NSW/ACT Awards Submissions 2025

City of Parramatta

City of Parramatta has committed to reduce inequality, increase opportunities and remove barriers to participation in sport for underrepresented groups (including women and girls), through the creation and adoption of the Sportsground Allocation Policy, which has the stated purpose of ensuring that Council will allocate the use of its Sportsgrounds in a systematic approach which aligns with Councils broader Sportsground Strategy and values, including to actively contribute to the health, wellbeing, equality, and inclusion of the whole community.

Cumberland City Council

The Civic Park, Pendle Hill Upgrade revitalises a key urban park into an accessible, inclusive, and sustainable community space. Featuring enhanced wetlands, new playspaces, fitness zones, picnic areas, and improved pedestrian connectivity, the project balances environmental restoration with diverse recreational opportunities. Extensive community engagement shaped the design, ensuring it meets local needs while promoting urban cooling, biodiversity, and social interaction. This transformation delivers lasting benefits for Pendle Hill and future generations.

City of Canada Bay

The Walk the Wangal Nature Trail is a transformative project enhancing biodiversity, climate resilience, and community engagement. Delivered by the City of Canada Bay, it restored a neglected biodiversity corridor, planting 60+ native species to support wildlife and urban cooling. It integrates Woody Meadows research, Indigenous knowledge, and community-led conservation. Supporting the Council NSW ‘Biodiversity in Place’ framework, it balances urban growth with green space, fostering sustainability, education, and long-term stewardship, setting a model for urban greening initiatives.

City of Canada Bay Council

The $5.72m Charles Heath Reserve Playground in Five Dock is a vibrant, inclusive space designed to serve a rapidly growing community. Featuring accessible play equipment, including ramps to climbing towers, it caters to children of all abilities. The park’s calming design, with muted colours and biophilic elements, promotes sensory comfort, especially for neurodiverse children. The playground also offers recreational areas, BBQ spots, and fitness equipment, making it a social hub for all ages. This community-focused space enhances well-being and fosters inclusivity.

City of Canada Bay Council

The Collating Our Canopy project was initiated to enhance urban canopy cover and improve tree management in the City of Canada Bay. By collecting data on 28,000 trees, including species, health, and size, the project enabled better planning for tree planting, risk management, and urban forest strategies. The integration of cloud-based Forestree platform transformed tree data to supporting the development of the City’s first Tree Asset Management Plan and improving decision-making across departments

City of Canada Bay Council

The $5.72m Charles Heath Reserve Community and Play Space in Five Dock is an inclusive, vibrant space for a growing community. With accessible play equipment, including ramps to climbing towers, it supports children of all abilities. Its calming design with muted colours and biophilic elements caters to neurodiverse children. The park also features recreational areas, BBQ spots, fitness equipment, and accessible amenities making it a social hub for all ages and promoting well-being, inclusivity, and community connection.

Blacktown City Council

The Blacktown City Beach Volleyball facility is breaking boundaries, proving that world-class beach volleyball doesn’t need an ocean nearby. Located more than 30 km from the coast, this first-of-its-kind venue in Western Sydney was made possible by a bold project team and partnership with Volleyball NSW and community. Their vision has created an inclusive space for all levels of the volleyball community, redefining accessibility and innovation in sports infrastructure.

Blacktown City Council

Currently, Australian local councils do not plant large shade trees on streets with speeds above 50km/hr. This is because current guidelines state large shade trees present a safety risk to errant vehicles. However, the guidelines only consider one risk – the risk to the errant vehicle. It also does not consider the risks of planting versus not planting trees along our streets. This multi-year, data-driven project changed that and improved the risk-based approach to how and where we plant trees along our streets to keep all road users safe from all risks.

Blacktown City Council

Blacktown City Council partnered with Transport for NSW for the Safer Cities: Her Way Program, which aimed to make public spaces, including streets and transport hub precincts, feel safer for everyone, especially women, girls, and gender-diverse people. Council delivered a Her Way project, implementing of a range of pilot public space improvements and events guided by community input. Our pilot public space improvements were influenced by our engagement with over 160 women, girls, and gender diverse people about their experiences of using public spaces around Blacktown station.

Clarence Valley Council

The Clarence Regional Aquatic Centre is the heart of the community, replacing the former Grafton Olympic Pool which was over 60 years old. A new facility which meets the needs of the community was required. Planning commenced in 2016 with community engagement, masterplanning, detailed design and concluded with the construction of a new state of the art facility which includes an outdoor 50m pool and 600 seat grandstand, an indoor 25m heated pool, a combined heated indoor program and leisure pool, a splash pad, accessible amenities and parents room as well as landscaped areas.

