Creating Places

Place Agency takes you back to a time when it was all about creating fun in a space or sandbox and making new friends. The playful child within is always there, nurtured by whatever it is fed, so whatever your age, we are here to help you start something special in a place.

Our Vision

The Place Agency project delivers a suite of educational and practice-based programs on placemaking and place development for graduate level students and early-career placemakers. These place-led approaches enable current and future practitioners to plan and design civic places with the community so that shared values can be realised.

Place Agency aims to enhance the theory and practice of co-designing places through three core components:

Bringing an academic lens of analysis to placemaking and place development practices
Greater integration of nature through an emphasis on ecological aspects on place
Integration of Indigenous perspectives in representations on place.

Guided by the insights of placemaking practitioners, and combined with academic rigour, this project has been collaboratively developed by a consortium of universities led by the University of Melbourne.

We thank The Myer Foundation, who provided the funding for our consortium to add to the voice of placemaking theory and practice.

We are creating a exciting platform for a new generation one we like to call “the sandbox generation” our platform is designed to inspire a fresh way to discover people, places and nature. Beneficial to the individual. Transformative to the local community. And all you have to do is to jump in and play.

We welcome you to take a look through our menu to learn more about the Place Agency.

PlaceAgency

Creating the capacity for people to invest with meaning in the spaces and places within their community… We are Place Agency

We seek to educate and promote local communities and the world about placemaking

We look to promote an all-inclusive community-led process, “co creation”

We want to add to the voice of placemaking, through education and ecological aspects

We aim to bring together industry, academia and communities

Testimonials

“The Newport placemaking studio was an excellent opportunity for students to participate in transdisciplinary, place-based research, firmly grounded in the local community and informed by the stories and character of Newport – We all learnt so much about the practicalities of planning and running a safe, inclusive, creative, engaging and fun event, and then encapsulating from it the inspiration for place design responses.”

Judy Bush, Studio Co-leader @ Newport Project

“Newport placemaking studio provided the opportunity for experimenting with place through the sandbox methodology. Similar to tactical urbanism, the sandbox methodology provides an invaluable opportunity for students to actively work with members of the local community, to plan a ‘real-life’ proposal for a much loved place and does so through fun and engaging activities to draw from the local knowledge and design accordingly.”

Cris Hernandez-Santin, Place Agency Project Coordinator

“Over a short yet intense summer semester studio we were able to establish and consolidate amazing relationships with local community members, artists, traders, students and researchers. The students’ work has subsequently been used as the basis for place-making plans for the area – a great result for everyone.”

Dominique Hes, Studio Co-leader @ Newport Project

“...HUGE thank you for Friday's workshop and the opportunity to have the Sydney Olympic Park as a case study for this important work. There was such positive energy in the room and truly amazing people who were so willing to contribute. At the end of the day, I was reeling with enthusiasm and excitement about the potential of the rating tool and how it can help us to understand and shape our place for a better future here at Sydney Olympic Park. We have work to do here to continue that enthusiasm and to implement change based on what we learnt last week and will continue to learn along this journey.”

Susan Skuodas, Place Management Director, Sydney Olympic Park Authority @ Rating Place, Workshop 1- Sydney

“Newport placemaking studio, as well as being an amazing teaching experience, has provided me with new insights for my own research on innovation in green space governance, reinforcing the linkages between transdisciplinary teaching and research.”

Judy Bush, Studio Co-leader @ Newport Project

“Fantastic to see community, local artists & Melbourne uni come together to reinvent this space. My kids grew up with this park, & I was proudly involved in the redevelopment of the Newport community hub, so to see the external space extend further to bring community together is fantastic. Please keep the oak trees. Please make market street a market once more. Please make it a safe open place to use at night as well as fun and engaging in the day for families to mingle with dogs, kids & friends... we made so many of our friends there.”

Community Member @ Newport Project