Greg Mews on Transforming Public Space through Play

Lukas: Where did you like to play as a child? I ask this question a lot because childhood memories shape us into the people we become. Welcome to Play It Forward, a worthy podcast. I'm your host Lukas Ritzen. Thanks so much for joining me. I talk a lot about play - I'm a dad, I'm a husband, I'm an educator and I'm a playground designer. So I want to gather some of my favorite people who are advocates of children and nature and create a space to have an honest conversation about getting more kids outside. The power of play is very often underestimated and I think we all need a little more play in our lives. Our next guest is considered a dear friend and also a teacher and researcher of landscape architect at Queensland University of Technology. He lectures at the Technical University of Berlin, YAO University, University of Canberra, University of Castle and University of New South Wales. Greg has received several high-profile research scholarships, 11 work-related works awards and is about to publish his next book entitled "Transforming Public Space Through Play" with Routledge. He is the founder of Urban Synergies Group and Urban Thinking Voice for the UN Habitat and fellow co-founder and director of the Australian Institute of Play. Today we're going to be talking about the state of play as a standard, what makes a good playground and there's a philosophical look at urban health and well-being. A big welcome into the studio Dr Greg Mews. We'll start off where we start off with all guests - a little walk down memory lane, a bit of storytelling. Where did you play as a child?

Dr Greg Mews: It's always a good one to start with. Yeah, where did I start? You can put it back - do you want early childhood or which stages? I mean I would probably give you probably an earlier rich version. Look, I spent most of my time - I grew up in Germany to begin with, probably you know figured out by my accent now. Yeah, that's it. So I grew up in just south of Berlin in a small town and spent quite a bit of time on the weekends often out in the country with my grandparents and they had a lovely big estate and a massive oak forest in front of the house. So I spent considerable time of my early childhood playing in that forest, but also because Germany, you know weather is not always that great, so spend quite a bit of time actually indoors but mostly at the attic - you know the old smoky, dusty attic, you know traveling around and creating imaginative worlds up there. So it's probably one - so very, very different because we don't have those major seasons but what I see the similarity between Australian, there is that need to be that secluded independence.

Lukas: And how did that - what's the leap between what happened between then and your passion to strike finding your realm and finding your feet in landscape architecture?

Dr Greg Mews: Well, you know to cut it short, probably it's the final of never growing up and just keep true to your spirit, right? And then how you can utilize that passion in a most useful way and you know externalize that energy where you can help and facilitate it.

Lukas: And you've had a bit of generational inspiration from your grandfather the musician. Tell us about that, it's a really lovely story.

Dr Greg Mews: Oh well, for a good part of my family they were quite artistic always, so in particular my great grandpa, he was quite into music. He was a conductor and had a chamber orchestra and so on. And he impacted a bit of the creative part of my life - not that I can actually become a good musician or anything, but what sparked is that sense of curiosity and I probably expressed more in art, you know given what I'm doing now and working in landscape architecture and more it's more with drawings and how we can create imaginative worlds. But as any kind of form of art, right, they have they elevate the human spirit and if you were exposed and viewed to with that kind of energy early in your life that definitely shapes who you become.

Lukas: And I like what you've mentioned in your TED talk about something along the lines of that he was so kind to everyone as well.

Dr Greg Mews: Yeah, that's my underlying character and that transforms into acts of kindness creating environments for people to thrive a few generations later.

Lukas: And also that conductor - a previous guest is the director of the National League of Cities in America and they're going in and doing green school yards and how to get cities and municipalities to work together to create thriving neighborhoods. And his previous, in his previous life before he got involved there, he was actually a conductor and classically trained. So these similarities carry across - the creativity, the kindness, the conducting that is necessary to create these urban environments. And then from - so you studied in Berlin and then what?

Dr Greg Mews: Well the thing is before I started in Berlin I actually spent time in the US and I studied art there. And then I went back to Berlin and studied planning and design - urban design. And then once I graduated then off I went again into the world and that carried me pretty much from the Caribbean to Central Asia, Kazakhstan, and then all the way now back to Australia.

