MINECRAFT PARK DESIGN Enabling Communities to CoDesign Public

MINECRAFT PARK DESIGN Enabling Communities to Co-Design Public Spaces in Minecraft Newry 2020 Brian Cleland info@newry 2020. com

Minecraft Park Design Innovation The use of modern digital technologies - i. e. , Minecraft, virtual reality, social media - to enable radically citizencentred design for a large-scale infrastructure project will be unique within this region. These technologies will allow younger citizens to develop, design and promote their ideas online, enhancing the citizencentred nature of the project, as well as increasing community participation, civic pride and democratic engagement overall.

Minecraft Park Design approach Co-creation workshops will be hosted by local community groups and schools. Participants in the Minecraft competition will be encouraged to develop and implement their design ideas in a virtual environment. This will take place on the Minecraft platform, and will be carried out in small groups of 34 children per team. Selected teams from each school will present their ideas to the Council to inform the development of the project, and screenshots and maps will be shared online via social media. Members of the public will also be able to tour the designs using virtual reality headsets.

Minecraft Park Design Relation to the urbanscape Newry has historically suffered from political unrest, economic deprivation and a lack of infrastructural investment. The deteriorating urban environment has impacted quality of life for residents, particularly for younger and older people, as can be seen in various deprivation measures and in negative health impacts. The park project will tackle this problem head on, engaging citizens, community groups and the local authority in an innovative co-design process enabled by modern digital technologies.

Minecraft Park Design Scaling up prospects One of the most attractive aspects of this project is the potential to scale beyond the initial study area. The success of this project has already inspired plans to do a Minecraft project on the city centre in partnership with local businesses. Ultimately we hope that similar approaches will be adopted across the region, and potentially by any location in Europe where comparable development and engagement challenges exist. Image license: CC BY 2. 0 https: //www. flickr. com/photos/12742655@N 05/