Who is a park really for? At a recent community session for a major park master plan, the most valuable answer came from the youngest person in the room.
A couple arrived with their child, aged 10, because they had no one to care for them that evening, something that often restricts parents from participating in community engagement. We had a facilitator, so with the child’s and parents’ permission, one of our team held a separate conversation with the child. What would make you feel safe in the park? What do you and your friends do there now? What needs to be true for you to keep coming back?
The answers offered a completely different perspective from anyone else in the room. It was a happy accident, and it shouldn’t have been. When a project design needs to include children and young people, they belong in the conversation, not just their parents and not just the adults who believe a skate park brings trouble.
Let’s be honest, most pop-ups, workshops and engagement activities are designed for adults: a table, a clipboard, a survey and a map at waist height. Children tug at a sleeve until their parent moves on. Teenagers rarely stop at all.
If we want to hear from younger community members, we need to design for them from the start. That is not always easy when time, budgets, capacity and political decisions all press on a project. But if we plan for children in some small way at every engagement, it soon becomes the standard our organisations expect.
Designing for children and young people means going where they already are, such as the skate park, the school gate, shopping strip or mall, the sports club or the library after school, at the times they are there. It means activities at child height, like a chalk wall, a floor map, Lego or other building toy, or an activity booklet. For the City of Melbourne’s Chelmsford Street Open Space engagement, a booklet invited children to draw their visions, and they asked for playgrounds, water play and vegetable gardens.[1] For young people, make it quick and social, and invite them to help run the stall.
Designing for children can also make engagement easier for parents and carers. While children play, parents and carers have time to talk. We seek consent from both the child and their parent or carer, and staff these spaces with people who hold a working-with-children clearance, such as a blue card in Queensland or a Working with Children Check in Victoria.
But designing for children is not simply about making adult engagement more child-friendly. We also need to consider whose voices we hear, and the cultural and community contexts in which children participate.
This year’s Children’s Week theme draws on Article 30 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: ‘Children have the right to use their own language, celebrate their culture and practise their religion.’[2] Article 30 speaks directly to Indigenous children and children from minority groups, and it protects those rights ‘in community with other members of his or her group’.[3]
This has important implications for how we engage with First Nations children and young people. In 2021, 76,978 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people spoke an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander language, and almost a third of those speakers were children aged 0 to 14. Yet 78 languages had no child speakers at all.[4] Every engagement with First Nations children is a chance to strengthen culture – or to quietly overlook it.
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child recognises that Indigenous children have a right to be heard collectively, not only as individuals.[5] The private chat that worked so well at our park session may not suit First Nations children. Engagement will need to follow protocols, and this might be through family, kin and Elders, on Country, through yarning, story, art and play, and in language.
So start by asking Traditional Owners and local community organisations how their children and young people want to be involved, and who should be there. Engage Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander facilitators and pay cultural advisers for their time. Traditional games, such as those in the Yulunga resource of more than 200 games, can be a respectful way into conversation when used with local guidance.[6] And build relationships that belong to your organisation, not to one person who may move on.
Capire developed the Inclusive and Accessible Engagement Toolkit for the Engagement Institute, covering eight areas, including cultural safety, language access and participation support. As it reminds us, ‘Inclusion doesn’t happen by accident.’[7]
So, this Children’s Week, look at your next engagement plan and ask who it is really for. If you have a project where children and young people should be part of the conversation, reach out to the Capire team for a chat, or find Sandra, Amy, Mollie, Caz, Emily and Denise at the Engagement Institute Conference in Brisbane.
We were all kids once. Let us plan as though we remember it.
Footnotes:
[1] Capire 2024, ‘Chelmsford Street Open Space Engagement’, accessed 28 September 2026, capire.com.au/project/chelmsford-street-open-space-engagement
[2] Children’s Week 2026, Children’s Week theme, accessed 28 September 2026, childrensweek.org.au/childrens-week/theme. Children’s Week runs from 24 October to 1 November 2026.
[3] United Nations 1989, Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 30, United Nations General Assembly, New York.
[4] Australian Bureau of Statistics 2022, Language Statistics for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, 2021, released 25 October 2022, abs.gov.au. Of these speakers, 32.7% were aged 0 to 14 years.
[5] United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child 2009, General Comment No. 11: Indigenous children and their rights under the Convention, CRC/C/GC/11, paragraphs 16 and 37.
[6] Australian Sports Commission, Yulunga: Traditional Indigenous Games, accessed 29 September 2026, ausport.gov.au/yulunga
[7] Capire 2025, ‘Inclusive and Accessible Engagement Toolkit and Training’, accessed 29 September 2026, capire.com.au/project/inclusive-and-accessible-engagement-toolkit-and-training
