News.

14/05/11

Who will pay to turn the Callan Park Master Plan into reality?

We conducted 3 bus tours of Callan Park today, taking a route that was able to explain many of the key features of the draft Master Plan which is now on exhibition.  Like the drop in events we held late last year and earlier this year, the bus tours attracted some new participants who hadn’t been involved in the intense workshopping and surveying and briefings and online interactions that form the basis of what the Master Plan proposes.  It’s no surprise that for these community members the experience of touring Callan Park was highly educational.

http://callanparkyourplan.com.au/index.php even those who had been heavily http://callanparkyourplan.com.au/index.php in the past felt that the tours gave them a much better appreciation of the way the draft Master Plan responds to community input, balances competing community interests, and fits within the framework of the legislation that governs development at Callan Park.

For future projects of this size, it could be fruitful to include bus or walking tours earlier in the consultation process.  For Callan Park, the most frequent question we heard today was ‘who’s going to pay for it?’ A good question on two fronts: it means that despite any lingering individual doubts about certain aspects of the draft Master Plan the overwhelming community sentiment is support for its intent; and it points to the Federal, State and Local funding partnerships that will be necessary to save Callan Park from the neglect it suffers today.

 

 

13/05/11

Congratulations Stephen Gregory new CEO Canberra CBD Ltd

Stepping into the big shoes of Linda Staite, the inaugural CEO of this ground-breaking place management business improvement organisation, is Stephen Gregory, former CEO of Snowy Hydro South Care.

Canberra CBD Limited is funded by a 5 year grant from the ACT Government – the grant itself is funded by a compulsory levy on CBD property owners.  In 2006 and 2007, City Marketing assisted the ACT Government, the ACT Division of the Property Council of Australia, and the Canberra City Heart Business Association establish the framework for the levy and its future operations.

For the last 4 years, Linda has been delivering against a 5 year strategy City Marketing wrote for Canberra CBD Ltd as part of its funding bid.  She’s done a wonderful job and left the organisation and the place it manages in great shape for the new CEO.

 

11/05/11

Mental Health Budget Allocation Good News for Callan Park

The community’s desire to see Callan Park as a Wellness Sanctuary – a place for strengthening and restoring mental health and community wellness – looks a little more possible today after the Federal Government’s $1.5b boost for mental health funding.
With an emphasis on early intervention, care outside hospitals, and employment services for those living with a mental illness, the budget aligns well with draft Master Plan proposals for Callan Park.

11/05/11

Callan Park Master Plan Bus Tours Saturday 14 May

As the formal exhibition period for the Callan Park Master Plan draws to a close, we’re running three bus tours of the site on Saturday 14 May. These tours create the opportunity to explain aspects of the Master Plan in detail, answer specific questions about particular buildings or particular areas of the site or particular aspects of the proposed governance structure for Callan Park. It’s been a while since our last Callan Park workshop, and it looks like this new (for this project) form of engagement has attracted some members of the community we haven’t met before in addition to those who’ve shown their continuing interest in the project through workshops, online participation, and dropping in to the exhibitions. Should be a great day.

06/05/11

The 3Gap Model for Place Branding

We’re intrigued by the 3Gap Model for Place Branding in Robert Govers and Frank Go’s book Place Branding – Glocal, Virtual and Physical Identities.

Gap 1 – where a place has a unique identity but there are gaps in the product offering and brand expression

Gap 2 – where implementation is ‘off-brand’

Gap 3 – where the place experience is ‘on-brand’ but the perceived image is skewed for a range of reasons including cultural interpretations, and biased word-of mouth.

In explaining the 3Gap Model, Govers and Go argue that many branding efforts focus too much on the ‘rational’ elements of destination choice behaviour and too little on the ‘seeing, smelling, feeling and hearing’ that create a ‘rich perceptual experience’.  Analysing a place brand (or brand potential) using the 3Gap model must incorporate the fact that consumers are not purely rational decision makers and ‘affective perceptions are indeed of tremendous importance’.

06/04/11

Industry calls for visa changes to boost tourist travel

As China becomes the number one source of international tourist arrivals for the first time, Australia’s Tourism and Transport Forum (TTF) has called for a changes to the ‘highly bureaucratic, cumbersome and expensive tourism visa application processes’ that are currently in place. Sounds eminently sensible – anything we can do to improve visitation from a variety of markets could help to offset anticipated declines from Japan and New Zealand, two of our top 5 international markets.

04/04/11

Legislation can’t achieve best practice consultation?

Neil Savery, CEO of the ACT Planning and Land Agency, was today quoted in the Canberra Times as saying ‘it would be very difficult to mandate by legislation or practice what community consultation should comprise’.  We agree with Neil that you can’t have a ‘one size fits all’ model of community engagement, but this year we’ll be exploring how to move beyond the various ‘best practice models’ that exist around Australia to a national framework for community engagement.

30/03/11

Big Ideas, Little Budget

Recently we’ve seen quite a few Councils calling for quotes on branding and marketing projects that sound well thought out in every respect except one……the budget that Council has allowed for the work. When we see these projects coming from smaller or regional Councils it’s hard to know whether it’s just a lack of Councils experience, or whether there might be small local firms willing to take on ambitious projects to get a ‘foot in the door’. Our advice to any Council thinking it might need a branding project is to speak to some of the larger Councils who’ve done it well in the past, to get a realistic idea of the budget and resources that should be allocated………Penrith, Parramatta and The Rocks spring to mind. A big idea deserves the right funding.