About
The Playful City?
Negotiating the public spaces of Parramatta CBD
What is a “city of play”?
A playful encounter in public space can help us smile among the everyday. It accommodates the needs of different people without making excessive demands of them. It provides the potential for encounter with other people, but respects our rights to be a stranger. A city of play promotes local engagement with each other and civic life, but also recognises the different ways we are connected to other places. A playful city recognises and fosters dynamic patterns of urban interaction between people, places and technologies. In the context of safety, a playful city approach can reframe threat as opportunity, and fear as curiosity, encouraging people to form new and unexpected connections with place, technology and each other.
This blog supports the 2018 workshop activities within a research project looking at playful approaches to seriously improving perceptions of safety in the public spaces of Parramatta CBD.
The research project, Towards a Playful City: Design-led approaches to improving perceptions of safety in Parramatta CBD - led by Dr. Cameron McAuliffe and team, at Western Sydney University, in partnership with the City of Parramatta, and University of the Arts London - responds to the strategic concern of City of Parramatta Council with the perceptions of safety and vitality in the public spaces of Parramatta CBD. Despite a general reduction of crime rates, a range of users continue to feel unsafe in the public spaces of Parramatta CBD.
The research project, Towards a Playful City: Design-led approaches to improving perceptions of safety in Parramatta CBD - led by Dr. Cameron McAuliffe and team, at Western Sydney University, in partnership with the City of Parramatta, and University of the Arts London - responds to the strategic concern of City of Parramatta Council with the perceptions of safety and vitality in the public spaces of Parramatta CBD. Despite a general reduction of crime rates, a range of users continue to feel unsafe in the public spaces of Parramatta CBD.
Resident surveying has identified sites including car parks, public toilets, the Transport Interchange and Centenary Square as sites where a range of users feel unsafe or uncomfortable within the Parramatta CBD. These spaces are utilised by a diverse groups of users. Additionally, there is major construction taking place in sites across the Parramatta CBD, which may also be contributing to public perceptions of disorder and threat in the Parramatta CBD.
The PlayParramatta action research team have facilitated a number of design-led workshop activities led by Marcus Willcocks (UAL), to help explore challenges and opportunities in this area.
Workshops 1-3 were hosted from Western Sydney University, mostly involving participants representing different organisations around the city:
The PlayParramatta action research team have facilitated a number of design-led workshop activities led by Marcus Willcocks (UAL), to help explore challenges and opportunities in this area.
Workshops 1-3 were hosted from Western Sydney University, mostly involving participants representing different organisations around the city:
- Workshop 1 - Getting to know Our Personas and telling their stories
- Workshop 2 - Exploring the CBD with personas
- Workshop 3 - Co-defining briefs and Co-designing experiments for a Playful Parramatta
- Workshop 4 - Want to Play Parramatta?
Purpose of the workshops
This workshops form part of a number of action research activities, to help collect diverse perspectives regarding experiences of particular public spaces, ultimately to inform development of a city of play approach for the urban public spaces of Parramatta.
The workshops have three main aims:
- To present a playful city approach to public space being developed by the research team, and to discuss how it might be used to support the development of more inclusive public spaces in the Parramatta CBD.
- In line with our participatory approach, to provide a forum for participants to voice their insights into the issues and themes that impact on the public spaces of Parramatta’s CBD.
- To provide participants with the opportunity to contribute to the design and development of ‘design-led experiments’ to be trialled in a Parramatta CBD location as a part of our research.
The workshops brought together different publics and organisations in the public realm of Parramatta CBD to discuss and develop different ways of thinking about public space, and how we might re-think Parramatta’s public spaces in a more playful way, as places of dynamic encounter that build an environment of trust and mutual respect that nevertheless acknowledges the need for respectful distance among strangers.
Desired outcomes of the workshop
The outcomes of the workshops will inform the development of the following:
- A playful city approach that Council can use to develop more inclusive public spaces in the Parramatta CBD, including public toilets, car parks and other gathering spaces.
- Co-created concepts or prototypes for a “design-led experiment” to be trialled Parramatta’s public space.
The workshops will be led by Marcus Willcocks, Senior Research Fellow with the Design Against Crime Research Centre at the University of the Arts London. A design scholar and practitioner, Marcus has close to 20 years’ experience applying design-led practice to crime prevention and the development of sociable cities. His design-led action research is focused on people-centred urban engagements and interactions in public spaces, afforded through spatial, socially responsive and co-design practices. Marcus has delivered best practice, award-winning projects to investigate and develop opportunities regarding sociable safe places; creative wellbeing and urban play; community-led design and spatial engagement; and, cycling, walking and sharing spaces. Marcus Willcocks is a UK Design Council Cabe Built Environment Expert (BEE). Two of his co-created designs are located in the permanent collection at MoMA, New York. His work is also incorporated within the Government of South Australia’s Atlas of Urban Excellence, as well as the UK Design Council’s Designing Out Crime: A Designer’s Guide.
Workshop activities 1-3
- Workshop Session 1: Our Personas & Storyboarding exercise. Participants were invited to get to know a selection of Parramatta ‘personas’, from those provided and others which participants chose to add. We then worked in small groups to create short ‘storyboard’ scenarios, reflecting how these personas may or may not engage with certain public spaces in the Parramatta CBD.
- Workshop Session 2: Exploring the CBD with our Personas. In this session, we took our personas for a walk around the CBD, to visit some of the public spaces under discussion. In small groups, participants considered, and documented, the types of encounters their personas might experience in particular spots in public space around Parramatta’s CBD.
- Workshop Session 3: Designing ‘experiments’ for a playful Parramatta. In this session, small groups worked to create a design brief and start to imagine what could take place in the public spaces of Parramatta CBD under the theme, Playful City, that would suit their personas. Drawing on the material from the previous sessions, each group contributed to an evolving platform of designed concepts and activities as prototypes (experiments), which will form new bases for further development and trial in this research.
Workshop blog
Contacts
Cameron McAuliffe
Marcus Willcocks
Comments
Post a Comment