Creative Communities

26/04/2026

Behind our business is something much bigger than work—it’s a shared vision 🙌.

David has always believed that community matters, and through Civosity Park he’s brought that belief to life—creating a space where people can come together, connect, and feel at home 🌿.

Being his daughter is something I’m proud of every day…
but being his business partner is something I’ll cherish forever.

Watching his story be recognised is so well deserved.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1CqPvswSKY/

31/03/2026

We’ve just completed our third and final One-Week Town Boost — and what a way to finish! 🙌

Just like the first two towns, Abergele truly exceeded our expectations. We saw fantastic attendance at the retailer training, brilliant support from both local and county councils, and great engagement from Councillors and the Lord Mayor.

Most of all, the local community really came together and got behind the Boost. We couldn’t be prouder of what’s been achieved 💛

22/03/2026

Llantwit Major One-Week Town Boost was our second pilot in Wales and we are blown away - the results speak for themselves. Such a warm and welcoming community. We have left a little piece of our heart there 💚🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

16/03/2026

What amazing feedback for the Abertillery One-Week Town Boost. Over 400+ likes or loves and endless positive feedback ❤️

We are now in Llantwit Major getting ready for the Llantwit Major One-Week Town Boost, which kicks off tomorrow 💥

15/03/2026

The Abertillery One-Week Town Boost was the first of three Town Boost pilots in Wales. We are incredibly proud of what was achieved 🙌.

A huge wrap to the community members who participated - your efforts and spirit have shone bright 🌞. A big thank you to Blaenau Gwent CBC staff for their support, you went above-and-beyond to achieve the best possible results!

A huge thank you to the Design Commission for Wales and Welsh Government for sponsoring these placemaking pilots!

11/03/2026

The team at Creative Communities are incredibly excited to be in beautiful Wales, delivering pilot programs of the One-Week Town Boost across three towns. We’re looking forward to connecting with local communities and seeing the impact unfold.

24/02/2026

💡Creative Communities is incredibly excited to be piloting the One-Week Town Boost in three towns in Wales. Abertillery is our first trial town. Stay tuned for exciting updates whilst we're in Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

We’ve all seen it. Great plans. Plenty of talk. But not enough action. ⚡️ The One-Week Town Boost is about turning ideas into real action — by supporting businesses and residents to lead revitalisation themselves, with Council clearing the path. If you care about the future of Abertillery, this week is for you. You can volunteer for as little as one hour.

✅ No skills or experience needed.
☺️ Everyone welcome.
⏰ March 10-14.
📧 Learn more and book your place: https://Boost-Abertillery.eventbrite.com.au

30/10/2024

I first learned how INTRIGUE acts as a MENTAL SPEED BUMP in Boise, Idaho.

For a media event, I had set up my throne (which comes out of a suitcase) right in the middle of a residential intersection. Soon the traffic began to back up as each driver queued to ask me what was happening. The cue got longer if I took longer to answer their question. But there was something very un-American about this traffic queue – there was no road rage. Instead there were waves, smiles, good humour and lots of banter.

One driver even asked if I minded him joining me. He parked his car, and returned with a flute - then began playing classical music and dancing around my chair.

All this activity caused people to come out of their homes. For some reason, the fact that I was in the centre of their street seemed to legitimise residents holding their conversations, not on the sidewalk, but right in the middle of the street. Kids brought out their bikes and pedal cars and began riding around in the street. And the motorists continued to queue patiently, waiting to ask, ‘So what’s going on here?’.

Why did the motorists queue patiently and not get angry? Intrigue. When we are intrigued we are faced with a situation that does not make immediate sense. Why is this person sitting in the middle of an intersection on a brightly coloured throne? Being curious creatures, we want to know what is happening and why it is happening. We want the full story. Our curiosity must be satisfied.

We all have a storyteller living in our heads. The storyteller loves to gather all the pieces of a puzzle and create a coherent story. The more mysterious the pieces of the puzzle, the greater our level of engagement in trying to guess the story.

I have a cardinal rule for street reclaiming events: ‘No Signs’. Signs decapitate intrigue. If, at the Boise intersection, I had put up a sign saying ‘Warning: Australian author deliberately holding up traffic’. I would have destroyed the intrigue factor. Intrigue only works as long as we allow the mystery and ambiguity to remain.

Why did the motorists queue patiently at the Boise intersection? The storyteller in the head of each motorist had to know if the story they had constructed was remotely right.

A sign would have sated the 'storyteller' in their head, and the ‘driver’ would have resumed control. The longer we can keep the person intrigued, the longer they will slow down (or stop altogether). So the absence of signs helps bring speeds down, making it safe for us to be in the street in the first place.

Standardised traffic control devices and signs do not require the storyteller in our head to be engaged. The story has already been told by an engineer.

