Open Streets ICT will be held on Sunday, September 24th from 12:00 – 4:00 pm. The event has been designed to elevate the quality of life and health and well-being of the Wichita community. For the event, a 4.1 mile route along Douglas Avenue will be closed off for a variety of free activities all along the way such as biking, walking, entertainment, food, and more.

Over 300 volunteers will be utilized to oversee activity areas, man the barricaded roads and direct attendees. Volunteers can choose from two different shifts so they are able to still attend the event and will receive an Open Streets ICT volunteer t-shirt.

To learn more about the event or sign up to volunteer, click on the website URL in the information area below.

Wichita Park & Recreation and the Wichita Park Foundation Board is partnering with a vast array of stakeholders, representative of the community, to organize an Open Streets ICT event on Sunday, September 24, 2017.

Open Streets is a community based initiative designed to engage the every generation in Wichita while achieving public health, environmental, social and economic goals. The concept of Open Streets ICT is to temporarily close selected streets to motor vehicles and open the streets to invite walking, biking, arts and culture related activities and play. While this is a one day event, the aim is that activities such as Open Streets ICT will become more common in our community, thus resulting in potential improvement in air quality from reduced emissions, decrease of chronic diseases from increasing physical activity, and enhanced community connectivity from social connections with all ages, abilities, backgrounds and cultures.

Open Streets ICT will become a public space that is a safe environment to promote local businesses and organizations to interactive with the community to help build and shape economic goals for Wichita. Streets belong to everyone, they connect us to each other and the places where we live, learn, work and play across neighborhoods, cultures and economic status. The goal of Open Streets ICT is to foster an appreciation among community members, businesses and key decision makers that streets can be multi-functional and not just for motor vehicles.

Open Streets ICT will provide a perfect environment for the community to congregate and think of streets as more than just pavement, but of connectivity. That sense of connectivity will come from the greater understanding the multi-modal forms of transportation (walking and biking) are safe and viable in Wichita, that businesses can change the manner in which they attract consumers and that civic pride erupts from attending an event that is new and innovative in Wichita, but as seen as the norm across the globe.