Child-friendly urban design aesthetics : testing a 'shared dialogue' approach.

Abstract

Andy Field is an English performance artist who develops interactive projects that often bring people together in unusual settings and/or couplings to explore relationships between people and place (Field, 2016). For example, the Lookout project, which he took to several UK and world cities in 2017, including Auckland. At the Auckland Fringe Festival in March 2017, 16 central city schoolchildren (8-10 years) took part in three days of performances (three performances per day), following seven days of two hour workshops and some rehearsals. Each performance session consisted of one child conducting a conversation about Auckland with a single adult audience-member that they had never met. This was simultaneously repeated with other couplings of one child and one adult. The site was the top of the Central Administration Building, overlooking the CBD and beyond, so that the conversation was centred on the child’s and the adult’s memories and perceptions of the city, past, present and imagined into the future - including consideration for climate-change catastrophes. Some material was recorded and the adult participant listened to it, while some of the 30-minute performance was spent talking together, following prompts from the child.