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Seven recommendations aiming to make Ballarat’s CBD streets safer for women have been handed down, as a result of the Right to the Night Pilot project.
The recommendations, unveiled today at Ballarat Town Hall, include development of a multi-stakeholder strategy for addressing loitering and intimidating public behaviour, and maintaining the momentum created by the Right to the Night project.
The recommendations also called for consideration of Right to the Night results alongside other sources of information to build a comprehensive picture of public safety in Ballarat.
The Right to the Night trial project, based on Melbourne’s Free To Be initiative, was officially launched in December 2018, and encouraged women and girls to identify and comment on their impressions of public spaces in the CBD using an interactive website, between March and May.
The project is a partnership between the City of Ballarat, Federation University, Women’s Health Grampians, the Centre for Multicultural Youth, Australian Catholic University, Ballarat Community Health and Victoria Police.
Between March and May 2018, 153 people added at least one location of interest to the website. They shared more than 300 locations in total and explained why they thought each location was either safe or unsafe.
Safe locations were generally well lit and often in busy areas with lots of people and obvious security. Unsafe locations were typically those where unpredictable people congregate, or in areas with poor lighting, unkept buildings or litter.
The number one concern for participants was intimidating public behaviour. Various locations across the city centre were thought to be unsafe because participants had either been personally harassed or intimidated there, or they had witnessed public drunkenness, drug-affected people or intimidating behaviour in those locations.
Most participants, or 86 per cent, were female, their ages ranged from 10 to 67 years, with an average age of 35 years.
The City of Ballarat and its project partners will use the results from Right to the Night to inform decision-making around the design of safer public spaces within Ballarat.