You may not be able to go to the rink and do some public skating, or head to the pool for a public swim, but the town’s parks, recreation, and culture department still wants you to enjoy at least the recreation and culture part of its mandate.
The town launched a new section of its website called RallyPoint, which is a hub containing links to online classes, workshops, and virtual experience related to physical activity, wellbeing, education, and culture.
Dean Collver, director of parks, recreation, and culture for the town, said it represents some of his departments adaptations in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The towns playgrounds, dog parks, and skate park as well as all recreational facilities have been closed. Parks and green spaces remain open, but those using the spaces must practice physical distancing and not gather in groups at all.
“Once the COVID-19 pandemic got to the place where it was closing facilities and disconnecting people physically … we knew we had to step out of the box … those are cornerstones of parks, recreation, and culture,” said Collver. “We wanted to provide programs for people to support physical activity, help with social anxiety and create positive experiences.”
But as it turns out, there were already a lot of organizations and people in the community reaching out online to meet some of those needs.
“We’re seeing the community-at-large stepping up and moving to online platforms to serve recreational needs,” said Collver. “We wanted to highlight that and see if we could put it all in one resource.”
The RallyPoint hub on the town’s website also includes a form to use to submit more online offerings that fit the parks, recreation, and culture categories.
“We do hope people are going to start adding in more content,” said Collver, adding the town already had a few submissions on the first day of the hub going live.
Some of the resources included already on the page include virtual experiences at Canada’s Wonderland, the NASA research centre, and Georgia Aquarium. There are also links to online workouts and fitness classes from local gyms, and some links to virtual cooking classes.
The links include both free and fee-based activities.
You can explore RallyPoint on the town’s website here.
