Firstly, a BIG THANK YOU to everyone who has participated so far. This is not an easy project to start, as we are laying a lot of groundwork. In our online workshops, due to lack of time, we have not yet had the chance to properly explain where we are at.

To rectfy this, here is a video of our introduction to the Ecocentre event on Wednesday night. We are approaching the stage where we can begin to make things much clearer for you.

Will you attend another event on 21 June?

We do need your help some more as we have other features to finalise and we can’t that without you. So if you missed last week or you would like to do it gain (I know quite a few of you said you’d be back), we would LOVE to see you. This will be our final push to complete this first round of work … we will even provide lunch!

Sign up here

Sat 21 June, midday-3:00PM (lunch provided)

Watch the video explaining how important your work will be to our community

Watch the video here

What we achieve in these sessions

What we have achieved so far is ground breaking. The kind of work we are doing isn’t that unusual but it’s never been done in an urban setting like this. It’s usually in less-developed countries, who are often more advanced in this type of planning. Ours is a particularly sophisticated approach that will create a powerful decision tool. This will be something our community can use to properly identify what works best to look after the Bay.

We did three online workshops but the first of our in-person events was at St Kilda Ecocentre. The room was packed and everyone was furiously busy in conversation. Yet we still managed to finish early and most people stayed back to socialise. It was great fun.

Here we aimed at progressing our collection of community data, connecting ecosystem features to community values. This critical part of conservation planning is often ignored and leads to poor decisions. The process, which is community co-designed, enables a way to unlock the power of nature-based solutions and is a step towards giving our community a real say in our Bay’s future.