Connected Environments: Building spaces for creativity in lockdown
By actively involving young East Londoners in co-creation projects, we can encourage them to engage with their local environment.
“My mother couldn’t afford paying for every journey to get to A and B, so our alternative was to use our ten toes. When I tell you we walked everywhere, I REALLY MEAN IT. I didn’t enjoy walking at first because keeping up with my mum’s long legs was a myth. So, because of that my mum tried her best to make it as fun as possible for me. She used to take me through different routes to get to places…”
Thus opens Angel’s Back Yard by Angel Okoturo, one of the texts we compiled in ARGH! Mateys, a project which invites people to walk and discover new writing by young people hidden in digital portholes located throughout the Royal Docks in London. ARGH! Mateys is just one of a series of co-creation projects introduced during the pandemic by researchers in Connected Environments which brings together interdisciplinary expertise in urbanism, digital and socially engaged arts practices.
Taken together, these projects reflect a commitment to creating opportunities for London’s youth. In developing an existing body of research around the uses of novel technologies for spatial storytelling, the team partnered with youth organisations including London Borough of Newham (LBN) Youth Empowerment and the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood to alleviate the impact of the global health crisis on young people.
Inspired by the Design Justice Network’s principles, we used co-creation as a method; listening to the participants and sharing the knowledge required to realise their ideas. Through these activities, we discovered that a sense of community can form remotely. The projects provided participants with a shared purpose, despite the multiple barriers to digital engagement and participation during the pandemic and afforded much needed space for them to meet and connect with their peers.
ARGH! Mateys
An ongoing project, ARGH! Mateys invites people to discover new writing by young people hidden in digital portholes located throughout the Royal Docks. Visitors can find AR markers and keywords installed on site at locations chosen by local young people and interact with them to explore new writing.
ARGH! Mateys was created with young people from Youth Empowerment, Fight for Peace, West Silvertown Foundation and Royal Docks Learning Activity Centre. An interactive web map was created in October 2020 to support public access during lockdown using the Memory Mapper toolkit developed at CASA. The physical trail was installed in April 2021 and will remain in situ until 2023. ARGH! Mateys was funded by The Royal Docks Team for Join the Docks (2020).
The way the project was facilitated was exceptional. Having worked with the Connected Environments team at UCL on a previous project, once again, the way that it was delivered was perfect for the group, and at every stage the young people were the architects, from the design of the AR marker, the location of the piece and the creation - which had been thought about at great length, that they were not only in charge of their piece, but in the direction of the project flow.” Tom Bayley, Youth Work
Research team
Dr Leah Lovett
Reseach Fellow, The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis
Dr Valerio Signorelli
Lecturer in Connected Environments (Virtual), The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis
Dr Duncan Hay
Research Associate, The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis
Dr Martin de Jode
Lecturer in Connected Environments (Hardware) , The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis
Professor Andy Hudson-Smith
Professor of Digital Urban Systems, The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis
Newham Youth Map
The Newham Youth Map was made by young people to help young people find out about youth organisations and activities in Newham. During the project, participants from our partners HeadStart, Fight for Peace and Youth Empowerment learnt about the history of maps and discussed different mapping conventions, before deciding on their own base map. They interviewed friends, shot walkabout videos and trained councillors and youth works in how to use the resource. Two of the participants used screen readers to access the online workshops and the Memory Map toolkit. Their contributions to the project ultimately resulted in a text-only version of the site being developed.
The Newham Youth Map was officially presented during the London Borough of Newham annual conference in November 2020 by Leah Lovett and Tom Bayley of Youth Empowerment. The map has been handed over to London Borough of Newham as a digital resource for the community.
We discussed how it’s different from other maps. For example, Google maps doesn’t highlight accessibility, but here, we included a voice description that can read out information about the venues.” – Irshad, participant
Research team
Dr Leah Lovett
Reseach Fellow, The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis
Dr Duncan Hay
Research Associate, The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis
RE-Invent Digital Pilot
Between April and October 2020, we joined together with creative producers at the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood for the online knowledge exchange project, RE-Invent Digital Pilot. Through close collaboration with artists, young ambassadors (11-14) and youth workers, the team co-created a series of interactive, web-based VR studios to creatively engage young people during lockdown.
I learnt how to make ideas into a reality.” – Young Ambassador
This has been a solid process of... workshopping then executing it right through to the end... like the blue-print of how these things can work, and how we can apply our skills and share them differently online.” – Marawa Ibrahim, Commissioned Artist
With the Bethnal Green site closed for a major transformation project, RE-Invent Digital Pilot focused on movement, design and sound to reflect the planned organisation of the new museum galleries. The artists commissioned for the project were Krisiti Minchin, Marawa Ibrahim and Dan Mayfield/School of Noise. The project was funded by UCL Engagement through their Listen and Respond initiative.
Research team
Dr Valerio Signorelli
Lecturer in Connected Environments (Virtual), The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis
Dr Leah Lovett
Reseach Fellow, The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis
Author
The Bartlett Review 2021