Parks and other pedestrian places are essential to a city’s happiness. -Enrique Pe’sa
Park Life is about life in Central Park, in the City, in Perth and in the Universe. Park Life injects performances and events into the heart of Perth in order to catalyse public discourse, community participation and contribute to the city’s diversity. It challenges expectations, both of how we behave in a space and what we get out of being there.
The first Park Life program ran from early May until late July in 2007, and included performers such as the ‘super hooper’ Isobel Necessary, classical guitar duo Duo Lenz, Swing It dancing school and Bantus Capoeira. Speakers included creative cities guru Charles Landry, sustainability expert Peter Newman, youth worker and pastor George Davies, and Nungar elder and cultural consultant Noel Nannup.
The second Park Life program, funded by Central Park, will run from mid-October until mid-December. With the theme ‘entertain me’, it will feature a variety of performers and musicians. It also features a discussion panel on 16 November about the dynamics of, and barriers to, entertainment in Perth featuring Mace Francis (composer & musician), David Gerrand (General Manager of Deckchair Theatre), Chris Kabay (Artistic Director for Eventainment) and Graham Wood (WAAPA Director of Music).
The Park Life program consists of weekly performances in Central Park. For an hour on Fridays, dancers, musicians, street performers, actors, storytellers and other artists from our community will transform the park into a stage. Here people eating lunch, or chatting to their friends or simply strolling by, will be offered an alternative experience of a lunch hour, of a park space, of a city.
The aim of this program is to make Central Park a temporary gathering point for seekers of new ideas, explorers of local histories, and hunters of new narratives for their lives and where they live, or punters enjoying their lunches nearby. A range of speakers will present on topics relating to locality, public life, culture, the city and its residents. Taking "urban conversations" as an overarching theme, the topics are chosen to engage with residents and visitors in regards to where and how they live and why they live as they do. Previous speakers have been drawn from a variety of institutions and locations, including universities, business, the public service and NGOs and generally speak for around half an hour.
