Such a proposal is being considered by a group of civic and business leaders to help town residents tune their sense of community.

The idea is among several to come from “place making” meetings throughout the shire last week.

Place making is basically re-establishing the importance of humanity’s connection with its living environment, a concept that appears to have been squashed under the weight of economic and industrial imperatives these days.

Singleton Council general manager Lindy Hyam said: “It’s about people’s relationships with place, the spirituality, how people feel about a place, how they interact, act as custodians and what they do to contribute to their sense of place.

“It’s not about getting somebody else to come in and do something for them, it’s about how they activate a place, it’s empowering the local community and giving it a voice.

“It can be as simple as a seat under a tree in an open space or things like art festivals or food festivals, creating points of interest such as public art walks or community gardens.”

Place making meetings were held last week in Singleton, Broke, Bulga, Jerrys Plains and in Hermitage Road, Belford, with representatives of the Sydney consultancy firm Place Partners speaking.

Place Partners spokeswoman Kylie Legge said: “This is a global movement, it’s also called collaborative urbanism, community led revitalisation, tactical urbanism or quicker, lighter, cheaper.

“Councils see the benefits of working collaboratively, not just with the community but internally and you start to get bigger shifts that influence the way developers are working also.

“This is a pilot program in Singleton that will have benefits for things like the central business district strategy that’s being worked on.”

Mrs Hyam said the program aimed to involve villages and communities throughout the entire shire.

“I can’t give you details of the meetings in the villages yet, but here in the town there are two things we’re going to look at initially,” Mrs Hyam said.

“The first is improving our interaction with the river, Singleton is located along the riverbank so we’ll be working on ways to capitalise on this great location.

“And secondly, we want to create a talking point, we’re going to try and paint the hole in the wall, make it a statement, perhaps it could be pink to fit in with the Connect Pink concept.”

Mrs Hyam agreed that such a move could be seen as a point where politics and art met.

Civic and business leaders wouldn’t just want people to notice an unusually coloured bridge they’d also want government decision-makers to pay attention to long-standing arguments that the bridge should be replaced to improve highway safety and increased transport needs.

“I’ve seen talking points in other cities, like life-sized cows that are moved around, or lions in Singapore, and different coloured bridges, red ones in China and yellow ones elsewhere,” she said.

“Why couldn’t we have a pink one?

“I’ll be speaking to (Member for Upper Hunter) George Souris to look into the ownership of the bridge and see if he can help with our idea of making it a talking point.”

Mrs Hyam said talking points and community-driven projects would help revitalise the shire as they emphasised people’s core values, family-oriented and youth activities and people became more engaged with each other and used existing facilities better.