Architecture for kids podcast with Hester Buck at Architecture and Art Collective Public Works

This podcast provides an opportunity to discuss how we can draw on the creativity of children and young people, inspiring them to playfully re-imagine our relationship with climate and ecology through the co-design of the built environment. 

Transcript

UNKNOWN: 0:00

you

SPEAKER_00: 0:09

Hello and welcome to another episode of Architecture for Kids podcast. I'm your host, António Cablão. I'm a trained architect, an architectural educator and founding director of award-winning Architecture for Kids CIC. In this podcast, I'm going to talk to practitioners and creatives that share the same passion as I do, to inspire and to engage children and young people to shape their built environment and the creative industries. The podcast is brought to you in collaboration with the Built Environment Trust, the Thornton Education Trust and the Wells School of Architecture, Cardiff University. My guest today is Esther Buck. Esther is part of the Architecture and Art Collective Public Works, a design practice set up in 2004, working across architecture, art and performance. She's currently completing a PhD through practice at the Wells School of Architecture. Thank you. Yeah, I'm really excited

SPEAKER_01: 1:42

to be here uh on national moss day so um it's a centenary year of the british biologists of society so biologists are people amateur scientists who study moss and this is the first national moss day so celebrating um moss uh where you know all the the mosses that grow in the uk um and thinking about how we can appreciate uh learn about them um and grow them

SPEAKER_00: 2:12

what such were you good at school and what subjects did you enjoy most studying if they were different?

SPEAKER_01: 2:21

So when I was at school I really loved I really loved art and design but I also really liked maths and physics and I think maybe so I trained as an architect and it felt like it sort of sat between those two worlds of art and design and maths and physics but I'm so I'm very dyslexic so I really didn't enjoy my sort of primary school I found bits of it quite hard and challenging. And I think what art and design and maths and physics all have in common is they're not very language-based. You're drawing and thinking, you're kind of exploring ideas and not necessarily relying on reading and writing very much.

SPEAKER_00: 2:59

What you were good at, I suppose it helped you to your career choices or to follow your studies.

SPEAKER_01: 3:06

Yeah. For a long time, I was sort of torn between either wanting to go to art school and be an artist or to... be a physicist or be a theoretical physicist. And they were the two things I was really excited by when I was quite little. And I suppose, yeah, architecture felt like a sort of a pretty good middle ground between the two. It was sort of practical and structured and applied, but it was also really creative.

SPEAKER_00: 3:29

And when did you decide that you was going to study architecture and how that decision came about?

SPEAKER_01: 3:35

I think I probably decided about 13 or 14. When I was at school, I did a lot of work experience. I worked a few architect What was it that convinced you to be an architect? So to an

SPEAKER_00: 4:02

extent,

SPEAKER_01: 4:08

I think maybe because of being dyslexic or being maybe that's just kind of what I'm like naturally I really love working with other people and I really like thinking with other people working in groups and developing ideas together and I think that was what I really enjoyed about what looked like the kind of role of an architect or what an architect does is it's about working with a client with a community but also with structural engineers and builders and it's that kind of collaborative practice that I think is really key to kind of how architects operate and one of the main things you kind of do as an architect is sort of thinking across different disciplines and different skills. And that was something I really enjoyed and I think was something that I felt kind of, I suppose, convinced me maybe that it was something I'd be interested in.

SPEAKER_00: 4:51

When you started studying architecture, was it in line with what you thought the course was going to be or how was that experience?

