2nd & 3rd August 2025

by Ashleigh Dharmawardhana & Carlo Tolentino

Down at the Montague community parklet, the event that marked its official opening was an urban play weekend – two days of playbusking, games, and meeting the community. Blessed with sunny weather, the conditions were ideal, and we had a fantastic turn out.

The weekend was advertised through Ashbury Parklet, the official voice of all things happening in the space. Ashbury advertised the weekend primarily through Facebook and Instagram, in a cheery and positive tone – a position well suited to stirring up excitement, and making the space feel more inviting. This is important, as we’ve observed people tend to treat these spaces like art installations – things to look at, and not to own or use freely. Ashbury’s posts directly respond to this, calling for the residents to ‘treat your parklet ‘like a shared backyard’. The language is intentionally crafted to softly guide people into the idea of this space being theirs.

Off the back of this promotion, we built a following of 43 on Instagram and 19 on Facebook. Translating this into engagement can be hard on weekends, as we found out that many residents have routine/planned activities on these days. Nonetheless, many came down to play.

Across the weekend, 5 groups were heavily engaged, and interestingly, all of these groups either had dogs or children with them – this is the key demographic of interest here. Across the weekend, approximately 210 people passed by, and of this group, 35 expressed interest in the event. 2 families spent the whole Sunday with us, and the children became extremely engaged in activity – they even started to make their own games, and engage with other people who stopped to play. We also had about 15 students from the interior architecture course come and observe how the site was being used, and join in some of the games. Overall, it was a buzzing hotspot that sparked people’s interest in the space.

The people who stopped to play expressed that this would be fantastic to have in the summer, and that they love the idea of having a shared outdoor space to socialise and play games in. Though the amount of people who actively played wasn’t overly high, we saw the amazing value of playbusking amongst those who did. Regardless, in the early stages of the parklet’s life, garnering awareness and interest of the space is critical – and we certainly did over this weekend.