TRADITIONAL ACADEMIC PAPERS, REPORTS, EVENTS
ART/PLAY/RISK is an interdisciplinary project providing new creative and scholarly research into public art’s role in the design and planning of intergenerational future-cities. Below are academic outputs from the project’s participants.
Book chapter:
‘Skate and Collaborate: Carving Spaces to Create and Educate Through Sociology, Performance and Interaction Design, and Public Art’
Willing, I, Mestrom, S, Loke, L and Odlum, N (2025)
for Hölsgens, S (ed) Skate and Educate: Pedagogies of Skateboarding. University of Groningen Press.
Co-Authored Paper
‘Spatial Justice and The Power of Urban Play: Skateboarding and Skateable Public Art as a Case Study for Creative Disruptions’ (2024)
Co-authored paper with Dr Sanne Mestrom, Dr Indigo Willing, A/Prof Lian Loke and Nadia Odlum, TASA annual conference, Perth, 28 November 2024.
https://www.tasa.org.au/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=671860&module_id=654275
‘Skate and Collaborate: Rolling Out Gender Equity’
Presented by Dr Indigo Willing on co-authored paper with Dr Sanne Mestrom, A/Prof Lian Loke and Nadia Odlum, ‘International Women in Sport Symposium 2024’, Western Sydney University, Convened by Dr Jessica Richards. 9 August 2024:
https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/wbrc/events/iwss_2024
Play Beyond Playgrounds Symposium Report
Mestrom, Sanné
Odlum, Nadia
DOI 10.25910/t1bp-1953
Permalink https://hdl.handle.net/2123/32777
2024-07-11
This report documents the proceedings and findings of the two-day symposium 'Play Beyond Playgrounds: Rethinking the role of public art in urban play' held at the University of Sydney on Thursday 30th November and Friday 1st December 2023. Comprising of keynotes, panel discussions, workshops and site visits this dynamic interdisciplinary event brought together experts from public art, urban planning, landscape architecture, academia, child development, and urbanism to collaborate, converse, grapple and play. Led by visual arts researchers Dr. Sanné Mestrom and Nadia Odlum from ART/PLAY/RISK and the University of Sydney, in partnership with leading landscape architect firm ASPECT Studios, this symposium challenged the status quo of urban play, asking the crucial questions: How can we harness the transformative power of play in public life to create better future cities, empowering individuals and communities? And what role can public art and design play in this vital transformation? The findings presented in this report advocate for the role of playable public art in shaping a city that empowers individuals of all ages to thrive and grow.
2024 SYMPOSIUM
CITY CANVAS: Public Art, Urban Play, Creative Sports
Convened by Sanné Mestrom, University of Sydney
17th - 18th October 2024
City Canvas, an interdisciplinary symposium that envisions the city as a dynamic playground, where public art and creative urban sports converge to create rich potential for urban play, with a special focus on the needs of young adults and other non-traditional users of public space.
Co-hosted by ART/PLAY/RISK, led by artist and academic Dr. Sanné Mestrom with Nadia Odlum, in partnership with the Skate, Create, Educate, and Re-Generate initiative, led by skateboarder and scholar Dr. Indigo Willing, this event challenges us to transcend traditional boundaries and reimagine our urban landscapes.
Building on last year’s symposium "Play beyond Playgrounds,” which focused on the child’s right to the city, we now turn our focus to the civic agency of young adults to ask: How can we harness the transformative power of public art and creative urban sports to empower adolescents and create more inclusive cities? And how can we use these mediums to address the underrepresentation of young women, non-binary individuals, and other non-traditional users of urban spaces?
With skateboarding's Olympic debut and the rising popularity of other creative urban sports like BMX, parkour, and break dancing, we stand at a crucial juncture. There's an urgent need to increase engagement, foster diversity, and create spaces that welcome all, especially as studies show a decline in activity levels among adolescents transitioning into adulthood.
City Canvas embraces an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together experts from public art, urban planning, landscape architecture, and creative urban sports to collaborate and innovate.
Through keynotes, panel discussions, and interactive workshops, we'll explore how public art can serve as a key methodology to transform typically unwelcoming urban landscapes into inclusive canvases for creative expression and play, particularly for young adults and non-traditional participants in urban sports.
By integrating the transformative power of public art with the dynamic energy of creative urban sports, we aim to create new urban environments that encourage creativity, social connection, and resilience among young people. This symposium is about reimagining spaces and empowering young adults of all backgrounds to thrive and grow in our increasingly high-density cities.
For more information on the symposium, click here.
2023 SYMPOSIUM
PLAY BEYOND PLAYGROUNDS: Rethinking the Role of Public Art in Urban Play
Convened by Sanné Mestrom, University of Sydney
30th Nov - 1st Dec 2023
Imagine a city where play is not confined to traditional playgrounds, but permeates every corner of the urban landscape, creating a vibrant and dynamic environment that encourages creativity, social connection, and resilience.
