Street Policy: Could explorative urban behaviour shape spatial planning?

'Street Training', a project developed by artist Lottie Child over the past seven years, is a participatory performance based on the idea that our surroundings have a profound effect on our thoughts, behaviour and ways of being - and that we can mobilise those aspects of our selves to have an effect on our environment. environment. The project encourages participants to better judge how to behave in public spaces, explore the limits of social and anti- social behaviour, and gain more knowledge of themselves and the local environment.
Street Training has taken place in Linz, Sao Paulo, Berlin and London, most recently hosted by the South London Gallery. For some time the project has had its own life through open source web software and through participants becoming active street trainers themselves, building new teams of ‘trainers’ worldwide. Recently, Street Training has been deployed in discrete sessions in which Child, along with young users of public space, educate policy makers, law enforcers and planning officers.
Seven years of active Street Training have provided a rich evidence base for its benefits both on a personal and social level, from self-help to resistance. In collaboration with urbanist David Knight, the project is now investigating ways by which street training can intervene in the processes of urban and planning policy.
The paper will explore the history of Street Training as on-going exploration and experiment, situate it in a wider debate about the nature of urban life, and present the means by which the project might intersect with urban policy.