Green Transition through Socially Engaged Arts: Addressing Climate Change By Capturing Cultural Value through ‘Roaming Rooms’ and ‘Public Map Platforms’ in Ynys Môn

Green Transition Through Socially Engaged Arts discusses feminist, arts based research, affective and site-specific engagement methods as tools to engage children and young people with public mapping processes. The methods and practices we discuss in this paper, have been developed as part of The Public Map Platform (PMP) research project. PMP is a two-year research initiative led by Cambridge University to make places in the UK better for the people who live there. The project is currently being piloted on Ynys Môn, North Wales. PMP proposes that engaging voices of diverse communities and representing data spatially on a public map platform accessible to all, enhances decision-making and resource allocation in pursuit of a socially just, green transition.

Lle Llais as a temporary, site-specific experience, comprises a pop up architectural installation, a multi-sensory activity journey and a programme of arts based activities. The aim of Lle Llais, is to create temporary relational and infrastructures that facilitate embodied, arts based experiences, inviting children and young people to share and map their knowledge and experience of specific cultural, social and environmental value.

In this paper, we discuss how feminist, arts based research, affective and site-specific engagement methods, offer relational and imaginary infrastructures with which to activate, listen to and map children and young people’s relationships with, and knowledge of, their cultural social and natural environments. We propose that the novel formation of the physical and relational infrastructure of Lle Llais, combined with a designated digital open public map platform, and the social artistic engagements that they facilitate and curate, can feed into social and cultural consultation with children and young people; methods of public engagement core to green transition processes.