Welcome to our special edition of Play Today eNews, launching 1000 Play Streets – a movement to reconnect our socially-isolated communities as we emerge from COVID-19 lock-downs and to importantly, provide greater play opportunities for our children, on quiet residential streets.

Watch our video to hear why communities love 1000 Play Streets. 

Play Australia is proud to release our 1000 Play Streets Toolkit for Australian Local Government to help make it easier for communities to get involved.

This is a FREE resource that provides a range of ‘accessible’ planning advice (prompts and templates) on temporary street closures for community Play Streets.

This Thursday 2 September 2021 we invite you to attend a FREE Online Special Event to hear more about 1000 Play Streets and the supports available for Local Government.

We welcome Dr. Erica Randle, Centre for Sport and Social Impact at La Trobe University to present on insights from our two-year national pilot, which has informed the development of our toolkit.

The two-year national Play Streets pilot has involved partnerships with Play Australia, La Trobe University, six Local Governments across four states, community partners and residents – involving 458 children, 308 adults and made possible by 37 Play Street Hosts – funded by Sport Australia’s Move It AUS Participation Program and by Office for Recreation Sport and Racing’s Game On Partnership Program in South Australia.

You may also be interested in our evidence review completed by Centre for Sport & Social Impact, La Trobe University on “How Play Streets supports the development of physical literacy in children”.

Lastly we ask you to help us to share the 1000 Play Streets movement, particularly with your Local Government networks, as now is the time to develop Play Streets policy to aide COVID-19 recovery and support our communities to heal. 

Check out our socials (at the bottom of this message), look for our 1000 Play Streets Launch posts and share wherever you can with the tag #100PlayStreets. Thank you in advance!