Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

Margaret Meade

Firefly Bay and Basin got wind of community’s concerns about the skate park early on in the project. We took time to understand how the community wanted this park to work better for kids.  This included hearing from the kids. We had Pizza afternoons and generally were just present in the park for many months to speak to anyone who was interested.

Working alongside community members, an agenda for change has grown – a bubbler, bins, cutting back trees to improve casual surveillance, alcohol free zone, covered seating for community to be present, advocating for  a ‘pump track’ for bikes, getting parents engaged to improve safety, connecting kids to role models, improving skating skills – basically making it the healthy community hub the community aims for.

With gentle advocacy and lots of important connections across key community people things can and do happen. Carolyn our community coordinator has worked closely with the Council on a skate park behavior mapping study and combining with her to identify community aspirations. We also worked with Fran and other locals to collect more than 400 signatures to council for a ‘pump track’ to be installed – by all accounts, an almost unheard of number of signatures for the area. The Pump track is not likely to happen in this round but all the improvements council have been allocated funding for should be completed in 2021 for the children. The primary school already use the skate park for the lunchtime sports access and increasing usage by community will only improve the area more.

Recently the council with the office of sport sponsored BMX workshops at the skate park, these were so successful we are currently advocating to support BMX workshops back to the area on an ongoing basis.

I want to live in a community with a fishing club for youth and a skate park with less graffiti and fighting. We need connection and more things to. 

12 year old boy @ skatepark

Sanctuary Point Skate Park has a dedicated Facebook page managed by the community.