SPEAKER_01: 4:59

I did my undergrad at Oxford Brookes. I think maybe a surprising thing about studying architecture, and it was quite reflective of that time, so just over a decade ago, there was a lot around sort of events and performance as architecture and how we thought about and designed events and that as a way of sort of almost like as a live real project that we could design event and think about how it operated as a space how it functioned how people moved what what it felt like to be part of that but also had what kind of impact did that event have on people and that as a way of sort of starting to think about architecture and design so i remember my first year we designed a cinema we had to design a cinema screening and we're all responsible in small groups to different elements of the evening um and i think i think My group was responsible for designing and building the chairs for the cinema from waste material in the architecture school. And to me, that didn't necessarily seem like something an architect would do. But I think that kind of, yeah, that thinking about how you make people feel in a space and what's the kind of, what's the experience of being in a space was quite sort of surprising to me as a sort of starting point for how we think about what an architect does.

SPEAKER_00: 6:07

Let's talk a little bit about your trajectory since you finished your part two in architecture. Until now, you are a student here at the School of Architecture. What have you done and what made you do your PhD?

SPEAKER_01: 6:20

So I studied my part two, so that's like a kind of master's in architecture at the Royal College of Art. And I was part of a studio. So my tutors, Tarandra and Andreas, founded Public Works, which is now the collective I'm part of. And that studio is really looking at ideas of architectural activism, how we think with communities, work with communities within our sort of architecture. studio projects developing briefs with them and then thinking through kind of design ideas in response to those briefs and when I finished my part two public work invited us to think about how those student projects could become real projects so how we could continue working with those groups raise funds continue exploring those kind of ideas we were looking at at university as part of a kind of and as part of public work so joining the collective I applied for some funding and at the time I was looking at social housing estates in London and the sort of greens spaces as social housing estates, how they could be designed, how they could be used as sort of community spaces, as community gardens, growing spaces, but also how that growing could be a way of sort of promoting and supporting the people who lived in those spaces and protecting them against sort of displacement and redevelopment. So this kind of privatisation of social housing. I raised some funding and I worked with a group in just off Victoria Park, looking at planting a series of community gardens, setting up a series of community gardens with residents there. I think that was a really formative experience in terms of thinking about myself as a practitioner but also how I worked as a group. So at Public Works we think of ourselves as a collective so we bring in work and we work together in sort of small teams but we also have, each of us has a sort of a research agenda or an idea we're exploring through our practice and we kind of think about how different projects can support that and I'm really interested in ideas of ecology and green spaces. So our relationship with nature and cities and how participatory co-designs and how working with different groups can develop a kind of closer relationship with nature and support those spaces. At the moment, I'm doing what's called a PhD through practice. So you ask a question of your practice or you want to explore an idea in more detail, sort of disrupt your kind of existing practice. So I suppose for the last sort of six, seven years, I've been looking a lot at sort of participation and co-design to how to work with different community groups to support kind of create collective visions of how green spaces could be used in improved and my PhD is looking at how we might think with the more than human so how and this is a theory within anthropology it's quite kind of abstract academic theory it's talked about quite a lot in ecofeminism and thinking about how that theory might be applied to a kind of a practice so working with community groups but also thinking about plants and animals as part of the kind of participants in the workshop and I'm really interested in you You know, what does that, what did I learn? What's kind of challenging about that approach? But what does it also bring to these co-design situations? What's this value of thinking with the more than human within these sort of participatory co-design process?

SPEAKER_00: 9:25

How you've developed the work that you're doing with the Grandstown Youth Forum and Wine Moss.

