Physical Literacy Enriched Environmental Design (PLEED)

Project summary:

In the context of Latrobe Valley, physical literacy-enriched spaces are a foundation for developing competence, confidence and motivation to participate in a wide range of physical activities for the whole community. Within the Latrobe City municipality, more than two-thirds of participants in recent research indicated that they would like to increase their physical activity, and 58% of them are not meeting daily activity guidelines. High-quality parks are an effective way of improving levels of community physical activity, along with physical and social health.

To support the health and wellbeing of community members across the lifespan, adaptation of public play spaces using a physical literacy-enriched design is being explored. Implementation of recommendations from a recent Federation University Physical Literacy Scoping Project Report exploring how physical literacy could be incorporated into public play spaces is well underway, championed by the LHA Physical Literacy Working Group.

The Latrobe Health Assembly has recently contracted Federation University’s Collaborative Evaluation and Research Centre (CERC) to undertake a collaborative action research project with the following key objectives:

Deliverables for this project include:

1. Develop a set of PLEED Principles and work with Latrobe City Council to incorporate these into the Mathison Park design plans.
2. Test these principles by measuring the impact of the redesign on health and wellbeing outcomes in real life over 18 months.
3. Prepare a report that identifies successful and non-successful outcomes and opportunities to influence future funding criteria for infrastructure to support physical literacy outcomes.