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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 12 Hansard (19 November) . . Page.. 4301 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

any of the work that he had done, or any of the evidence that he was using to support his particular response. I will bring into this debate an example of a council, the Warringah Council in New South Wales, which won the national local government award for innovation for the Warringah graffiti project. The project is still going and it has been very well received.

It started in 1998 and, according to Mr Ken Dray from the New South Wales Premier's Department, "Warringah Council was the first Council in NSW to systematically and strategically develop a policy on graffiti and give it enough time and resources to see whether it worked."

The objectives of the project were to:

  • educate the community about graffiti art and foster the acceptance of legal work and the culture around graffiti;

  • increase public access to legal, high quality and innovative visual arts programs;

  • build positive relationships between the community and young graffiti offenders and artists;

  • provide murals which showcase the creativity of young local artists and instil a sense of pride;

  • establish a mural restoration and graffiti clean-up team, consisting of young people involved in creative components of the projects;

  • ensure detailed documentation of processes, including videos, reports and the extension of a graffiti website;

  • encourage events which promote the art of graffiti and create awareness of social problems related to illegal graffiti in the community;

  • promote the other elements of hip-hop culture, to divert creativity in other directions, for example, breakdancing, rapping and so on;

  • increase employment opportunities, mentoring partnerships and traineeships for artists;

  • improve the artistic skills of young people by providing opportunities for involvement in visual arts.

The outcomes include the following:

  • the incidence of illegal graffiti on the northern beaches has been reduced significantly;

  • there has been a change in the level of community acceptance of aerosol art, as opposed to attitudes to illegal tags;

  • there have been economic benefits as the clean-up costs to Warringah Council have decreased;

  • customer service has been improved by involving young people in a process that was foreign to them, thereby making council more accessible and community involvement less intimidating;

  • there has been a reduction in the incidence of vandalism as reported by the New South Wales police.

Corporate outcomes have been achieved through a collaborative approach in which ownership of the project is shared among different departments within the council. Illegal tagging ex-offenders have been rehabilitated. The result is a reduction in the

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