requirements to consider

- Requires lots of coordination and collaboration

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Why don’t young people use public spaces?

I was interested in what currently prevents young adults from using public spaces as a part of brainstorming options for the Northshore development. The research demonstrated that lots of public spaces are not designed for young adults to exist as young adults, and as such, young people do not feel comfortable existing in them. Karen Malone, senior lecturer at MONASH University, identifies the issue in the typical behaviour of young adults being considered anti-social to adults:  “hanging around in groups on street corners talking, playing or simply observing others is viewed as inappropriate in the structured ordered streets of our cities.” She labels this approach as the “not seen and not heard strategy” which acts to exclude and isolate young people, rather than engaging them in society and social negotiations. 

Carlos Costas (2021) echoes these statements in “What happens when teenagers reason about public open spaces?” stating: “they[teenagers] are portrayed as those who dare to be in a group, too loud and too disrespectful…in places where thin and subtle rules and boundaries are in place, with established behaviours, that teenagers seem not to comply with. For this reason, teenagers are often viewed as a disturbing element in the public realm (Wyn & White, 1997) and consequently, not always well accepted by other users or neighbouring business owners…” 

Both authors argue the social and developmental benefits of including young people in public spaces, but also the importance of making conscience decisions regarding the needs of young adults when designing public spaces; How will this space allow for young people to act their age? Brisbane is currently lacking spaces that address this; Southbank caters for families (young children particularly), New Farm James Street is expensive with little public space, New Farm Park has more capacity for young people but are unfortunately seen as more of a threat after sunset. Key outcomes of placemaking include creating “connections between and among people, and between people and place” and  “capacity building for local civic sector and organisations to maintain engagement of the community and to exercise local stewardship and governance” (Borrup, T. 2016). Young people could play a significant role in maintaining engagement and exercising local stewardship if they are given the opportunity to properly exist within the space. In particular, if Northshore is looking to become a forefront of culture in Brisbane, young people’s support will be vital in achieving that. 

 Borrup, T. (2016). Creative Placemaking: Arts and Culture as a Partner in Community Revitalization. A Chapter in Fundamentals of Arts Management. University of Massachusetts. https://creativecommunitybuilders.com/wp-content/uploads/Borrup-Creative-Placemaking-2016-UMASS.pdf 

Malone, K. (2002). Street life: youth, culture and competing uses of public space. Journal of Environment & Urbanization, 14(2). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/095624780201400213 

Costa, C. Et al. (2021). What happens when teenagers reason about public open spaces? Cities, Communities and Territories, 43(December). https://journals.openedition.org/cidades/4887#tocto1n3 

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A Comparable Development

Rocks Riverside Park is a comparable development area in Brisbane that I am hoping to look to for potential inspiration for Northshore. 

The facts:

- Located 16km from city in Seventeen Miles Rocks

- A formerly industrial area, redevleoped in a public, suburban area

- Is based along river

- Gets very hot, but has lots of shade

- Contains:

1/2 basketball court

Multiple playgrounds

“Industrial artefacts

Free wifi

Accessible pathways + bathrooms

~8000 square metres of open grassed space 

Riverside walkway

(via Brisbane City Council Website: https://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/things-to-see-and-do/council-venues-and-precincts/parks/parks-by-suburb/seventeen-mile-rocks-parks/rocks-riverside-park)

Things to apply/note:

- Uses water play to manage crowds in the summer heat

- Reviews mention great signage for way-finding

- Still targets 6-12 year olds; gap for young adults

- Disability accessible paths/bathrooms/swings

- Limited access to food places, b.y.o. food 

- Lots of picnic space

- Water frontage adds to ambience; later development at Northshore will allow for “boardwalk” along river 

- Does a great job incorporating history of the site into the development

Photo description: Machinery from old development site made into an art piece

(via council website)

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What makes a good public space?

A key element in feeling a sense of belonging and connection to a place, for me, is associating it with joy and an activity of some sort. I have found that attaching it to an experience is central to whether I visit it again or not. For example, the different exhibitions in GOMA are key for me choosing to go to Southbank for a day rather than West End. 

Below are three of my favourite public spaces, and what aspects of them make an enjoyable experiences:

New Farm Park:

- Vast space; lots of different spaces to enjoy

- Lots of shade

- Beautiful space; rose bushes, big arching trees

- Very accessible; roads circle interior, not great for those with mobility issues once you’re off the road 

- River breeze, relatively uninterrupted view of river

- Lively; feels like it wants people to be there

- Not super accessible via transport from the west-side of Brisbane

- Near Powerhouse, comparably culturally with Flipside/Eat Street

Southbank Precinct:

- Lots to do; cultural centre, restaurants, parklands, cinema

- Very accessible with cultural centre, two train stations, ferry stop

- Very walkable; uninterrupted pathways from one end to the other 

- Activities target young children and adults; young adults aren’t particularly catered for

- Plenty of parking

- Lots of shade

Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island):

- Calming, beautiful, feels very culturally connected to Indigenous roots

- Allows for individual experiences/activities; not guided day/activities

- Lots of restaurants and local foodaries 

- Pretty inaccessible: hourly ferries, buses, driving 

- Lots of beaches, not crowded and not empty 

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First Impressions from site visit:

Quite stark landscape

Very hot

Little shade

The grassy hill would compliment a concert in the hangar

Summer night event: 

- local indigenous artist pop up markets 

- local singers/performers/circus performers?… link with uni? Vermillion records? 

- free entry 

- uni holidays 

- pop up bars

- each week night different performer/bar? 

- Is there a week/time that is of historical indigenous significance? 

Kids event: 

- school holidays 

- Indigenous leaders reading/renacting local and Dreamtime stories for the kids

- During the day

- Learning history with songs and performances 

- team up with hacker shed and men's shed to teach building canoes/water vessels from history