Often useful, sometimes messy, always essential 

I recently attended an inaugural lecture by an old friend at the University of Bristol, expecting to hear about his projects, in which maths and science are being applied in areas of natural disaster around the world, to model and predict risk. What I didn’t expect was his evidence and enthusiasm about the ways that local communities shaped how the resulting tools were made and used.

If you are reading this, it is probably because you believe that projects that engage communities as collaborators in decision making can bring about more meaningful, effective and lasting outcomes. Professor Jeremy Phillips’ talk really hit home the stakes involved in achieving meaningful, civic engagement. In his work in a South American community, for example, input from members of the local communities, about their lived experiences and observations, made the difference between landslide predictions that might mitigate some damage and those that could reliably save lives.

There is a huge range of activities that can be called civic participation or participatory citizenship. From the ad hoc and creative– things like guerrilla gardening, street libraries, or repair cafes –to grass-roots activism, volunteering, neighbour groups, public consultation, participatory budgeting, voting and more. Done well, with ample time, care and respect, these activities can increase people’s sense of purpose, agency and mutual understanding. Good outcomes can offer innovative, scaleable solutions, and influence tools, processes and policy. What form (or forms?) does your civic activity take?

One form that is gaining traction is the Citizen’s Assembly, a process in which a randomly selected group of citizens that represent the wider demographic, come together to address a specific issue or set of issues. In Bristol, The Trinity Centre has been working towards a Citizen’s Assembly for Culture. Things are certainly looking promising on that front, as they are currently recruiting for the role of a Producer to take the project forward.  And on Tuesday, 16 April at 18:30, Play Disrupt will co-facilitate the final in a year of conversations within The Bristol Urban Forum.  The session’s topic is “Is it time for a permanent Citizen’s Assembly for Bristol?”. Play:Disrupt will be inviting and facilitating the responses of those present, through our most playful and audacious means. And while the stakes in Bristol are not as high as those in areas of high risk, your particular knowledge and perspective is still an essential part of this beautiful, messy and important art of participatory citizenship. We hope you’ll come along.

Make an Encouraging Banner

This prompt is from assignment No. 63 from the book Learning to Love you More by US artists Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher (thus the use of the Americanisms; ‘color’, ‘construction paper’-which is coloured card stock, ‘neighbors’, and ‘gas station’). We think of this as a gateway activity for making personal projects in public space. Let us know how you get on by tagging
@PlayDisrupt #encouragingbanner

“Think of something encouraging you often tell yourself. For example, Everything will be okay. Or: Don’t listen to them. Or: It’ll blow over. Now draw each letter of the sentence on a large piece of colored construction paper or big squares of fabric. One letter per piece. Draw them blocky so you can cut them out. Cut them out. Glue each one onto a piece of construction paper or fabric that is a contrasting color. Glue the edges of all the pieces of paper or fabric together to make a banner. Hang the banner in a place where you or someone else might need some encouragement, for example, across your bathroom. Or between two trees so that you and your neighbors can recieve encouragement from it. Or in a gas station.”

Upcoming

Is it time for a permanent Citizens Assembly in Bristol?
Register to attend the
Bristol Urban Forum on this link! 

16 April 2024, 18:30-20:30 at Sparks, Bristol 

News

Pop-up place-making 

Bristol’s Cabot Circus recently commissioned Play:Disrupt to conduct pop up engagement with the public about an area known as Quakers Friars, centred around a beautiful Grade I listed, former meeting house, and surrounded by contemporary retail and residential units and a large public square. The project was collaborative from the start, with inspiring partners including McGregor Coxall, AHMM and other great place specialists. Our aims were

• To get public feedback on Quakers Friars Masterplan from diverse perspectives.
• To identify themes for interventions that can activate the space
• To identify current barriers to access, use and sense of welcome within Quakers Friars

To begin, we used our street pop-up with colourful street furniture, music and games to engage with over a hundred people passing through the area. Creative mapping activities provoked people to think about the place and discuss what they enjoy about it, what, if anything, stops them from coming or hanging out, and what they would like to see in the future. We encouraged them to imagine, and give examples of activities that could bring about the changes they wanted to experience.

A second round of engagement focussed in more detail on accessiblity. For this, we joined forces with WECIL’s (West of England Centre for Inclusive Living) access and inclusion team and generated some specific guidelines for accessibility, not only in spatial design, but in cultural offerings and wayfinding. We compiled recommendations from the processes for the project designs going forward.