Darby Street headphones bring the bass through Make Your Place

The installation of a large interactive headphone sculpture is set for completion by the end of the month.

Fitted Bluetooth functionality will allow people to play music from their collection, and the sculpture has a pickup and sound mixer so musicians can busk.

The headphones will be installed over the curved-shaped bench at 92 Darby Street, between The Hop Factory and the Euro Patisserie. This sculpture will likely be a destination for music and art lovers.

The brains behind the project is landscape designer Mark Tisdell, 33, who came up with the concept for an architectural contest during his final year of uni.

"I drew up the headphones and, I'm not a musician, but I wanted something for people to walk past and be like 'what the...?' I thought about how to build it and submitted it. I got feedback that people were happy with it, but it was a bit too much to do in the time frame. I put it in my back pocket, and when the Make Your Place grant happened, I thought I'd give it a go," Tisdell says.

Newcastle City Council's Make Your Place Community Grant Program started in late 2010. The council hoped to generate community-identified projects which would activate public spaces.

According to council's place-making facilitator Susan Denholm, there are two strong outcomes from these projects.

"One is visual improvement or place enlivenment. Two is the benefit to the people who become involved, meet each other and learn," she says. "There's lots of capacity building; we learn from them, and they learn about council."

Denholm says council built the concept of the grant program from scratch and spent time to make sure applicants could keep it simple. Each project has a funding limit of $2000. The council has two funding cycles over a year, providing $20,000 in project money in each period to give to successful applicants.

"We call it a proposal, but we keep it in plain English. There is a detailed budget table to help people understand the resources required for their project," she says.

Tisdell says he received that Make Your Place funding for $2000 and received approximately $10,000 of additional funds and labour from Darby Street Traders and Job Find. Tisdell has a fabricator, an electrical engineer and a graphic designer giving time and labour to the project,too. During the same round of applications, Tisdell was also approved to make the Darby Street Community Garden, which opened to the public in December 2014.

"The best thing about the garden is how so many people walk by. People stop and talk to their neighbours, and that's invaluable," Tisdell says. "We had a couple meet each other there. That's been nice."

Denholm shared several different success stories from the Make Your Place grant which ranged from workshops and walks to theatre performances and murals.

"The people who live, work or recreate in the space usually know what's going to work or activate the space, and our job is to guide and facilitate," she says.

She highlighted one of the original projects in New Lambton, where individuals beautified a small piece of council land called Roseann Park (located at 16 Roseann Close).

"You only need three people to create your group, and three [neighbours] decided to improve a small piece of parkland to plant natives," Denholm says. "They eventually got the whole street involved and many people on the street hadn't met each other [before]. There were elderly people, people with health issues, a war veteran. They all love looking after the park, and they've formed friendships."

Susan Harvey headed up the Roseann Park initiative in 2010 and has lived next to the park since 1985. For as long as she had been there the park was just grass and a few trees.

"I felt the park was beckoning me to be beautified," Harvey says. "We paid Lee Rowan to come up with a concept, they came up with a plan and we submitted it all to council."

Now the park is made up of indigenous and native species. It's thriving with the help of the residents including Harvey.

Harvey, her husband and another family regularly mow the park, calling themselves "The Phantom Lawnmowers Association".

She speaks highly of council and the program. "One of the things I thought at the time was 'I hope this doesn't affect anyone at council's job', but then I realised it made them more relevant, not less. They were the source of information; we built up relationships. "Now we all have this beautiful space which nurtures us every day," Harvey says.

The projects are not solely based on nature and noise from headphones though.

Eighty-eight-year-old Vera Deacon from Stockton has belonged to Stockton Historical Society since 1998. She received funding from Make Your Place to install a memorial seat (a park bench) with an interpretive sign sharing the 1942 story of the Japanese submarine attack in Newcastle.

The park bench represents the emplacement of the anti-aircraft guns which were fired during the attack.

"It's a very good outlook for people trying to imagine the past. They can see Nobbys, Fort Scratchley, the little beach that curves around to the shipwreck walk. It's a panoramic view. They can imagine where the submarine was firing on Newcastle," Deacon says. "It's a little bit of history that has slipped under the radar."

Deacon say the Make Your Place program is a way of bringing up Newcastle's past and history.

"Susan [Denholm] is a very encouraging young woman. You discuss things with her, you need a bit of advice going through these things," Deacon says. "It's a very good initiative by the council."

The next application deadline for funding is August 2015.