SPEAKER_01: 9:30

As I said at the beginning, I really like thinking with others and exploring ideas in groups. And I think this idea of sort of, it's called participatory action research, but how knowledge isn't produced always in universities, but can be produced by we can learn from think with groups and people around the cities I sort of started my research thinking about how we could engage with natural resources of the city and how those natural resources can become kind of a key element within a sort of participatory co-design conversation but in particular I'm really interested really passionate about moss so how we can think with moss as a sort of an urban plant that we can find everywhere all around us in cities how we what does it mean to kind of engage with this as a kind of focal point to a process, a kind of a co-design process. So moss is really interesting in that it doesn't have a root system. It's not what's called vascular. So almost every other plant is vascular. It's drawing nutrients and water out of the soil up through tubes and pipes into leaves. Whereas moss, because it's a more primitive, earlier form of plant, is always in direct body lead contact with air and it's drawing its nutrients and water out of that air and that's how it's kind of growing and this is one of the reasons why moss is so small and grows along the kind of along the ground and isn't like large and fibrous and woody like a tree but because of this relationship with air and air quality moss both filters the air so it takes pollutants out of the air like NOx which is generally nitrogen dioxide nitrogen is what causes plants to grow kind of green and lush but also PM2.5 or even PM10, which is basically like dust that are suspended in the air. And moss filters those pollutants out. So it directly improves air quality. And I first became interested in moss thinking about how we could design prototypes to improve air quality, which grew moss within them. But through that process, I also became interested in how we could learn from moss. So by looking at how and where it grew, we could start to understand the nature of air quality and to some extent also start to discuss and think about our own relation with air quality so I suppose it's this idea of thinking with the moss as a kind of a teacher within this process by looking and understanding the moss and its relationship with air we also start to think about our own relationship with air and the types of behaviours in cities that can improve air quality so you know plants and animals plants in cities improve air quality they're kind of taking out pollutants and behaviours that sort of increase pollution so things like cars car travel but also construction, the demolition of buildings, that's something architects are really involved. So yeah, I became really interested in this idea of how we could think with moss. So I ran a sort of six-month programme with the Greater Town Youth Forum, exploring how we could think with moss, what did it mean to kind of, what do we learn about moss, what do these kind of scientific stories of how moss interacted with air pollution teach us about our own relationship with moss, but also more broadly about our neighbourhood and its air quality as a natural resource, as a sort of starting point to how I was thinking about framing my research. And so this kind of, I suppose my current, the way in which I currently think about moss is really informed by those conversations with the young people for this part.

SPEAKER_00: 12:58

How do you think with moss? Can you give us an example as well as what is the involvement with the young people in the project?

SPEAKER_01: 13:04

I started this process really thinking that we would be building prototypes. So we'd be building kind of experimental architectural elements that use moss within them. But the element of the project I was most interested in and enjoyed the most was actually working with others. So working with communities and building these prototypes and what we learned together about ourselves and our relationship with the environment by thinking about how we could grow moss. With the youth forum, we started what's called, we're exploring called a living lab. So a living lab is something that happens within citizen science, anticipatory scientific method where you ask a question as a group and explore how you kind of answer that question. So as a group we asked how could we grow moss there's very little horticulture around moss within the UK when you google moss it comes up with how to get moss out of your lawn how to kill moss we as a kind of as a country we don't have very much love for moss there's not much care for moss and as a result it's really hard to moss in some ways is everywhere you can find it you know whenever you start to look you can find it in the cracks of pavement and on buildings but also it's never anywhere intentionally we don't have beds of moss in the way they do or lawns of moss in the way they do in somewhere like Japan that as this kind of as a group we were looking at how we could grow moss within the pavilion and so we built these tube which were put up in the entrance of space as a sort of living exhibition and we explored what those tubes were like so what was the air quality within those tubes like and how did that affect how the moss grew so we collected moss from different bits of Cardiff and sometimes the tubes were filled up in the street sometimes they were where the cars and things were and there was a different air quality there and then we filled other tubes up inside the pavilion we also explored how much water we put into the tubes and then over the process of the exhibition observed how the tubes grew. And so I suppose it was this idea of how could we grow moss but through the process of growing moss what did we learn together about air and air quality and our relationship with air quality.

SPEAKER_00: 14:57

How do you set up all this experiment?

