The Doorstep Realm Project by Amelia Dray

In this Blue Sky Republic Editorial Newsletter theme of Education, I have stumbled across “The Doorstep Realm” — a Design project by Amelia Dray exploring children’s everyday acts within the frame of Democratic Experimentalism, how adults can support the possibility of further emerging child cultures.

The project argues that children have limited opportunities to engage within a wide range of public spaces. Due to this, children’s current opportunities for participation in a democracy are limited by spatial infrastructure.

With the reflection of different examples of map-making and material investigations, Amelia continued to navigate and recognise the possibilities of spaces where children can exert their presence and their culture in ways that are not shaped by adults. Child-led tours of the child’s own neighbourhood and creating mapping workshops within schools were conducted as part of her Design research.

This diagram shows the material form and affordances of the mapping loose parts. From the first mapping in the doorstep realm to the next versions for the school workshops, to the loose parts where qualities of the tools were used to shape the final design. The material investigations throughout the project evolved gradually through an iterative process and making and testing with children.

Rather than defining children’s acts of democracy, this project aims to outline possible ‘prisms’ — the metaphor of framing, to support further exploration of being with children’s capacities for experimentation in public space and to catalyse a conversation and further dialogue around how we might imagine the future of democracy.

Throughout the process of Design research, Amelia has identified the six prisms of children’s democratic acts, which are:

1. Dancing between story and reality
2. Making decisions based on joy
3. Physically and imaginably reappropriating spaces and things
4. Leading adults and directing their own play decisions
5. Iterating different ways of playing with the same thing
6. Collaborating with humans and non-humans

Amelia mentioned in her thesis that the ‘prisms’ of children’s acts of democracy do not point towards a destination for children, but are a way to reflect on our own design decisions and how we, adults, can support children as the active, experimental makers of culture they are. Adults can play the role of active listeners and environment enrichers to materially and socially support the emergent cultures of children in public spaces.