Collision

Imagining the future of our high streets with young people

The app allowed users to create a flag, take it out into the world, and plant it

Overview

This piece of work was a commission from Manchester-based arts and technology organisation FutureEverything. As part of their this place [of mine] project, I took part in workshops with young people across Greater Manchester to imagine their future high streets. In response to these workshops, I created an online creative experience called “Collision”.

When worlds collide

The intro animation created for the application

During my conversations with them, I learned that young people had no sense of ownership of their high streets, which they felt were lacking colour and creative opportunities. In discussions about online worlds such as Roblox – which they frequently inhabited – I learned that online spaces offer freedom of creativity and play, something that was missing from their own environments. In the words of one of the young people, they would like to see a “collision” of their physical and online worlds.

Creating an online art creation tool

Flags could be as simple or complex as participants wanted, with curated palettes sourced from Lospec.com

During the workshops, the young people were invited to create abstract digital artworks using a variety of online tools. Seeing how positively they responded to these activities, I was inspired to create a short online creative experience of my own for them to experiment with.

“Planting a flag” is a centuries-old practice used to claim ownership of places. They also act as markers of human endeavour, with the act of planting a flag being just as symbolically important as the colours borne by them. The resulting experience that I created invited the people of Greater Manchester to design and plant their own flags in places that have personal significance to them.

I created a virtual twin of the region in Roblox, which was mapped to the GPS coordinates from Leigh to Stalybridge. The flag designer was a simple pixel art tool accessed via a web browser. Once participants were happy with their flags, they could go out into the world and plant them using their phones. These would then appear in the Roblox flag space, where participants were invited to visit and explore, turning the entire city into a DIY art gallery for people to explore and contribute to.