SPEAKER_01: 15:00

And then this way my research is actually not so much focused on and I think it's a really important question and I think it would be really interesting to explore in more detail but my research isn't actually looking necessarily at kind of mapping how well the moss is growing it's more reflecting on what did we learn as a group through trying to grow moss together so what did the process of kind of finding moss and thinking about where it was growing teach us and how did that kind of change our relationship with our environment so the sort of what kind of conversations we were having and that really led into so the play lanes project which I've been working on as a kind of so using the ideas that we develop within the the moss breathing moss exhibition about how we could think with moss and thinking about how they could then sit within a more traditional architectural project in a sense I suppose while the breathing moss exhibition was looking at kind of methods in citizen science a kind of living lab method as a way of thinking about moss this was thinking about how do I translate that learning how can I use that way of thinking with moss within what is I suppose my existing practice of sort of participatory co-design so the plain lanes project was funded by child friendly cities at Cardiff Council. They had some funding to think about how the lanes at Bakako residents' houses could be improved. So how could they become more child-friendly spaces? And so we started with a kind of call-out to invite residents who had a lane at the back of their house to sign up to say if they would like to improve their lane, to kind of think about what could happen within these spaces. And what was really amazing about the call-out is actually we got far more residents signing up than we expected. So we set up a resident... committee of people who weren't going to put their lane forward but were kind of living in the local area and then they chose their the kind of two lanes to be a pilot project for this idea. Two lanes in Grangetown which could be which we could explore kind of how they could how we could improve those spaces and the project was developed by something at Cardiff University called Community Gateway and that's really based in Grangetown and it's looking at how academics can work with kind of communities and groups within Grangetown on sort of live project for their research but also kind of exploring ideas or supporting community ideas within the local area. So working in Grangetown we had two lanes chosen by this resident group and we were thinking about how we could improve these spaces and my interest as I kind of helped facilitate the project as architect looking at kind of participation in co-design but my interest within the process was what how could we think with moss within this process how could we focus on moss as a way of collecting ideas and thinking about a design for the space. Started when we first went into the into the lanes we were telling residents about the project and inviting them out into the street and we did a moss hunt so looking at moss what moss was growing down the length of the lane what moss could we find and what did that tell us about the existing environment where it could tell us about where it was light where it was dark how water moved through the space so what were the kind of damp areas moss grows in really damp moist areas and what were the kind of drier spaces of the lane so it was a way to start to kind of understanding the existing context we also started to make we ran a moss tile making making workshops. So we were seeing if we could grow moss on a series of tiles that could go into the space. So that kind of moved, I suppose, from thinking about the lanes, what the lane was like now, and then thinking about how could we change it? How could we improve it? And I was really interested in, yeah, what does it mean to bring a kind of ecological environmental agenda to a project? What does it mean to kind of think about a space of the city already as a really vibrant ecology, as a place that kind of appreciate the kind of the positive environmental quality of what's already there? as a starting point for the design process. In sort of multi-species ethnography, there's this idea of sort of patchy hope. How do we find, in places where we kind of perceive them as kind of very grey and human and urban, how can we find patches of hope of a kind of resilient environment of ecology thriving? And I think in some ways the moss became a way of sort of thinking about this sort of, this hope, these small pockets of ecology that played a really important role in the biodiversity at the local area of hosting tiny wildlife which supports larger things like birds to live within the city but it also holds water, slows down the movement of water within the city and it's kind of improving our air quality so it's this really important kind of element of the environment and what does it mean to start a design process by care.

SPEAKER_00: 19:30

So it has a massive impact on the built environment, what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01: 19:33