Typically, conventional playgrounds of today offer limited scope for exploration and growth, with children often following predictable paths, devoid of challenge, cooperation or risk-taking opportunities, so vital to their health and development.
We believe in transcending these limitations by embracing an interdisciplinary approach that brings diverse knowledges together to reimagine the urban environment, with public art and bespoke design as central players.
In Play Beyond Playgrounds, we challenged the status quo of urban play, asking the crucial questions: How can we harness the transformative power of play in public life to create better future cities, empowering individuals and communities? And what role can public art and design play in this vital transformation?
This two-day symposium was designed to explore the need for play-beyond-playgrounds in our increasingly high-density cities.
Comprising of keynotes, panel discussions, workshops and site visits this dynamic interdisciplinary event brought together experts from public art, urban planning, landscape architecture, academia, child development, and urbanism to collaborate, converse, grapple and play.
Led by visual arts researchers Dr. Sanné Mestrom and Nadia Odlum from ART/PLAY/RISK, in partnership with leading landscape architect firm ASPECT Studios we advocate to shape the new playable city that empowers individuals of all ages to thrive and grow.
For more information on this project, click here.
AAANZ CONFERENCE
‘Unconscious Demonstrations of Freedom: Children’s Behaviour in Public Places’ can be viewed here.
Dr Sanné Mestrom and Nadia Odlum presented in the Art Association of Australia & New Zealand annual conference, as part of the panel ‘Coaxing chaos: spontaneous demonstrations in contemporary art.’
ABSTRACT
Public spaces in cities influence and shape how we inhabit and move through them. Michel Foucault characterises modernity through a distribution of power, agency and gazes. Public spaces as panoptic regimes of visibility and order can be understood as reinforcing power and domination through their linear spatial organisation, but they can also offer potential sites of resistance and subversion. My research addresses how young children relate to public spaces in cities. Through play, they inhabit and unconsciously subvert the powerful exertions of the public realm in ways that we, as adults, find difficult to anticipate. Quentin Stevens suggests that most movements children make are spontaneous demonstrations of freedom and imagination. Trying to understand how public spaces shape us, by analysing them through the eyes of a child, may give us the tools to ‘fight back’ against the power these spaces exert over us. Drawing on extensive observation of behaviours in public spaces, my research findings suggest that even the most innocuous doorway or gutter can be a site for play, resistance and power. Indeed, my own art practice (public sculpture) explores the way we can embed these unpredictable child-led demonstrations into ways of thinking about public space.
URBAN ART, PLAY AND RISK
Dr. Sanné Mestrom Urban Art, Play and Risk
Presented as part of the Performing the City symposium, this paper reflected on the growing interest in presenting art outside of the gallery/museum context, examining the opportunities and implications of complex interdisciplinary relationships between art, landscape architecture, urban planning and the social sciences, as they redefine the role of public art in the move towards people-centred place-making.
2021 SYMPOSIUM
Performing the City
Online symposium Friday, 7 August 2020.
Convened by Sanné Mestrom, University of Sydney
This one-day symposium explored the current—and changing—role of creative disciplines in bringing urban communities together, driving conversations, and nurturing senses of place. Through a combination of presentations, provocations and a workshop, the program reflected on the growing interest in presenting art outside of the gallery/museum context, examining the opportunities and implications of complex interdisciplinary relationships between art, landscape architecture, urban planning and the social sciences, as they redefine the role of public art in the move towards people-centred place-making. With backgrounds ranging from digital design to sculpture, urban planning, and performance studies, presenters explored how sharing creative and innovative research in the arts can contribute to learning, civic debate, placemaking and community engagement.
KEYNOTE: Dr. Quentin Stevens, RMIT University, Architecture and Urban
Design Urban play: a dialogue between people and environments
RESPONDENTS
Dr. Sanné Mestrom | Urban Art, Play and Risk
Dr. Luke Hespanhol | Online and Blended Public Spaces
Dr. Ian Maxwell | Affordances, habits, practices and rituals: towards thinking about performance, performativity, and performing the city
For more information on this project, click here.
Book Proposal
Willing, I, Mestrom, S, Odlum, N and Loke, L (proposal in development) 'Skate and Collaborate: Co-Creating Skateable Cities' - working title.
THE JOURNAL OF PUBLIC SPACE
‘Snakes and Ladders’ a collaborative public art project between Digby Webster and Nadia Odlum, was was included as a case study in the Journal of Public Space special issue ‘Universally Accessible Public Spaces for All’.
This paper was co-authored by Nadia Odlum and Morwenna Collett.
To read this paper click here.
For more information on this project, including a ‘making of’ video, click here.