‘Restoring pride in our cityscape’: Group of women to clean the windows of vacant shopfronts of York Street

Armed with buckets of soapy water, some sturdy brooms and good dollop of community pride, a group of women will take to Albany’s main street on Saturday to clean the windows of the city’s empty shopfronts.

A brainchild of social collective Women’s Monthly — and more specifically Grytsje Doust — the group hopes their efforts achieve more than just cleanliness.

“It’s about restoring pride in our cityscape,” she said.

“By making the empty spaces look cared for, we hope to send a quiet but powerful message that this town still matters.

“We also hope that passers-by slow down, take notice, and sometimes even stop to help and what began as a simple act of cleaning might start a ripple, encouraging others to imagine what these spaces could become.”

Ms Doust said the idea, which she presented to the group at its first meeting months ago, had been playing on her mind for a long time.

“There were about 15 of us at our first meeting and we went around asking, ‘did anyone have anything that bothered them, or ideas of things we can improve in town’,” she said.

“This has been bothering me for a long time.

“People put notices on the empty windows and the blu tack gets stuck on the window for ages afterwards and then graffiti comes in because people think, ‘oh that looks grubby, lets make it worse’.”

“Albany is a beautiful town and to see the main street being rundown like that, even though its all to do with the internet and online shopping, it shouldn’t stop us from taking a bit of pride in the way things look.”

The project is the first the group has embarked on, with Ms Doust saying they wanted to be “actively fixing things”.

Up to 30 women come along for their monthly get-togethers, and about eight put their hand up for the weekend cleaning mission.

“Some are working, some are retired and came together to discuss ways of contributing to our community’s social wellbeing in ways that we felt had been missed or neglected,” she said.

“With so many people moving down from Perth, some retirees of course, but also more and more young, entrepreneurial people, along with the ever-increasing tourism, there are opportunities in this growing city.”

The group will set off from the Health Nut at 10am on Saturday and work their way up York Street.