Client:
Infrastructure NSW & NSW State Emergency Services
Project Overview:
The Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley covers a vast area in Western Sydney from Bents Basin near Wallacia to the Brooklyn Bridge.
The area has a history of significant and often dangerous flood events. These occurrences are exacerbated as floodwater flows into the Valley more quickly than it can escape causing significant water back-ups. The impacts of residents are property during flood events can be catastrophic.
To raise awareness about the possibility of flood events and to create increased community preparedness, Infrastructure NSW and NSW SES delivered a series of pop-up engagement activities.
The pop-up engagement included a variety of activities designed to catch the interest of attendees while sharing important safety and preparedness information.
Objective:
The core objective of this project was to raise awareness about the risk of flooding in this region and encourage residents to have conversations with their households about how they can prepare, what their plans are when there is a severe flood event and what they can do to ensure they are safe in these situations.
Our Role:
- Pop-up Engagement: Captivate was responsible for developing eye-catching and interesting pop-up activities, leading conversations with community and organising all logistic elements of the activities.
Challenges:
The challenge with this project was selecting locations that had sufficient foot traffic, each location tended to have different times of day that were the busiest and getting this right was a challenge.
Other challenges included being sensitive to people who had experienced recent trauma due to flooding and breaking down local, long-held misconceptions about flood levels and impacts.
Outcome:
This project was highly effective in raising awareness about the prevalent flooding issues in the region. Many people we spoke to made comment that their awareness had increased through the activities and that they would take steps to prepare for extreme weather events. Overall, this project was successful in achieving its objective, with over 175 participants engaged across 8 locations.
Why Captivate Consulting:
We have the expertise in community engagement, which is necessary when engaging with local communities. We are able to create engaging activities that provide knowledge to the community. Our years of experience with pop-up engagement allows us to create and sustain conversations with community members, that leave them feeling heard, informed and looked out for.
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