The Production of Play: new forms for civic engagement within contested urban realms

Since 2012, I have run Public Interventions, a collaborative interdisciplinary platform for participatory art and design research projects concerned with the dynamics and practices of public spaces in relation to social and urban change. In this talk, I draw on previous projects such as Phantom Railings and The Garden Square (on the contested exclusivity of urban public space in England), WC1 (on the debates surrounding Victorian public toilets), and P|A|N (using bread as a vehicle of cross-cultural engagement), to show how artists can make visible the hidden histories and contestations embedded in the city's public spaces.