Page 4227 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 21 September 2010
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To do that, we need to engage them in conversations about how they would like to see issues within policy that affects them—the public space they use, the schools and jobs they attend, the healthcare services they access, where they call home and the many other aspects of their lives.
So why is participation important? Participation connects children and young people to their environment and community. It provides them with a voice to contribute. It allows young people the opportunity to understand more about the ways in which they can contribute to the community for today and into the future.
Participation is important because children and young people know the most about what is important to them. It is children and young people who often have the best ideas, the newest ideas, about ways of integrating old and new, about how to change things and make things better for them and their peers. To ignore this voice in the ACT is to be disrespectful and negligent because we have so much to gain from raising the volume of this voice.
The ACT government has many opportunities to include children and young people in planning and the development of our city. For instance, a recent announcement heralded a $4.2 million investment by the ACT government and the federal government for a new skate park near the Eastern Valley Way inlet in Belconnen, with upgrades to the foreshore. It is wonderful news for the Ginninderra community, but in order to make it magnificent news, it is important that the community is consulted to ensure that we design and develop a community facility that meets the needs of children, young people, families and adults alike now and into the future.
It is not a difficult task. It requires some thinking, planning and investment up front. We see the ongoing benefits when the time is taken to consider the needs and hear the voices of those in the community who use the facilities. What we end up with is full use, a sense of community and ownership of these facilities by those engaged in the process.
There is a real risk of a lack of authentic participation in planning, design and development of urban spaces. While at times the ACT government has endeavoured to consult with young people about their use of public spaces, for the most part this has been about getting them involved rather than acknowledging their distinct needs. Participation is not about consulting children and young people about what colour to paint the youth centre or planting trees in the playground. It is about finding out how children and young people use public spaces differently and how they would most like these spaces to reflect them and their specific needs.
The capacity of children and young people to contribute to public space planning is often undervalued. Inclusive, leading practice approaches to participatory planning ensure that processes designed to engage with communities provide opportunities for children and young people to participate directly in planning, building and evaluation of the design construction and modification of urban environments, arrange feedback from children and young people to ensure that their suggestions are incorporated in ongoing planning and design decisions, find ways to incorporate children and young people’s assessment via projects in local schools, engage children and young people
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