Making the streets around schools safer for children and adapting design based on location
The school crossing supervisor program started in 1975 as the result of increasing community pressure following fatalities that involved children across the state.
School zones have always been under close scrutiny and are an emotive subject because of the involvement of children, parental fear, public perception of risk and lack of risk assessment data.
Complexity, funding arrangements, high expectations and lack of proven alternatives have combined to halt progress in their implementation and design.
We were brought in to re-design school crossings and determine pilot sites.
For this important piece of work around school crossings we ran three co-design workshops throughout Victoria with 38 local councils.
Our focus was to capture approaches to school crossing safety, map processes and funding methods today, so that we could brainstorm future opportunities or ways of working.
We used a video montage around global school safety as a way to kick-off activities in a fun way and open up ways of thinking around solutions. Card sorting was used to identify interventions by council area. We finished by working together to identify and pitch pilot sites to run tests.