Tweed Shire Council

The Jack Evans Boat Harbour Precinct in Tweed Heads is a vibrant 4.3-hectare space that blends recreation, tourism, culture, and nature. Serving as the gateway to Northern NSW, this popular destination offers locals and visitors a wide range of activities, including leisurely strolls, family gatherings, water recreation, community events, and cultural engagement. At the heart of the precinct lies the newly upgraded Central Swim Park, a dynamic community space set against the stunning backdrop of Tweed City Centre. Although occupying just a small corner of the 2.3 km sheltered shoreline, it has

Sutherland Shire Council

The $6.2 million Engadine Active Sports Youth Precinct and All-Abilities Playground is a master-planned initiative designed to modernise and enhance recreational opportunities in the Sutherland Shire, providing inclusive recreation and play opportunities for people of all ages and abilities. It offers a state-of-the-art inclusive playspace with a grand bespoke accessible treetop walk; inclusive play equipment designed for sight-impaired or non-verbal play participants; accessible plaza-style skating area, pump track, parkour course, fitness course, bike repair station, set within a large gras

Moir Studio

Harold Gregson Reserve exemplifies exceptional public space development, transforming a complex site into a thriving community hub. Maitland City Council’s strategic vision and Moir Studio’s innovative design seamlessly integrated site remediation with ecological sustainability, creating a place that truly reflects local needs. The reserve offers diverse amenities for recreation and social connection. It is a space where memories are made and community bonds flourish.

Cumberland City Council

This Strategic Masterplan outlines the project vision, principles, and design strategies for the Prospect Pipeline Corridor, establishing a framework in which to enable Council to engage with the local community, key stakeholders, to inform detailed design and feasibility studies, and to support funding applications. The vision for the Corridor is to enhance the established corridor in the west, whilst extending connections in the east utilising a portion of the water pipeline corridor, to provide recreational linkages for pedestrians and cyclists to nearby parklands and town centres.

Orange City Council

A bespoke designed playground, reusing materials and structures of the original Orange Adventure Playground, exemplifies the Orange communities' vision for an accessible, unique, rewarding and safe play space that carries a story and continues a legacy

TERRAS LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS

The Newcastle South Skate Park and Foreshore Promenade are key components of the City of Newcastle’s ambitious fifteen-year initiative to create a continuous coastal pathway connecting the iconic beaches of Merewether, Dixon Park, Bar Beach, Newcastle, and Nobbys. As a flagship project of the Coastal Revitalisation program, this initiative enhances accessibility and connectivity, community facilities, active play and passive recreation while celebrating Newcastle’s stunning coastline.

City of Newcastle

The creation of the new inclusive playspace at Hamilton’s historic Gregson Park. The new playspace includes equipment for a range of ages and abilities. The playspace provides a combination of traditional and nature based play elements including traditional Indigenous elements including a yarning circle and a bush tucker garden. The playspace is complemented by an upgraded, accessible amenities building and new covered picnic and BBQ area.

Belgravia Leisure

The MOVE IT CANBERRA! campaign takes a comprehensive, 360° approach to achieving health and wellbeing outcomes, demonstrating how short-term events can create lasting impacts for everyone in the community.

Twin Fin Consulting

Data Consulting

Lake Macquarie City Council

Coastal Visitation Analytics – Enhancing Public Safety & Recreation Management Twin Fin Consulting is at the forefront of data-driven decision-making in coastal safety and recreational planning. Our groundbreaking Coastal Visitation Analytics Project, developed in collaboration with Data Consulting and Lake Macquarie City Council (LMCC), leverages People Movement Data (PMD) to provide unprecedented insights into beach visitation trends, safety risks, and resource management. Using anonymized GPS data from mobile devices, this innovative approach allows councils to accurately measure visitation

Cumberland City Council

Connecting Canal Road Park is a transformative project centered on connection—linking people, place, and culture. An upgraded playspace and new outdoor learning space connected by a new shared pathway provide enhance play, accessibility, recreation, and engagement with nature while embedding cultural storytelling.

