West Torrens Community Forum
In partnership with West Torrens City Council, 5000+ hosted a workshop at the Hamra Centre Library for interested community members to discuss possible futures for West Torrens. 5000+ commissioned three different teams of designers and architects to present speculative propositions for West Torrens and Inner-Rim areas, with respect to housing diversity, connected living and growing food locally. (see Patterns of Living).
The postcard invitations to the event, distributed throughout the Adelaide Airport Summer Festival, were themselves provocations to think about a more innovative approach to the future of West Torrens.
In the experience of 5000+ to date, when local government seeks to measure public temperament in response to a public policy proposal, a process of intelligent engagement by design yields vital insight. It generates a rich discussion, outlines possibilities, communicates these visually to the public, and engages their response relative to the values, priorities and concerns they have.
The ideas & conversations which our design testing projects provoked at the event will feed into both West Torrens City Council community consultation work and into 5000+ recommendations. Equally important as the ideas captured during the workshop, the aim was also to better equip the community with ways of thinking about future possibilities for their neighbourhoods, and to reinforce the existing networks of active community members - the champions of innovative thinking.
The workshop demonstrated how an intelligent engagement by design approach early in the life of a project, policy or program proposal, can establish the groundwork for a meaningful process that integrates public, stakeholder and professional views.