I suppose something I'm also quite interested in as a plant is it's sort of, it's everyday and you can find it, you know, it's not this really rare element that has to be kind of flown in from far away the best moss um in your area will be the moss that's already growing there um you can find it almost everywhere and yet it's so kind of overlooked we very rarely kind of think at that scale to look that closely at something so small and through these sort of workshops how can we improve the ecology of our our spaces in big ways in terms you know we can add things to them it's a kind of designer as an architect i'm always thinking about how you know what can be what can how can we enhance build on what this place is or really like to kind of improve it but also in terms of how we have an ongoing relationship of care. I think one of the things I've been quite interested in is one of the sort of I suppose from my research one of the biggest impacts of the workshop we added these sort of we had seats and planters and sort of like chalkboards and sort of playful activities into the lane and that could also have these frames that residents could use to hook different things onto their back walls to think about the lane as a play space. We also drew a microscopic image of moss and a on the ground using sort of the markings traditionally used on roads working with a local artist Helen I suppose to me seem like more traditional architectural elements but one of the the biggest impacts or the thing I was most interested in was actually how we change people's behavior so by talking about the value of moss how did it change how people would then think about moss they found on their property in their garden in the lane not as a kind of sign of a neglect that needs to be taken out but actually really important element of ecology a really important important sort of element of the environment and through the sort of the process of the co-design and thinking about moss how did that change the way people thought about how they cared for the space and how we can think with moss as a way of thinking about what we want what do we want to invite in what do we want to look after within our green spaces and actually sometimes it's that kind of those small scale acts of care of sort of you know leaving moss growing in the kind of cracks of the pavement that actually can have a really important impact in terms of how we think about support the sort of biodiversity.

SPEAKER_00: 21:41

What is the role, what is the age of the residents in the project?

SPEAKER_01: 21:44

In the play lanes, we started by, we were able to collect, meet as many residents as possible, tell people about the project, but also keep that process really open so they could define what the project could be like. What were they most interested in happening within their lane, within their street? We started kind of collecting ideas for what people were interested in adding to their lane, how they thought about how the lane could be improved in the future. And then through that process we sort of mapped out all the ideas that we collected according to how possible they were so you know there were some great ideas that just weren't possible within the budget or so within the nature of the lane because it's a residence can access some of their cars so we couldn't enclose the space or we had to kind of keep the space open so really that's why we focused on thinking about the walls of the lane how we can improve prove it by adding elements to people residence walls so we collected all these ideas yeah we mapped out how possible they were and then also as a group how desirable they were so what ideas most stood out that were the most important and based on that process we developed kind of a strap line for the two lanes and it really focused on green and that was a really important thing for almost all residents how it could become a greener space a safer space so thinking about how you could improve make children feel safe within the space but also safer in terms of the kind of the properties that backed onto the street and then also a cleaner space so how we could stop people's fly tipping clear up the space and then make it kind of and in turn how that could make it a kind of make people feel safer within the space developed a series of sort of cartoons around what could happen within the space based on those based on that kind of discussion with residents and then that formed the kind of framework for the ideas that we were proposing within the lane so then residents could sign up depending on what they most interested in in relate so of what they'd like to add to the back to the back of their walls to kind of kind of improve the play lanes and all of this has kind of it's informed a toolkit which is now on it's going to be put over on Cardiff Council website that different residents can download and use to think about how they could run a kind of co-design process with their neighbours to think about how they could create a collective vision for the lane at the back of their houses and how they could also make improvements to that space.

SPEAKER_00: 24:04

What was the residents children's involvement in a project?