City of Parramatta

The Dixon Park Escarpment Lookout offers a transformative experience for visitors, providing an accessible and unique vantage point overlooking the Parramatta River, the vibrant Central Business District, the new Powerhouse Museum, Parramatta Quay, and the breathtaking sunset views. This project creates an invaluable connection between the community and the natural environment, allowing people to engage with the landscape in an innovative and meaningful way. The design team adopted a “light touch” approach, carefully considering the site’s challenges and environmental values. This thoughtful

Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure

Arcadia Landscape Architecture

Nandi Reserve, a 12.24-hectare bushland site off Wakehurst Parkway, Frenchs Forest, has been revitalised under the NSW Government’s Parks for People Program. Shaped by community feedback, the upgrades created new pathways and opportunities to improve connection through nature. These include new walking trails, creek crossings and new nature play spaces, as well as areas to sit and rest, all while having minimal impact to the ecology of the natural environment.

Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure

The Adventurous Spaces Guideline champions inclusive, engaging spaces. It navigates cost, land use, and community attitudes, offering invaluable research, inspiring case studies, and practical advice for creating skateparks, pump tracks, mountain bike trails, and dynamic skills parks. It embraces a ‘people, place, purpose’ approach to transforming overlooked, undervalued public spaces.

Sydney Olympic Park Authority

Department of Planning Housing and Infrastructure

Surrounded by the natural environment, Haslams Pump Track offers a free to ride, inclusive, all-ages, all-wheels recreational space to Sydney Olympic Park’s evolving action-adventure precinct. Haslams Pump Track is the ultimate destination for thrill-seekers and families alike, creating a greater connection to the land and Country. Designed by landscape architects and bike enthusiasts at Common Ground, with community input throughout the process, Haslams Pump Track features three separate circuits tailored for beginner, intermediate and advanced riders.

Arcadia

Barangaroo Station Park is a pivotal piece of landscape architecture that allows commuters and visitors to enjoy a biophilic moment in the urban environment of Barangaroo’s commercial and dining precinct. Designed so that visitors feel a living connection to Indigenous and colonial history, it has become a popular destination with its stunning backdrop of Sydney Harbour, open lawn and 50m feature seat. Made from precast white concrete seeded with oyster shells, the interpretive seat design celebrates the Nawi Cove’s traditional use by Gadigal peoples as a fishing ground.

Northern Beaches Council

Trafalgar Park Playground sits within open parklands and surrounded by mature trees. It is an important neighbourhood playground situated adjacent to Newport Public School. The playground has been recently upgraded by inhouse staff to become a larger, more accessible and better integrated into its surrounding environment.

Campbelltown City Council

PLAYCE

BEASTMAN

The Seddon Park Youth Playspace delivers a high-quality, inclusive environment for all ages, genders, cultures and abilities. Fostering social interaction, the space provides diverse physical experiences encouraging active play and exploration, including elements of Basketball and ball sports, skate park plaza, parkour, outdoor fitness equipment, passive recreation and a shaded children’s playground, The project’s success lies in its ability to seamlessly blend diverse recreational opportunities into a cohesive and welcoming space, fostering a sense of community and promoting active lifestyles

Port Macquarie Hastings Council

Kendall Recreation Reserve has been transformed into a vibrant community hub, delivering one of the region’s largest skate parks, an inclusive play space, and inviting green areas. Designed with sustainability and accessibility in mind, the park promotes active lifestyles, social connection, and environmental resilience. Extensive community consultation shaped its development, ensuring it meets local needs while fostering pride and engagement. This project sets a benchmark for inclusive, safe, and multi-functional public spaces, enhancing liveability for Kendall and the wider region.

Northern Beaches Council

The Northern Beaches Council has introduced a groundbreaking smart irrigation water control system, which optimises irrigation water usage in terms of both water quantity and water quality. This system efficiently manages multiple water sources, including rainwater, bore water, and potable water, to ensure that water is used where and when it is most needed. As a result, the system has significantly improved turf conditions and sportsground resilience, making it a sustainable solution for local sportsfields.

Port Macquarie Hastings Council

ArtWalk has grown into one of the region’s most anticipated cultural events on the NSW mid north coast transforming the Port Macquarie CBD into a vibrant, open-air festival of light, music and colour. What started as a small, creative endeavour nine years ago attracting 3000 visitors, has evolved into an immersive creative arts experience that attracted 25,000 attendees in 2024. Streets, laneways, and public spaces come alive with stunning art installations, interactive exhibits, live music, and digital projections, offering an unforgettable experience as a community-based initiative.