Buranda ParkFest
Reclaim, Create, Celebrate!
FREE ENTRY
Saturday, August 18th
12pm - Sunset
cnr Carl St & Tottenham St, Woolloongabba
Facebook event at this link
RECLAIM - CREATE - CELEBRATE
A free community festival to reclaim this little-known park - officially called Carl St Park. Neglected by Council, commercialised by a developer…it’s time for the community to reclaim this public space.
A day of creativity and celebration to re-imagine what this park could be. Please RSVP below if you think you might come along.
Live Music throughout the afternoon
FREE Vego BBQ
Parkour Workshops
Graffiti Jam Wall & Live Street Art
Stencilling workshop
Yarn bombing
Pop-up Play space
Gardening workshop
Market & Info Stalls
Interactive installations on reclaiming this public space
Performance poetry, Juggling & more
Workshop Times
12:30pm: African Drumming
1.30pm & 3pm: Parkour & Movement (1 hour long)
2pm & 4pm: Stencilling & Street Art: (30 mins long)
2:30pm: Organic Gardening
4:30pm: Yoga
We acknowledge that this event is taking place on stolen ground, on the land of the Jagera and Turrbul Peoples. We pay our respects to their elders past and present. Sovereignty was never ceded.
Reclaiming the Park
The festival inspiration came from wanting to engage the community in a redesign process for this park. We hope the festival will inspire the local community to re-imagine what this park could be while also providing an opportunity for park users to contribute their ideas for the park redesign through several interactive installations.
Community-led Park Redesign
I have an annual budget of approximately $400 000 for upgrades to local parks and public spaces. This year, I'm allocating 3/4 of that budget towards improving the park at the corner of Carl Street and Tottenham Street in Woolloongabba. I’ve also successfully lobbied the Lord Mayor to contribute more funding from the council’s main parks budget. We now have an available project budget of $1.1million.
My office is organising a community design process, where residents collaborate to decide what facilities should be installed in the park and how we can make the best use of this space.
Park history and future expansion
Since 2012, this park has grown gradually as council bought neighbouring properties to expand it. With my support, council recently acquired the properties at 32 and 34 Tottenham St. I’ve asked the Lord Mayor to demolish or relocate these buildings to create more green space (we investigated turning one of these houses into a community facility or shelter, but council officers decided the high cost of renovating the old building wasn’t worth it). As part of this expansion, I’ve also asked the Lord Mayor to allocate an additional $800 000 towards upgrading this park (for a total budget of $1,100 000).
The park is adjacent to the former Ipswich Road Tram Depot.
Tram turning from Ipswich Road into O'Keefe Street with Princess Alexandra Hospital in the background (03/10/65) (http://www.brisbanetramwaymuseum.org/photoalbum.php)
Decision-making process
I think it’s important that local residents get a meaningful say in how their parks and public spaces are designed and used. I don’t just want residents to tell me what you want. I want to encourage you to talk to one another, share ideas, and collaborate on solutions.
Our community design process will revolve around face-to-face workshops, with extra opportunities for people to contribute online or by contacting my office if they can’t make it to the meetings.
Surveys: Our office and a team of volunteers hand-delivered 700 surveys to residents in the immediate area of the park asking for ideas and visions about this park redesign process.
Face-to-Face: We door-knocked over 250 homes in the immediate area and spoke to people about the process, obtaining their thoughts and experiences about the park and the community.
Workshop 1: Our first face-to-face workshop was held in the park on Saturday, 2 June from 3pm to 5pm. At this event, we talked about the needs of the local area, how residents currently use the park, and what other purposes you hope it will serve in future. See below for more info.
Festival Interactive Installations: The Buranda Parkfest will have a several interactive installations allowing park users to see what ideas the community have already discussed as well as providing opportunities to engage in the redesign process with their own vision.
Summary notes of the community engagement so far.
After the Festival, I will ask council officers to provide detailed costings for the various features that residents have suggested. We will then organise further meetings and online discussions to work through options and gradually agree on a final design for the council to implement.
If you'd like to volunteer to help organise, promote or facilitate the workshops, please get in touch via [email protected]
Possibilities for the park
The park is zoned as an urban common. This means council intends for it to serve as a neighbourhood hub with a higher intensity of use, such as for community events and maybe even small festivals.
A nearby example of an ‘urban common’ is Bunyapa Park on the corner of Vulture St and Thomas St in West End, which we designed with a stage and access to power points in order to accommodate outdoor concerts. I expect that as the Carl St park is much larger, it will have more open green space than Bunyapa, but it would still be good to include features that support community events and projects.
An example of an urban common-style park in West End
Local Context
The design of this park will take place at roughly the same time as a major upgrade to Hanlon Park, just to the east of the Pacific Motorway in Greenslopes. The Hanlon Park upgrade is a much larger undertaking coordinated by BCC’s City Projects Team, and will involve major engineering work including converting the concrete drain back into a natural creek.
It will be important that the facilities and features of these two parks complement each other. I expect the design of Hanlon Park will include a fair bit of vegetation, with a stronger focus on creating native wildlife habitat. So it might be appropriate for the park on Carl St in Woolloongabba to focus more on active recreation.
A Name for the Park?
We also need to decide on a name for this relatively new park. These days, council generally avoids naming parks after individual people, and instead prefers to choose names that reflect a neighbourhood’s local identity or history.
My intention is to collect suggestions for park names, develop a shortlist and put the decision to a public vote. I am writing directly to local Aboriginal elders asking for their suggestions regarding a park name, but I also welcome suggestions from local residents. You can email me your park name suggestion, plus a brief explanation of the choice, at [email protected]
Community input so far:
Carl St Park Redesign Workshop - Sat 2nd June
We met in the park, got acquainted and shared thoughts and ideas about the local area and what the park could be. We explored ideas based on remembered experiences of what we enjoy doing in the outdoors, and then connected this with practical outcomes by imagining what these experiences might mean for our park. There were some beautiful reminiscences of Jack’s house and old fashioned garden and the how self-sufficient his style of living was. We talked about the importance of public space for relaxing, meeting people, gathering around activities, getting in touch with nature, growing our own food and even patient rehabilitation. One resident summed up their feeling about the park beautifully -- “a city needs breathing space, so do birds”. People shared special memories of being outdoors, and when it came to imagining what might mean for our park, the ideas bubbled forth -- Jack’s ‘corner’, sunny winter spots, make the park a journey with play along the way, bike loop, hills to roll down, village square, exercise equipment, reuse existing unit building, toilets, kitchen garden, community kitchen, covered BBQ area, street art, Wi-Fi/charging spot, festivals, markets…
Carl St Park Redesign Survey 1
Responses to the survey showed similar concerns around the importance of public space and highlighted the changing nature of the neighbourhood as a “concrete jungle” where we are “hemmed in by highrises”. Changes people would like to see to the park included play area, more trees, more seating, gardens, picnic facilities, BBQ, shaded areas, Sporting facilities, off-leash dog area, exercise equipment and ways to connect with nature.
A more detailed summary of this feedback is available here.
Next steps
The next steps in the Carl St Park Redesign process to look out for include:
- Buranda ParkFest & interactive installations
- Online survey
- Detailed costings of proposed features & draft designs
- Community workshops focused on final design
Get involved - Stay updated
Let us know if you want to be:
- Involved in the community design process in any way
- Kept updated on activities and events related to the Carl St Park Redesign.
email [email protected]
call my office on 3403 2165.
