Whanganui’s Lights on Bikes and Drews Ave Street Party a winner at NZ Recreation Awards

The most recent Lights on Bikes event has won the Outstanding Event award at the Recreation Awards 2022. Photo / Gail Imhoff

Whanganui’s Lights on Bikes and Drews Ave Street Party won the outstanding event award at the New Zealand Recreation Awards 2022.

Initiated in 2018, Lights on Bikes is an all-ages bicycle parade in Whanganui’s city centre, with participants encouraged to decorate themselves and their bikes with costumes and lights.

The most recent Lights on Bikes in 2021 combined the event with celebrating the completion of the Drews Ave restoration project.

The event involved lit-up bikes, skateboards, prams, wheelchairs and other wheeled contraptions travelling from Drews Ave through Pākaitore Moutoa Gardens, along the Whanganui River pathway and back.

The cycle route included a range of illuminated displays by local artists, projections on buildings, a lit-up tram and roving performers, while local musicians played on Drews Ave.

Lights on Bikes organiser Shanti Sibbing said more than 1000 people attended the 2021 event.

Lights on Bikes and Drews Ave Street Party organisers (from left): Ellen Young, Charlotte Melser, Emma Morris and Shanti Sibbing.

“It was fantastic to see so many people participating and enjoying the different aspects of the event,” Sibbing said.

Recreation Aotearoa chief executive Andrew Leslie said Lights on Bikes and the Drews Ave Street Party encouraged people to engage with and recreate in community spaces in different ways.

“Whanganui District Council has illuminated a pathway for community activation and engagement in the local area,” Leslie said.

“It was an honour to be able to, at a national level, acknowledge the council, its partners and the community with these awards.”

The upgraded streetscape, funded through Waka Kotahi’s Innovating Streets programme, features communal outdoor seating surrounded by plantings, bike racks, a retro telephone handset and games.

The Drews Ave project was co-designed by businesses, iwi, building owners, artists and residents operating in the street, and received a merit award at the recreation awards.

The Lights on Bikes event and the upgraded streetscape was a team effort, led by Sibbing and former town centre activation officer Ellen Young and supported by Waka Kotahi’s Innovating Streets and council staff, as well as a host of local organisations.