I was wandering around looking for joyful, creative behavior in the afternoon. Then I bought a large sheet of paper and a pencil, sat in the last of the evening sunlight in a calle off Via Garibaldi and began to map the area. A boy came up to me and was asking me what I was doing, we tried really hard to communicate and the language difference meant that I started clowning and gesturing more than usual. He went off to the other end of the Calle and began playing with his tennis racket and ball against the wall of his house. I went and watched him and stood around awkwardly.

Visit Villa Frankenstein the website of the Britsih Pavilion in Venice to see the fruits of Street Training research in Venice. http://villafrankenstein.com/child-in-the-city/street-training/

Venice Street Training August 28th

Introduction

Welcome to your Street Training program. Street Training is a name for all the joyful, funny, subversive, responsive or poetic things people do as we use the streets. And everyone does things over and above just walking down the street with your walking down the street face on, going shopping and going to work as fast as possible. What do you do? Imagine what people are thinking, stop to smell flowers, secretly race people?

On the 28th August Via Garibaldi will also be the Waste in Mile end E1 London. The two streets run west to east and children do some of the same things there. The differences in the two places will be highlighted as I demonstrate the behaviours I've learnt in Mile End from my Neighbour who is seven on Via Garibaldi with local children and architects.

Walking with Venetians Elena and Luca

I met with a group of Venetian teachers in June to explore ways in which drawing and close looking can be applied in new ways in their teaching. I wanted to provide an opportunity for them to look again at the area around Via Garibaldi, introduce them to the British pavilion and the work of muf for the architecture Biennale. We worked with the Biennale education department to enable these links with local schools. This is the first time an architecture practice, exhibiting at the Biennale, has worked with local schools.

Are there things about the design of a public space, street, square or alley that encourage certain behaviours? How do the built infrastructure and the social infrastructure relate?

Ten years of research into people’s approaches to safety and joy in city streets is now applied in Venice, Italy in collaboration with muf architecture\art as part of the Venice Architecture Biennale.

On the 8th June I delivered a Street Training workshop with the support of Amy Pettifer and Viola Carnelutti from muf architecture/art to a group of 25 school children. The session began with an explanation of how joy shapes cities and young people and children are experts on joyful behaviour. I explained that was why I wanted to learn with them so as to gather their ways of being in the street and pass them on during the architecture biennale.