Dear mums, dads, aunties, uncles, grandparents and carers.
Firstly, thank you for taking the time to get engaged with the 7 Senses Street Day this far!
As parents with young families we wanted to share with you our vision for 7 Senses Street Day and why we believe your family should be involved and your voice heard.
The idea to hold the 7 Senses Street Day grew out of our awareness of the growing rates of impairment and disability amongst our youngest and eldest populations, and how difficult it can be for families with disability to participate in our current built environments.
We know that the impact of living with disability extends far beyond the immediate person with the disability. We know that for every person who is restricted from participating in daily activities due to their impairments or marginalisation, there are family members, including siblings, who also miss out.
We want to change this.
Our vision is that the words “inclusive” or “accessibility” are no longer code for “there is a wheel chair access ramp” or used to describe a place where some props like plants, textured tiles and photos of people from different ethnicities have been superficially imposed or attached on like an after thought.
Instead, our vision is that every playground, building, street, school… is designed with sensory integration at its heart, and by doing so, will automatically become a place that embraces, celebrates, and engages diversity of abilities and cultures.
We believe that the 7 Senses message is a simple tool to get that happening.
In 2013, the 7 Senses Street Day is focused on residential streets. The degree of built-in isolation within our current street designs is cause enough to demand better, not to mention the focus our residential streets have on just being efficient traffic channels.
There are 100 little things our residential streets could and should do to create more engaging, more sensory streetscapes where our children of all abilities could safely play.
The 7 Senses Street Day is a chance to showcase the current barriers preventing families from participating in a more active daily life and, more importantly, demonstrate the simple steps we as a community can take to address this – starting at our home front.
We hope that you use the Street Day as an opportunity to get involved. Being involved can be as simple as just spending 10 minutes to do a sensory based activity on the foot path with your kids, or something bigger like a street BBQ.
Warm regards,
Tobias Volbert and Linda Cupitt
7 Senses Street Day Founders
