This weekend provided Crazy Dames the opportunity to explore and play and we want to thank Sparkbox Studio for providing the perfect playground.

We still want to look back and reflect on our questions: Could our conversations and creations shape the vision for the County? How can our stories and experiences of place be reflected in our future spaces? Do these exploratory workshops focused on our spaces better connect us with community and our physical surroundings? 

This mini workshop series was an experiment in thinking through these questions - Perhaps by honouring these everyday experiences, planners and city-builders can begin to think about spaces in new ways. Or it may be that by highlighting a diversity of people and how they experience our environments in such different ways can push us to consider these distinct perspectives when designing our physical spaces.  Most importantly, these workshops provide new ways of communicating with citizens, connecting them to our cities and asking them to consider how they can participate in public life in a way that could potentially better it. 

 “In great cities, spaces as well as places are designed and built: walking, witnessing, being in public, are as much part of the design and purpose as is being inside to eat, sleep, make shoes or love or music. The word citizen has to do with cities, and the ideal city is organized around citizenship – around participation in public life.” - Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking