Co-designing With Minecraft
Langdale Street Co-design
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.
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.
Approach
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. You can read more about our approach in this blog.
Outputs and Impact
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.
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. We also won a Scottish Transport Award ‘Most Innovative Transport Project of the Year‘!