So it’s time to get our tech-hats on and work out which of your ideas will really make Coventry a more playable city!

We’ve been exploring ideas to see if they are viable, testing technology, hacking speakers, soldering electronic boards, chatting with super-smart software guys & gals – and even doing a tour of all the bins in Coventry City Centre (a very ‘interesting’ day for our hard-working intern!).

And, finally – we have it! A list of 4-5 really exciting tech-play installations that we’re going to work our little socks off, with the help of some tech-savvy friends & artists to bring to life in Coventry between the 16th-22nd of October…

But we’re not giving anything away just yet…so keep your eyes and ears peeled for more Open Citizens news coming your way soon!

We’ve had over a 20 prototypes on display that were designed and created by the people of Coventry in workshops with Ludic Rooms over the last few weeks. It was a hard task to whittle down the 100+ models/ideas that came out of the workshops, but in the end we have an exciting series of prospective tech-play installations, including:

• bikes that go faster the louder you shout
• a disco bus stop
• steps that light up in different colours depending on the time you stand on them
• a giant arm that jumps out of the river to keep you safe
• a massage bench that rewards communication
• a series of lamposts that light up in different colours as you run between them

And so many, many more…plus we’ve also been adding in new prototypes as the exhibition has progressed. Members of the public have had the chance to make their own models when they’ve been in to see the exhibition. We’ve also held some more workshops in the space that have produced even more exciting ideas (a whoopey cushion bench…)

We’ve had two evening events in the CET building whilst the exhibition has been open. The first was a really exciting event for Coventry, and something that we were particularly excited to be involved in; Ludic Rooms, together with IDP & Coventry University School of Art & Design held an Urban Room; an experimental event to explore how urbanists and artists can make the city more playable and rediscover some of its lost spaces. The event was an opportunity to discuss the potential for an Urban Room project in Coventry and included a talk by Claire Tymon; the founder of Urban Rooms Blackburn and Director of Placeshakers; a social enterprise to creatively bring about change in the built environment.

We also held a City of Culture 2021 bid sponsors event, which gave us a great opportunity to meet some of the lovely faces behind the range of companies that are supporting Coventry in its bid to City of Culture – we even put them through the ringer with an Open Citizens prototype workshop – and you could definitely spot the engineers! Such a great night!

The space is so exciting – there is a boardroom upstairs that’s clad in teak, printing machines the size of small houses and a print hall so big you could easily fit a swimming pool (or two!) in there – we’d definitely recommend getting yourself down here to take a look, self-guided tours available on Saturdays 11-4, with the added benefit of our awesome prototype exhibition in the foyer at the moment too…

We’re putting the final touches on the exhibition set up now, almost ready to open to the public in a few short days + EXCITING NEWS: we’ve added a workshop area to the space, so now you can drop by, take in the inspiration from the other prototypes and make one of your own!

See you here….

The idea generation is in full flow, from disco bus stops to information posts that give off scents, and everything else in between…we’ve got plenty of top notch ideas to go into our forthcoming prototype exhibition at the CET building next week. The creativity of both the ideas and designs are astonishing, it’s certainly going to be difficult to whittle the ideas down to the 3-5 live interactive installations that will be donning the streets of Coventry in October.

For now, we’re going into exhibition prep-mode – we’ve got to take all of your shiny models and curate them into an exhibition that will open at the CET building on Saturday the 1st of July. We’ll be hosting a variety of events and workshops throughout the two weeks that the exhibition is open – so make sure you pop in and take a look at what we’ve been up to…and of course, join in and let us know how you would make Coventry a more playable city!

The news is out! We’re screaming from the rooftops. We have been selected as Digital Artists in Residence for Coventry’s UK City of Culture 2021 bid.

We’ll be hosting a series of workshops in the next few weeks, working with different community groups to imagine playful interactive artworks that could make the experience of travelling through Coventry a bit more fun. Then this autumn, we’ll be turning a handful of Coventry’s ideas into reality.

We want to engage a city of creators, working with people to represent their experiences and creating work that sparks the imagination of local people. It’s sometimes the small things that you remember and make you smile, not necessarily the huge spectacle. Our aim is to encourage people to think differently, to look at, for example, a bus stop, how we can use that differently, digitally and how everyday life might look in a future city. Our creative process will be taking the public’s ideas – these moments of magic – and making them a reality.