SPEAKER_01: 24:07

The project came through Child Friendly City so we were really interested in this idea idea of how we could make it a more child-friendly space. I think what's also really exciting, amazing with the way child-friendly cities talks about a better city for children is a better city. So when we make things more accessible, more playful, clearer, that's better for everyone. That's not just something we're aiming at and of working with children. So that was, I suppose, the starting point to how we were thinking about the project as well. And one of the sort of feedback we got from residents and children, but I also went into some primary schools and we're talking to children there it was just after lockdown and actually lots of the children were interested in this idea of how we could have a space for quiet play in a way they were talking about well we've already there are already parks nearby we can go to the park and we can play football or we can play basketball and I think maybe having just come out of lockdown you know living in kind of quite full noisy houses homeschooling children were talking about they wanted actually a space where they could be quiet where they could have some sort of a space where they could sit and be on and play in a very different way and that was really important in terms of the project so thinking about how we could create these kind of spaces for quiet play and again I think nature is really interesting thinking about kind of more than human playmates how can we how can gardening and growing become a form of a sort of a playful activity but also within the workshop so we ran activities within workshops within the lane so there was a kind of moss tile making workshop we also did like rubbings where we looked at the different textures of the existing lane and we chalked out on the road what could what drawings about what could happen And I'm really addressed within my practice as part of public works of how we work with children, how children are really fantastic at imagining how things can be changed and improved. They're really good at thinking imaginatively about space and in some ways actually a lot better than adults. Adults sometimes within participatory processes can get really hooked on what doesn't work, what is kind of failing or needs to be improved. I think children are really, really good at thinking imaginatively about how that space can be changed and improved. be really totally radically different so within my practice I do a lot of workshops with children as a sort of as a way of collecting ideas and thinking thinking about how we could improve an area of space also children are really good at kind of found within the work moss workshops they were really good at kind of imagining the environment the ecology of the space different thinking about themselves from the perspective of moss thinking they were you know thinking at different scales the moss was a kind of forest that they were walking through actually how would the lane be different thinking about how a bird would move through the space. I suppose, again, that sort of imaginative play is a way of really thinking about ecology. And that became a way to then also talk with parents and adults about how we could think about the ecology of the space and meet their parents and sort of discuss them.

SPEAKER_00: 26:56

So I can imagine as you were talking about a very hands-on sort of approach, the kids are along with you kind of making a lot of those things and coming up with their own ideas.

SPEAKER_01: 27:05

Exactly. And I think, so we started, yeah, the project started with visioning. So we were sort of thinking, collecting ideas of what could happen. but then towards the end as we started to develop design proposals we had a prototyping event so we were thinking about how we could make these changes how we could make these improvements to the space so we put up these frames that went on the back of residence house the back garden and we thought about what we can attach those frames so we brought loads of cardboard into the lane and we're kind of cutting up and taping together cardboard to think about how we could make planters how we could make homes for wildlife what they might look like how we might construct them and I think that idea of sort of it had on experimental making as a way of sort of collecting ideas and starting to understand what's also possible within a space once you have a kind of vision for what you want to achieve is also something yeah I'm really interested within my practice but I'm also I really love doing again with children in terms of that sort of experimental creative approach to making.

SPEAKER_00: 27:59

What is the knowledge that you are trying to achieve with your PhD studies?

SPEAKER_01: 28:04

From an academic point of view within so there's ecofeminism which is this idea of how do we think with the more than human how do we create relationships of care between the human and the non-human and then within anthropology ideas of multi-species ethnography which is kind of similarly this idea of more than human storytelling how do we think with the more than human to understand our natural our kind of our existing ethnography our kind of culture and society and so these exist as kind of theories within academia but I'm really interested in what would it mean to try and practice that what would it mean to apply those ideas within a sort of a live environment so when we're thinking about what the kind of the nature of a place is what the culture of a place is how do we how can we think with the more than human and what does that bring to that process as a sort of as a practice opposed to as a kind of more of a theoretical theory and within this is I think this is really important this idea of you know how do we conceive or think about our relationship with nature and how does that start to inform how we're responding to things like the climate crisis responding to the kind of crisis around biodiversity and you know and the kind of our growing kind of concern about our relationship with the environment and there's in the next 50 years that's you know there's obviously got to be a huge amount of kind of change in how we we think about how we relate to nature and so yeah what does what would a practice of thinking with the more than human thinking with plants and animals within how we think about our natural environment what does how can that operate and how can that support the way in which we understand our relationship with nature and then develop actions, ideas, designs, proposals in response to that understanding of how we relate to nature. And then finally within the kind of Welsh context there has been a new piece of legislation called the Future Generations Act which is a really exciting amazing policy in Wales which has been which is kind of looking at this idea of how can we hold ourselves to accountable to our future generations so any action today must can't compromise the lives of future generations and in that there is a clean link with kind of young people and children as a future but also this idea of yeah how do we really hold ourselves accountable to the growing environmental crises that we're experiencing and again I think what's really amazing exciting about the future generations act is the sort of the commitment this is a sort of policy by Cardiff Council and now there's a lot of really exciting work exploring well what does that mean on the ground how can we hold ourselves accountable what how does that play out what does that actually really mean in terms of how we approach our kind of our built environments our rural areas how we approach transport how we think about kind of food and consumption and so I'm really interested in within sort of participation in CoSIM which is such an important bit of architecture and architectural design how do we think think about the natural resources and the effect that these these kind of proposed changes to the built environment will have on our natural resources. How can participatory processes develop and evolve to really address nature as a kind of stakeholder within this process?

