In 2023, we inaugurated a set of research questions concerning children’s participation, following the data collected through Playing for Keeps a TGAL pilot project that examined the sustainability potential of playgrounds. The project illuminated a persistent critique concurrent of the child-friendly cities initiatives (Powell, 2024): while children’s voices are increasingly invoked within the framework of their right to healthy cities, they are rarely taken up substantively. The reasons for this are many, yet our attention turned particularly toward the methods through which participation itself is enacted. We began to ask how children’s ideas might be taken up materially—rather than symbolically—through their active participation in design processes. To explore this, we opened the question to community partners across Middlesex County in a public presentation (see video below) following presentation of findings from the TGAL pilot, inviting them into dialogue around children’s co-design of urban spaces. From this conversation emerged an ongoing collaboration with the London Bridge Child Care Services, through which these questions now take practical and speculative form.
References:
Powell, R. (2024). Child-Friendly Cities and Communities: opportunities and challenges. Children’s Geographies, 22(5), 716–729. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2024.2353746