The Place Leaders Awards were co-hosted by City of Parramatta on 13 October 2022 at Parramatta Square. The event celebrated cutting edge innovation and excellence in the place sector, with categories covering projects, processes, leadership, governance, and digital placemaking. We recognise and congratulate all our Awards Nominees and Recipients!
ABOUT THE AWARDS
The Place Leaders Asia Pacific Awards Program provides a platform for the promotion and celebration of innovation and excellence across a broad field of place focused work.
The awards recognise physical projects, place processes and leadership within the six categories of Place Leadership, Place Project Large, Place Project Small, Place Process, Place Governance and Digital Placemaking.
The program highlights the achievements of Place Leaders and the ongoing contribution of the work in delivering successful place outcomes that enrich the life and well-being of all communities.
JURY MEMBERS
Alex O'Mara (Jury Chair), Principal, Sustainable Solutions Advisory
Dr Robyn Creagh (Jury Member), Senior Lecturer at The University of Notre Dame Australia
Frith Walker (Jury Member), Head of Placemaking, Eke Panuku
2022 AWARD WINNERS
Place Leaders Asia Pacific is delighted to announce the recipients of the 2022 Awards.
CENTREPIECE AWARD
WINNER: Arncliffe Community Hub - Evolve Housing
This year, the jury recognises the leadership from Evolve Housing with the Arncliffe Community Hub in harnessing the power of placemaking to support a diverse range of disadvantaged and vulnerable people into emergency accommodation during COVID and create a sense of belonging and connection to community through placemaking. We want to acknowledge and celebrate the efforts to provide a whole of life experience and support-not just a roof–and the meaningful community connections that were created as a result. When the COVID pandemic hit, Evolve Housing turned around an upgrade to 142 units within 6 weeks to support rough sleepers off the streets, single parents, women and children escaping domestic violence, young people at risk of homelessness and people in urgent need of housing assistance. Rather than doing the minimum possible to house people, they didn’t stop there but instead approached this with a bold vision for how great placemaking has the capacity to create community–recognising that many people moving into the housing had no previous connection to Arncliffe and securing funding from philanthropic and government sources to enable it.
Evolve Housing’s agile, community-led and place-based approach provided wrap around support to this instant community, creating a sense of community. They tailored their response to the needs of their community and the Jury were so impressed by what emerged–everything from a community garden built with the Community Greening Team which the community called the Garden of Eden, health drop-in sessions, free morning teas, homework and internet hubs, a mural painted by a resident, a street library and connections to services like training and employment. This was embraced by the community, creating a sense of belonging, with members stepping up to look after the garden and for example, a resident offering cooking classes to the community. Of the tenants surveyed, 100% felt supported and 78% felt that they were part of a community. While potentially not strictly everyone’s “definition” of placemaking, this project shone because of its clear illustration of how the use and recognition of place is critical to happy living. The jury were so impressed by this nomination because it is about true placemaking-about addressing difficult challenges that make a real difference to people’s lives, and about the value in place-based, community led approaches. The opportunity to thrive in great places should be available to everyone-this is at the core of 'just transition' and we celebrate the creativity, drive, innovation, kindness and leadership of Evolve Housing in making that happen.
PLACE LEADERSHIP AWARD
WINNER: City of Parramatta Placemaking Team
It is so heartening to see a placemaking team operating at this level and with such broad support, especially from above. It is not easy to work within the system in a way that both progresses change and honours more established ways of thinking–this team’s commitment to helping their places and all those that care for them is a testament to their creativity, dedication, and optimism."Placemakers don't design and build assets, they design and build working systems"–really sums up what we hope this placemaking word is achieving within local government thinking. Really commend the balance between clear leadership and remaining well aware that this is, ultimately, a role that is in service to people and place. A strong team of strong people who believe in the potential of their place and the capacity of all peoples to see it into fruition. And capitalising costs? Gold stars all round!!!! Awero for you though team – now how do you make space for your local mobs.
PLACE LEADERSHIP COMMENDATION: Leederville Connect for UX2
Leederville Connect is a civil society organisation that seeks to shape the future of urban development in Leederville, an inner-city, urban area, three kilometres from the centre of Perth. UX2 adds to Leederville Connects portfolio to present eleven actionable urban projects which envisage a liveable, ethical and sustainable future for Leederville which speaks to local community, and local developers.
PLACE GOVERNANCE AWARD
WINNER: Parramatta Place Plan - City of Parramatta
The Parramatta Place Plan has harnessed an innovative approach to place governance to deliver dynamic, adaptive and integrated outcomes for Parramatta. We were impressed by the strong commitment from the Council to harnessing the Place Plan to promote public benefit within the public realm and with its vision of Parramatta Place as a gathering place starts with Country, respecting its history in that the Burramattagal Clan of the Dhurug people gathered here. One of the strengths of the Place Plan is the way it brings people together to create shared outcomes for the place, enabling integrated decision-making through the creation of alliances of tenants and landowners to drive connectivity, sustainability and activation. The Jury was also impressed by the Place Management Framework which will generate ongoing data to inform agile decision-making and enable an inclusive evolution of the place, ensuring that diverse stakeholder groups such as CALD communities, youth and First Nations, as well as tenants and others are engaged in ongoing activation and curation of the precinct to ensure 'everyone feels welcome'.
PLACE PROCESS AWARD
WINNER: A2040 - Alexandria Council
This project won the judges’ hearts. In the writing about place in this application we saw a beautiful understanding of the magnitude and importance of what we are working with as placemakers. We would like to honour this group for having the humility and wisdom to acknowledge First Nations people as being where deep knowledge of place lives. We would also like to really commend the empowerment of council staff in this inclusive process. The artful disruption that this project displays is highly inspiring–shown beautifully in the point "the success relies on the humility in leadership to know that this movement has started... [and that] the programme must continually evolve...". The attention to holding to the Golden Thread of strategy connected to the “place led, community fed” approach ensures a meaningful journey to a carefully considered future. Beautiful.
PLACE PROCESS COMMENDATION: Doing Things Differently - Suburban Land Agency
The Suburban Land Agency’s vision is to ‘create great places where communities thrive’ while it’s primary role is to develop and sell ACT government land. To achieve this, from 2020 SLA have embarked on a journey of “Doing Things Differently” applying a placemaking lens across its land development program and taking a people and place first approach, and commencing major projects with community engagement to develop a Place Vision or Place Design Brief. It is truly inspiring to see this level of thinking being honoured and supported at this level of governance. We know this effort needs to be top down and bottom up so highly commend the commitment to vision and the courage to do things differently in order to ensure that you are what you say on the tin.