WHILE Shoalhaven City Council finds its plans for Egans Lane caught in the bureaucratic cogs of the Office of Local Government, delaying its efforts to revitalise the Nowra CBD, people power is mobilising to achieve the same result.
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A grassroots spin-off from the highly anticipated second Shoalhaven River Festival called Riverlution is intending to do what successive councils couldn’t and transform the CBD into a vibrant and fun place to be.
The group’s tactics have been tried – and succeeded – in cities around the world. And they are beautifully simple: find a bare patch of ground and plant it with flowers or herbs; adopt the space and look after it.
It doesn’t end there. The Riverlutionaries are planning to undertake street art projects as well. Now, that doesn’t mean slapping graffiti on buildings; rather sprucing up spaces with art forms such as yarn bombing (knitting ‘jumpers’ for trees and lamp posts, for instance).
The real attraction of this movement is that it doesn’t expect council or any other higher authority to beautify the town centre, it wants to do it itself. This is about people doing it for themselves and it will not only knit art forms, it will knit a closer, more involved community. A community involved in its CBD rather than one that complains about it without doing anything.
Within 24 hours of launching its Facebook page, Riverlution had attracted a couple of hundred fans, reflecting a groundswell of local support. We eagerly anticipate seeing its good works blossom around the CBD.
