Young girls are overwhelmingly excluded from urban public spaces. Moreover, public spaces, like parks and multi-use game areas, are often planned and designed for stereotypical boys and young men. As a result, investments in facilities such as skate parks, BMX tracks, and football pitches almost entirely bennefit boys. We think the exclusion of girls and young women’s needs from the planning and designing of these public spaces is a problem and that girls and young women need to be involved in their public spaces through researching and mapping their own spatial experiences, having a voice in planning, and informing design.
This project hired ten girls and young women aged 16-24 across various sites in the UK to investigate these themes. It is a ‘research in residence’ style project – a paid learning and working experience – focusing on the needs of girls. It was delivered through a partnership between LSE Cities and the advocacy group, Make Space for Girls.
Participation in the project included undertaking a six-week curriculum to apply a critical lens to understanding and researching public space by conducting various social and spatial assessments of public space in participants’ local areas. The project, and its young researchers-in-residence, explored how girls and young women experience public space in their localities and imagined new ways of designing these spaces.
The primary aim of the project was to further explore an innovative participatory research method – the researcher-in-residence model for strategic design action at LSE Cities – advancing the concept where critical inquiry is informed by and responds to the experiences and needs of the people involved. This primary aim was therefore a methodological one asking how peer research can be done in practice.
The secondary aim was to share project research on the provision and access of public space for young girls and, working in collaboration with third sector partner organisation Make Space for Girls, to make a real-world difference through direct engagement with local authorities and stakeholders. The project, through a researcher-in-residence model with girls and young women, therefore both furthered a particular participatory spatial methodology while investigating the ways in which gender, age, design and public space intersect.
Outputs
Project Summary
Making Space for Girls, June-July 2022, Project Summary
Article
Are girls being designed out of public spaces? in Research for the World magazine issue 11, LSE, 15 November 2022
Film
Making Space for Girls, available to view on YouTube and LSE Player