You can read all about it in the Coventry Telegraph here:

http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/whats-on/arts-culture-news/digital-artists-ludic-rooms-bring-13176992

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If the last few years have taught us anything, it should be that democracy is more complicated than asking people a binary question. That creates instability, uncertainty, and a dangerous space where bad ideas rise to the top. We need every citizen to understand issues, interrogate policy, question authority, and find local solutions to global problems. This week, I spent a couple of days working with Ludic Rooms, to look at how their Open Citizens projects start to find ways to create such an enabled, empowered and emboldened citizenship..

The Coventry-based studio are now working on their second Open Citizens project, and it’s important to understand that this is less a distinct project, more a methodology which underpins a series of projects. Open Citizens encourages people to start to understand problems at a local level, to try and test ideas that use technology to fix them, and through that process understand more about how citizenship might look in the near future. Ludic Rooms are particularly interested in the idea that we live in a postdigital world; that is, where there was once a clear line (maybe…) between the ‘digital’ and the ‘real’ world, that divide no longer exists. So their projects combine cardboard and computing.

The current Open Citizens project was commissioned by the team behind Coventry’s bid for UK City of Culture. It is funded by a range of local commercial bid partners as well as Arts Council England.

It looks at Coventry’s city centre. The area is in a process of renewal as a large amount of new student accommodation is either retro-fitted into existing property (an old hotel, the spaces above shops) or built on brownfield sites. Across the city, old buildings are getting new life, and a scattering of cranes and concrete stair cores indicate the sites of new towerblocks.

I first worked with Ludic Rooms founder Dom Breadmore in 2009, when I was commissioned to produce a Void Space Strategy for the city. In that work, I found a people-scaled city, full of pedestrian spaces forming distinct areas. Most importantly, I identified key areas which, if activated, could create better routes through the city. Some of that is starting to be addressed and looking at Coventry’s skyline is like watching a digital graphic equalizer as a song builds to a climax.

So Open Citizens is going to enter this contested and changing space, looking at the public space between and around these buildings. It will look at how people move around that permeable city centre. It will identify where they stop, pause and take breath. And then, by making people’s behaviours visible, it will create simple ways to change behaviours and encourage people to understand how they both own and share space. In doing that, it will gently challenge and question the gradual privatisation of such city centre spaces.

I’ve helped Dom and his Ludic Rooms team refine the first stage of their project, as Open Citizens starts this month with a series of focused conversations with people who use the city. These may include taxi drivers, shopmobility users, and customers in shops and cafes. These conversations will form an experiential evidence base which when retold will inspire people in a series of workshops with targeted local groups. In the workshops, participants will be asked to use everyday materials – cardboard, tape, string and glue – to create objects which, when placed in public spaces, could change people’s behaviours.

Alongside this, a mass of data will be collected using simple questions on postcards, distributed as widely as possible through existing networks like offices and schools. This work, based loosely on the Mass Observation movement started by anthropologist Tom Harrisson, poet Charles Madge and filmmaker Humphrey Jennings, is a technique I’ve often used, and it is a simple but powerful way to start more complex conversations.

This broad data, and the rough objects made in workshops, will be exhibited in the old Coventry Evening Telegraph (CET) building in June-July. Visiting this vast office building and old printworks this week was a reminder that we’ve lost an important element of local citizenship in just a few years. Staffed properly, with trained and experienced journalists under a real editor, the local paper was a vital part of the city’s democratic structure. Today, most local papers are clickbait factories with few staff and no local presence. Open Citizens use of the CET building will echo this earlier use, allowing people to see the city (possibly through a temporary Urban Room), reflect on it, and have a role in saying what comes next.

After the exhibition, the objects and the data collected will head back to the Ludic Rooms studio in the old Canal Basin Warehouse, whereas lead artist Dom will work with further associate artists and backroom boffins to create working prototypes which will head out into the city’s public spaces in October.

Here in Margate, with a dysfunctional Ukip-led council and crushing poverty existing alongside an affluent class of new London incomers, it’s obvious that we need tools that help people to become active citizens more than ever. I’ll be watching Open Citizens. Two days in Coventry has reminded me what a great city it is. While part of that is down to good postwar civic planning and beautiful midcentury architecture, it’s mostly down to people.

“What is the city but the people?
True,
The people are the city.”

Dan Thompson, Dan Thompson Studio, 19th May 2017