Watershed Presents: Making the City Playable Conference, 10th – 11th September 2014 (Bristol, UK)

Featuring speakers from Google, Ogilvy, artists Luke Jerram and architect Usman Haque, this two-day international conference will explore the theme of the ‘Playable City’, asking what it might mean for citizens, urban planners, tech giants, small companies, artists and designers in imagining and making the cities of the future.

It will examine the growing global movement of unusual city interventions: from Stockholm’s Piano Staircase to Bogotá’s traffic mimes, these initiatives use playfulness to connect people to each other and the places they live and work. Playable City is a people-centred counterpoint to the notion of the Smart City, challenging public narratives around technology-driven cities which often feature a fear of isolation, or the extinction of community and conversation.

On the 10th and 11th September, we will be bringing together a brilliant group of thinkers, makers, planners and civil disobedients to look at cities as playable places and ask the question: how do we make and unmake our future cities?

The conference will feature playful interventions, networking, debate and discussion, an academic track, plus some artist commissions. Key speakers and practitioners include architect, artist and Umbrellium founder Usman Haque, Director of Google’s Creative Lab Tom Uglow and the makers of the inaugural Playable City award-winning project ‘Hello Lamp Post’, alongside an academic strand programmed by an inter-disciplinary, cross-university team of researchers from both UWE and the University of Bristol.

As part of the conference we will unveil Shadowing by Jonathan Chomko and Matthew Rosier, the winning project of the 2014 Playable City Award. This brand-new artwork will give memory to Bristol’s city street lights, enabling them to record and play back the shadows of those who pass underneath, inviting interaction between those who share a space.

For more information on the conference programme and speakers, visit Making the City Playable Conference.

Making The City Playable Conference (10th and 11th September 2014)
Watershed
1 Canon’s Road,
Harbourside
Bristol BS1 5TX