Intrigue is one of those magical feelings that changes our perception of time. A good storyteller can keep us spellbound for hours. Time moves at a different pace when we are in our driver persona than when we are in our storytelling persona.

28/10/2024

I made an accidental discovery in 1996 that turned everything I believed about streets and calming traffic upside down.

Brisbane City Council agreed to trial an idea I called the Traffic Reduction Treaty. Neighbourhoods would exchange a treaty with each other to act like a guest in each other's neighbourhood. I suggested that no neighbourhood should get traffic calming unless they first signed this treaty.

At this stage I still believed passionately in traffic calming.

Henry Street was selected for a trial. At the end of phase one we had a giant street party to celebrate the fact that during a test week, residents had reduced their car use by a massive 34%.

A short time after the street party, I met with the residents to review the project and plan for the next stage – traffic calming their street. Some of the residents reported very excitedly: ‘The traffic is going much slower since the party'.

‘It can’t be’, I replied in disbelief. ‘We haven’t made any physical changes to your street yet’. But I was intrigued and decided to investigate.

I discovered that prior to the street party, many residents didn't know their immediate neighbours and most of the kids in the street had never met. At the street party new friendships were formed. The street party also changed the way the adults and kids viewed their street. They no longer saw it as just a place for traffic. It was now seen as a legitimate place for play and socialising. So in the weeks after the party, the new social relationships and changed view of the street resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of kids playing on the footpath/sidewalk and adults standing in the street chatting.

Now imagine you are a motorist who drives regularly down Henry Street. Last week there was no sign of any life in the street. But this week, there are kids playing and adults standing around talking. As a motorist, what is your natural instinct? Without even thinking, you will slow down. Kids are unpredictable, and one may chase a ball out into the street. So you slow down, just in case. And natural curiosity means you just have to slow down to have a ‘sticky beak’ at the adults who are standing around talking. Who are they? What are they talking about? What is their story?

The increase in community activity in Henry Street had caused motorists to slow down without the motorists even being conscious that the new social activities in the street were seducing them into driving slower.

At this point I had an ‘aha’ moment. The speed of traffic on most streets is determined to a large extent by the degree to which the residents have psychologically retreated from their street. This means that working with people’s perceptions of their street and creating social infrastructure may be more effective in slowing traffic than building speed bumps.

In fact, social activity in a street is a MENTAL speed bump.

In some follow up posts I will explain how these mental speed bumps work.

21/10/2024

In 1989, I authored a little booklet that is credited with starting the Traffic Calming revolution in many parts of the world. (It was part of our campaign to stop a road widening in our community.)

Although founded on great intentions, was Traffic Calming fatally flawed from the start?

OUTSOURCING CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY

In our ‘motoring persona’ we want traffic to go faster. In our ‘resident persona’ we want it to go slower. Traffic speed only becomes a problem if, as a society, we allow our need for movement to ride roughshod over our need to reside (to be grounded and have a sense of home). If we allow this to happen, we begin to feel like something is wrong.

Traffic calming seeks to redress this imbalance by confronting head-on the ‘motorist’ and their desire for speed. But this simply evokes a negative reaction from a part of our brain that has very legitimate needs and desires. Rather than attacking the 'dominant voice', a much more effective strategy, for addressing the inbalance, is to amplify the 'submerged voice' so that it has equal status at the negotiating table.

One way we deal with our internal contradictions is to keep our contradictory selves in separate compartments and we flip-flop between which one is in control of our thinking. When we are driving, our motorist is in charge, and we curse anything that slows us down. But when we get home and want to relax with the family, we blame ‘irresponsible motorists’ for destroying our sense of home. Most residents see the traffic problems on their street as being caused by ‘those bad motorists from the other side of town’. And it is someone else’s responsibility (usually the city) to fix this problem. These residents never stop to think that every time they drive they are potentially destroying someone else's sense of home.

Traffic calming covertly encourages people to externalise the blame for traffic problems instead of taking civic responsibility for their part of the problem.

By city authorities promising residents a ‘solution’ (such as traffic calming) that
does not require the residents to face their own contradictory needs, they actually make the problem worse in the long run.

One way that residents contribute directly to the traffic problems on their own street is that they have retreated psychologically over time. This may have started with parents telling their kids not play in the roadway, which invited the motorists to drive faster, which resulted in the residents abandoning the street as socialising space, which invited the traffic to go even faster. Simply putting physical devices in a street is no guarantee that the residents will psychologically reclaim their street and rebuild their neighbourhood life.

So yes, I think that Traffic Calming should be banned and we should enable residents to psychologically reclaim their street as socialising space and take civic responsibility for creating a better balance between our need for speed and our need for home.