In June 2021, we had the absolute pleasure of working with Sustrans Scotland, St Paul’s Youth Forum, and St Philomena’s Primary School (in north-east Glasgow), on a pilot placemaking project to engage local children using game Minecraft. Working with a team of 10 budding young designers, we alternated between site visits, group discussions, and using Minecraft to explore designs for a new public square in neighbouring Langdale Street. The Minecraft world included a faithful rendering of the local area, with local landmarks and many of the children’s homes.
Engagement with children is usually based around seeking reactions or tweaks to adults’ pre-hashed ideas, rather than birthing original ideas from children’s lived experience. In fact, even when children do propose original ideas, it can be difficult to show wider stakeholders what this would look like in practice. What can result is a dismissal of children’s proposals as imaginative, but unrealistic.
Minecraft therefore immediately struck us a way to really show what children can contribute and enhance discussions with wider stakeholders. Another truly exciting benefit is that many children are incredibly adept at this game already. It’s use thus really puts children in control, and enables their creativity and vision to shine.
Assembling our Design Team
Children applied for the team via a job application, where they were asked what motivated them to take part. Successful applicants included boys and girls from senior years, and both Enhanced Nurture Provision and mainstream pupils. We didn’t select pupils based on knowledge and interest in Minecraft, rather we brought together a team that were all motivated by an opportunity to use their imaginations to improve their community for everyone. You can find out more about the pupils’ motivations in this article in The Glasgow Times.
The first session of the project involved a site visit – in high-viz jackets and clipboards – to make notes about the area. Everyone agreed that making the street cleaner, more beautiful, and addressing dangers of speeding traffic were important objectives. We then returned to the school to begin building and developing ideas in Minecraft, where the pupils were assisted by helpful nonplayer characters representing a town planner, an engineer/builder, an architect, an artist, and a landscape architect.
Working on Designs
The second and third sessions involved continuation of our blended approach – engaging in site visits to clarify, discuss, and affirm needs; discussing the objectives of a good quality place and design; and working as a team to develop proposals for the new public square and local area that could be shared with the community in a wider consultation process. We were also joined by members of the St Paul’s Youth Forum team, and a local councillor who truly enhanced the discussion and helped the team focus on the wide range of factors that need to be considered in design.
We noted that pupils unfamiliar with Minecraft at the start learnt to use it quickly and all were bringing their ideas to life by the end of the first session. Meanwhile, switching between different modes of engagement significantly enhanced the discussion, and led to effective group collaboration (despite not all the children knowing each other beforehand!).
Outputs
The urban design team developed a range of ideas and proposals within a very short period. These include, but were not limited to:
- An emphasis on food growing and opportunities to experience nature in the community, including in the school grounds.
- Enhanced play provision – including a slide, climbing frame, sandpit, a secret base and several designs for gazebos and treehouses.
- Affordable food and drink purchasing opportunities, and food-related community events.
- Several designs for a bridge that would celebrate the community and provide views and space for social activity – there was strong support for this being a rainbow bridge to celebrate diversity and inclusion, as well as bring colour to the local landscape.
- Creative designs for bins, and ways to encourage the community to keep the local area clean.
You can view the children’s ideas here. These are now part of the local consultation on next steps for the local Places for Everyone scheme, funded by Sustrans Scotland with support from Transport Scotland.
Named ‘Flourishing Molendinar’, the scheme will bring to life new infrastructure and placemaking that align with the Places for Everyone aims of creating safe, attractive, healthier places and increasing the number of trips made by walking, wheeling and cycling for everyday journeys. The programme also aims to make it safe and easy for young people to move around their communities independently, by designing infrastructure that can be used by an unaccompanied 12-year-old.
We loved working with St Paul’s Youth Forum and St Philomena’s Primary School, and they were recently Highly Commended for this project in The Learning for Sustainability Awards!
Blended Approaches for Quality Engagement
We learnt a lot by piloting Minecraft in this small project, and instantly saw the advantages of using it as a creative sandbox for bringing ideas to life. However, more than that we learnt the value of mixing virtual approaches with real on-the-ground engagement and discussion of constraints and priorities in situ. Rather than running ‘Minecraft projects’ where use of the game is the main interest and driver, we now seek to run engagement projects that use Minecraft as a tool to enhance a broader process of meaningful participation.
We are now using what we’ve learnt to develop further projects and look forward to seeing how Minecraft can contribute to enriching our understanding and implementation of child-friendly environments. Get in touch if you have a project idea you’d like to discuss!