Resident data collection - Public art workshop & campaign - Planning Aid For London - "ART-OPOLY"
On behalf of Planning Aid for London, WeTheSeeds were asked to collect resident data from the community of The London Borough of Harrow via an engaging public art workshop.
With Planning Aid for London aims being that they wanted to engage local stakeholders in order to offer ideas on both the built environment and residential urban planning in an alternate means to typical community outreach - sparking creative, front-line ideas from adults and children.
The "ART-OPOLY" campaign
The process
We wanted to break free from the preconceptions of a stereotypical artistic painting workshop. We found that engaging multiple stakeholders for the project’s success meant for us to create an art activity which would be more of an “experience” rather than a typical art workshop. This meant creating a public art activation which collected community data in a way in which guests could feel excited about, yet be efficient in it’s means to collect the resident data itself.
Our team proposed on the strategy of “ART-OPOLY” a creative play on the classic board game. Our idea was to formulate a fully immersive experience where guests could come and play a giant “street-art” board game in the public realm which helps to “re-imagine” the local area- thus collecting data in a creative way to inform town and country planning.
Our expert design team designed the giant board game board below, it was designed in a way in which meant that players would land on a tile which related to a topic, corresponding to a data point. For example: Green spaces, housing, environment, transport, local enjoyment and activities.
Alongside working side by side with our client in creating key questions, we translated each of these topics into “board-game friendly names” and introduced a colouring in square in the middle to attract young people into taking part in the community outreach workshop.
See the final giant game board design below:
Growing the seeds
Following our public engagement strategy, we set to work on creating sub-branding for the event, digital media and related copy (post-event day) in order to market the event outwards towards the local community.
Along with cross-posting on our social media channels, we ran local Facebook ads around Harrow Town Centre targeting residents to sign up via a bespoke landing page where they could pre-register for the event.
We created a Facebook and Eventbrite event page, sourced and posted media in local Facebook community groups and built relations to release out to local networks such as the Harrow Culture Forum newsletter, Harrow Online media channel, HA1 Business improvement district and the authority themselves.
Images of the media post-event can be found below:
Upon the event’s launch date, WeTheSeeds curated the giant board game board experience in real life, where residents could make their way around the board landing on the different tiles and answering interactive questions relating to the local built environment.
Upon answering a question, they would then have to draw a picture related to their answer on the game board itself within the time limit.
When players made their way all the way around the board, they would win a prize!
We curated the whole art activation experience within the busiest part of the town centre, applying for highway permits to bringing together the ascetics including the gazebo, balloons, staff and questionnaire sheets.
Lastly, we complied and fed back to the client with the data collected from the event.
We reached a vast demographic of both residents and visitors, all offering their own ideas on various planning-related topics. The event was a huge success, inspiring and bringing out key local ideas through the means of public art engagement!