executive director
BARBARA
CHAMPION PO Box 2060 North Melbourne VIC 3051
Phone: +61 3 8846 4111
Fax: +61 3 9846 7473
Email: Please use the contact form
committee of management
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1. CATHY KISS (President)
Cathy has worked in recreation planning and management in the local and regional
government sector for over 19 years. She has practical experience in all
aspects of playspace management - from writing strategies for a municipality,
to implementing that strategy through development of play environments.
She is currently Senior Planning Officer, Parks Recreation at the City
of Melbourne..
2. JOEY BOOTHBY (Vice President)
Joey is a Landscape Architect with experience in the public and private sectors,
and is currently employed at the Manningham City Council, Victoria in a
recreation and open space planning role. As part of this role, she co-ordinates
the playground replacement program and manages all aspects from strategic
planning to construction including consultation and participation. She
has traveled extensively and was an intern in New York with Leathers & Associates
community playground builders.
3. FELIX HEMINGWAY (Vice President)
Felix is a Landscape Architect with a background in Site Design and construction
as well as Urban Design. He is the Manager of Urban Design at the Whitehorse
City Council in Victoria.
4. JEFF SPEAKE (Treasurer)
Jeff has a background in Sales Management, Product Management and Marketing.
He is the Director of Safe Play Systems Pty Ltd who distributes play equipment
and outdoor furniture in Victoria for Forpark Australia. Jeff has a lengthy
involvement with PRAV.
6. KERRY ROGERS
Kerry Rogers has an extensive history in pre school education and is currently
the Director of the Lang Lang Pre School in Victoria. Kerry also operates
a consulting business in the development of outdoor play in the early childhood
sector.
8. SUE ELLIOTT
Sue is an educator in the Early Childhood field, was the co-founder of Environmental
Education in Early Childhood (EEEC). She currently works sessionally as
a lecturer and part-time as Training Co-ordinator for the Commonwealth
Child Care In-service Training Project based at Community child Care Victoria.
10. CORMAC McCARTHY
Cormac has been at Maroondah City Council for 4 years in the role of Open Space
Planner which involves a myriad of projects and tasks from developing policy
for open space use and planning to implementing capital works projects to improve
parks and reserves. This also includes public toilets, playgrounds, bike paths,
sportsfield drainage and irrigation systems and any other park infrastructure.
Another major component of the job is fund raising to get grants from State
and Federal Government agencies to fund major projects often in the environmental
area. His largest projects in the past 2 years have been building a stormwater
treatment wetland in a degraded creek line with EPA funding, creating an accessible
sensory playspace based on the theme of earth, wind, fire and water and a skate
park in Ringwood. Cormac is the Acting Coordinator for the PRAV Local Government
Play Network, Eastern Metro Chapter representative on the PLA Victoria / Tasmania
Region Committee, and joint convener of the Open Space Planners Network.
12. PATTIE MORGAN
Pattie is a teacher who has always been sure that what is learnt best comes
about through child initiated play. She first taught in schools as an “infant” teacher,
and retrained as an Early Childhood Educator, now teaching at the Knoxfield
Pre School in Victoria.
15. NEIL BAILEY
Neil is currently the Horticultural and Playspace Coordinator for Hume City
Council. He
has worked in playground management for 10 years, and has a background in both
landscape construction and maintenance and more recently landscape design. He
works closely with the Early Childhood Coordinators of Council and the Open Space
Planner and Landscape Planner in Hume City Council in the management of all of
Councils playspaces. He is really committed to the importance of play, and is
hugely supportive of play at Hume.
16. PAUL GROVER
Paul is a Civil Engineer with over 15 years experience, primarily in the
inspection of infrastructure in relation to maintenance, conformance and
safety issues. In early 2001 Paul undertook his first project directly
relating to playground infrastructure and immediately decided to
endeavour to specialize in playgrounds as the work was more interesting,
challenging and rewarding than other types of infrastructure. Paul has
since completed a broad spectrum of projects such as: comprehensive
audits; strategy reports; guidelines documents; policy development; design checks; undersurfacing tests; and design of a playgrounds
reporting system. Paul is currently the Manager of the consulting firm
Play DMC and has two young children that he loves playing with and they
prove to be very useful as test pilots when auditing playgrounds.
17. BARBARA CHANCELLOR
Barbara Chancellor is a lecturer in the School of Education in the Portfolio
of Design and Social Context at RMIT University, Melbourne. Her research interests
are focused on playspaces for children in the outdoor environment, in both
early childhood, school playgrounds and public open spaces.