Milbank

Innovation in Parks and Recreation: The Winning 2020 NRPA Innovation Award Projects and Programs

The NRPA Innovation Awards recognize and honor the latest advancements in the field of parks and recreation. The 2020 NRPA Innovation Award winners, through their projects and programs highlighted below, exemplify the best of the inspiring work park and recreation professionals are doing to improve and empower their communities through innovative practices in health and wellness, equity, conservation and park design.

Innovation in Health — City of Golden Valley, Minnesota

HomeRECed: A Navigational Guide to Everyday Recreation In early 2020, the city of Golden Valley closed its facilities and canceled programming due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. While the park and recreation department’s top priority remained maintaining the health and safety of its employees and the Golden Valley community, staff also recognized the importance of providing the community with leisure services during the closure — not only to encourage physical activity for people of all ages, but also to provide positive morale for residents during uncertain times.

On March 23, 2020, the Golden Valley Parks and Recreation staff launched HomeRECed: A Navigational Guide to Everyday Recreation, which offered people an opportunity to engage in simple and fun activities from the comfort of their own homes. Examples included a DIY lava lamp craft for kids, simple yoga poses, an athome photo booth, simple low-impact exercises, themed games and much more. Daily activity videos were posted on the city’s social media platforms, and an events list was posted on the Golden Valley website (tinyurl.com/y2tcqdpd).

Innovation

As the world faced an unprecedented health crisis, Golden Valley Parks and Recreation staff believed there was an opportunity to showcase their talents and creativity through the implementation of novel leisure services. “While our profession has explored virtual experiences for years, HomeRECed was Golden Valley’s first virtual program,” says John W. Stutzman, recreation supervisor for the city of Golden Valley. “The ideas used removed barriers and built a foundation for future recreation services.”

While rapid decisions were made by political leaders to combat the COVID-19 virus, Golden Valley Parks and Recreation staff provided their community recreation options in less than a week. In doing so, staff believes the speedy approach provided people a pause, if only briefly, from the chaos surrounding them. HomeRECed is Golden Valley’s first fully virtual program, which removed barriers to help build a foundation for the department’s future recreation services.

Community Engagement and Partnerships

The engagement process started with the use of a social media hashtag, #GVHomeREC, which allowed the public to submit reactions to the daily activities, photos/videos of participation and future ideas. Staff also engaged city council members, who promoted it through their social media platforms, announcements at city council meetings and in the local media. Park and recreation department staff also partnered with the local cable channel to promote the HomeRECed program to the Golden Valley community and surrounding communities within the broadcast area.

IMAGE COURTESY OF CITY OF GOLDEN VALLEY, MINNESOTA On March 23, 2020, Golden Valley Parks and Recreation launched HomeRECed.