“DO you take Beech Croft Road to be your loyal, wedded street?” asked a man wearing a dramatically tall top hat.

“I do,” replied a woman in witch attire.

“Do you promise to adopt and to love, to fund and maintain this street until votes do you part?”

“I do.”

And so councillor Jean Fooks accepted the union of the county council with Beech Croft Road’s DIY Living Streets project.

The road was closed for this inaugural ceremony. Amid a carnival-cum-Halloween atmosphere we watched the Head Witch wrap Mrs Fooks’ shoulders in a shroud impregnated with reflective glass beads.

Ted Dewan, aka Head Witch, has been playing with the boundaries of public spaces for nigh on 10 years as part of his Roadwitch project (roadwitch.org.uk).

Roadwitch argues that Beech Croft Road, once proud and alive, became crushed under the weight of parked cars and passing commuters.

Over the years, activists led by Ted have worked to transform it into a civilised street in which cars are welcome but no longer king.

The early years were characterised by Ted’s “living room in the street” – art pranks where Ted and pals would relax in the middle of the road sitting on sofas and armchairs, with rugs underfoot and standard lamps for reading the paper.

With encouragement from Ted, householders were persuaded that a repurposing of the street was in order.

With the enthusiastic support of both city and county councils, as well as technical expertise from Sustrans and a grant of more than £7,000 from the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, the country’s first DIY Living Street is open.

It features “road carpets” at six points. These are 30-centimetre diamond shapes painted directly onto the road, with dozens of them in blocks eight-metres-squared. They’re an arresting sight and have the desired effect of slowing drivers right down. This imaginative approach to traffic calming mirrors the patterns of the Victorian tiles on the paths leading up to houses’ front doors. Some of the diamonds are painted with a specially devised paint that at night gives drivers the powerful impression that they are approaching stealth bombers on the road.

Instead of slowing cars with ugly chicanes of kerbs and bollards with relective discs, the street is given form by huge tree-filled planters. By day, the planters appear stone-coloured. By night, headlights reveal the massive grinning faces of Cheshire cats – no-one is going to miss these, nor miss the point: the road is having fun.

The piece de resistance for cyclists is the on-street cycle parking. Cycle stands at various points along the street contribute to the narrowings.

It is a truly exciting vision of what we could do with hundreds of thousands of residential streets nationally, and internationally.

It would never have happened without the inspiration of Ted.

But perhaps the advent of the Big Society will encourage others to take cars by their horns and give their own street a DIY Living Street makeover.