Her City - Making Women Visible In The Design Of Open Spaces

A Festival of Social Science Event

What’s on offer?

Two workshops to empower the local women in Leeds in designing and shaping the built environment for a better and safer community (20-25 participants each session).   The face to face workshops will be split into two age range groups between (16-25 year olds) and (25-70 year olds).

The workshops will be run within the comfort zone of the participants to be able to capture their thoughts and ideas freely without restrictions.

The duration of the session will be around 90 minutes between the briefing and the introduction to the actual session itself.  Participants will be split into groups.

What’s it about?

This event focuses on how residents particularly women can contribute in shaping the areas they are living in, working and socialising to help make places that they would belong to. Local communities,  practitioners, and all the different decision-makers should be able to work together in an inclusive approach to shape their surrounding environment. A new theme is being added to Leeds's police and crime plan: making sure women and girls are safe. So, it's important to include and listen to what girls and women have to say.

Participants will use a variety of art supplies to draw about safe public open spaces in Leeds that make them feel good and let their emotions out. These pictures will let their inner feelings and thoughts come out and tell their own stories. After that, they will put together a collage map that will be an art installation. In the second part of the workshop, participants will mark dangerous areas on a map with coloured pencils, which is a very important task for people who are familiar with Leeds's public open spaces and being part of their daily lives.

Who’s leading the event?

Dr May Newisar - University of Leeds

Open to

Women and girls

Of particular interest to

We would like to engage all sections of society precisely women and girls from different ethnic groups who are familiar with and have lived in Leeds to understand the nature of its public open spaces and the issues around safety and security for women and girls.

Event booking deadline 15th October 2023