SPEAKER_00: 31:21

Children will be very much part of that co-design and process-friendly design that you're looking at in your PhD.

SPEAKER_01: 31:28

Absolutely. So I suppose in a kind of Sunrise Young Life project, the fact we were working with child-friendly cities, that became a kind of focus for the work. But I think before that, I was already working a lot with children. I think they're really key in terms of co-design, how we work with others within sort of co-design processes, like I said before, in terms of their imagination. But then, like you say, I think in terms of the environmental agenda, it's really interesting how young people and children are the sort of forefront in terms of how are we going to live differently in the future? How can we develop more resilient and regenerative forms of living?

SPEAKER_00: 32:05

And become more conscious about the actions we do. Is there a question... should have asked you that I haven't asked you and what is that question?

SPEAKER_01: 32:14

You could ask me about my placement which I am currently completing in the Child Friendly Cities Department as part of Cardiff Council. So as I said before I met they funded the Playlanes project and I've been working with them around sort of developing this toolkit thinking about how which sets out a sort of framework for other residents to run co-design processes thinking about how they can improve the lanes at their back of their houses working with their their neighbors to create a kind of common vision for what this space could be like but within this toolkit I'm also interested in how at different points we can think about ecology think about moss as a way of thinking about the sort of natural environment nature that already exists in the lane and how we can support and improve it so this placement with child-friendly cities is looking at how maybe improving this toolkit toolkit getting feedback on the toolkit but also thinking about how this sort of method might sit within other sort of dispute processes within the council can be used within other sort of design processes where we we work with with groups I'm talking to different members of the council and thinking about how do they approach participation how might we kind of work with focus on young people and address the environment as part of those processes one thing I'm also doing so the other thing that that Child Friendly Cities does it sort of it supports develops projects that engage with young people within around their sort of the children's rights so Child Friendly Cities are looking at becoming the capital of play UNICEF's capital of play putting children's rights children's ability to inform and impact their built environment at the centre of that and so again I think you know how do you set processes that work with children are really important as part of that kind of design processes they also have the youth forum so this is a group of young people who meet monthly to give and they give feedback on the kind of policy and ideas that are being developed by the council and again I suppose what's really interesting with that is there's a really clear environmental agenda that's coming from those young people and they're sort of holding in some ways the council to account so they're kind of they're giving them feedback on the ideas that are emerging and also highlighting things that might be overlooked or need to be given more attention. I'm interested in working with young people to get feedback on the Playlanes document, so improving play spaces within the city at the back of residents' houses, but also developing participatory co-design methods, working with residents and neighbourhoods where we think about the more-than-human, the natural environment as part of those processes. We make that really key to how we're approaching designing and improving space.

SPEAKER_00: 35:07

Thank you for having me. Thank you very much to my guests today. To all the listeners and please subscribe to Architecture for Kids podcast and leave your rating and the review recommend us to your friends and family and to find out more about it visit our websites and follow us on Instagram Arch for Kids And please join me again next week for another episode of Architecture for Kids podcast brought to you in collaboration with the Built Environment Trust, the Thornton Education Trust and the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University.