Hawkesbury City Council has secured $500,000 in NSW Government funding to upgrade the infrastructure behind local events in Richmond and Windsor, cutting red tape and equipment costs for community groups planning festivals, markets and street celebrations.
The funding, delivered through Transport for NSW’s Permit/Plug/Play Program, will flow into Hawkesbury Streets: Activate and Celebrate, a Council project focused on the practical, unglamorous groundwork that makes events possible in the first place.
Think hanging points for banners and lighting already fixed in place around Richmond and Windsor, rather than rigged from scratch each time. Think permanent power bollards instead of a diesel generator trucked in and hired by the day. Think modular street furniture that can be wheeled out for a market and packed away again without a forklift.
None of this is flashy, but it’s the kind of investment that changes who can actually put on an event. A school fete or a community club fundraiser has never had the budget to absorb thousands of dollars in traffic control and equipment hire, and that cost has quietly kept many good ideas from ever leaving the planning stage.
Council is also building a digital permit portal and a pre-approved Traffic Management Plan template, so applicants won’t have to start from a blank page every time they want to close a street for an afternoon.
Mayor Les Sheather, who thanked Transport for NSW for backing the project, put it plainly: this funding is meant to make it easier and cheaper for local groups to hold events. He pointed to events as something that helps the City grow culturally, celebrate its heritage and support local business, sitting alongside Council’s existing Events Sponsorship Program and its new Events Guide as part of a broader push to back community-run events rather than just Council-run ones.
It won’t turn every backyard idea into a festival overnight. But it lowers the bar just enough that the people with the ideas, not just the budget, get to be the ones running the show.
Hawkesbury Streets: Activate and Celebrate is proudly funded by the NSW Government’s Permit/Plug/Play Program, led by Transport for NSW.