Lukas: And what were you doing in those countries?

Dr Greg Mews: Well somehow if there is a line and narrative you'd like to follow in that regard, it's the passion for urban design and trying to facilitate conditions in which life can flourish, right? Interestingly enough, given that in the degree what I did is town planning - you know probably well in Australia - then you wonder, town planning, how often do we ever plan a town from scratch? I mean yes, Canberra is one, but you know how often does it actually in fact happen? So it's more a matter of scale and when you work at various different scales then you come back to the question of agency and where can you drive performative transformative change towards facilitating these nurturing conditions? Is it in a strategy, is it in an abstract master plan, or is it something where you have access to everyday life and transform meaning creation? And I always argue what we are doing within the spatial disciplines is almost we were part of the meaning market, so we're creating meaningful lives in that sense.

Lukas: That's awesome, I love that - the meaning creation. And that's why I wanted to have you on as well, it's around like every time I have a chat to you I walk away going I've got to find out more about that or even get my dictionary out going okay I'm not sure what that word was but I'll look it up. But I think there's so much to learn between looking at your expertise from these huge scales and then shrinking it right down - the macro versus micro - and shrinking it down to the realm of what we do and just the small play environments for early childhood. But you can see these similarities that carry across and the things like you know the nurturing strategy that you mentioned - that's integral for children's growth and then that meaning creation. So could you give us an example of nurturing strategy?

Dr Greg Mews: That's a good one. I mean let me start probably on a broader scale that more people can relate to. So we're all born into this material world which we're surrounded with, right? So we're arguing this is the external world. And then within that world you are living and breathing a world within that world and that is socially constructed through your parents, through your friends, through your work context, what you make, you know when you go to conferences. So it's a unique path how you experience life. And that world within the world is constantly changing because people come in and out, so it's but it's also quite unique how life itself reveals itself in front of your eyes and how you can engage with that world. And within the world, you know, and over time of course we're quickly modifying the broader world, but more agency sits within this smaller world within the world there. And when you go with that narrative and use your socially constructed world in there, you have a sense of agency to say yes or no to certain things - choices you make - and then cumulatively they shape the path of how you go through life. That starts arguably when you come into this world - there's no science coming out - that starts even before you becoming birth. You know of course the mother has already this nurturing relationship with you and it comes back always down to the environment - the environment from the internal to external if you want to work with it kind of dialectic. But or you actually leave that behind and you say what is it really what makes it whole. So if you have these kind of understanding that we are actually operating this socially constructed world within the larger world, that means we are constantly facilitating and changing this social constructed world. So often what we find is that that socially constructed world works adversely to conditions where nurturing childhood can occur and that is dynamic and always constantly changing. What we can look into is how - and that's more an existential question - how do we want to exist? And that's the question everybody can ask themselves: how do I want to exist in the world? Not tomorrow, not yesterday, but now. And through the conscious choices you make now you could create a different kind of future. And the choices we make of course, you know, can should be well informed with evidence and all these broader signs and based, but often we don't have the time to engage with that. Hence why you know podcasts are good format to break that down in small chunks and make it digestible to the audience. So it's more about how we can create these nurturing conditions in the socially constructed world within the world to achieve some better outcomes. And there can be deterministic or they can be quite open and ambiguous and it's really a question of what kind of life-giving forces you want to give energy to.

Lukas: That's what I wanted to have you on. So how much of that agency have we in recent times - are we automatically surrendering? You know we've got so much agency over that social construct because you were saying about those choices you make all the time, but the environment in which we live in, all of these external policies - is it leaning towards us just surrendering to our environment and being a product of the environment and just giving up on our own social choices?

Dr Greg Mews: That's a good question to ask and you know probably I can go into quite a bit of steps in that. There's a part of it which you can actually critique the concept of free will, right? Does free will exist or not? And I probably stick to my discipline in that sense and I would say the environment shapes us more than you might think. And everything what we're engaging when we have an urban way of life, for example, most everything what you see around itself, it has been some form or the other designed with some sort of conscious intent behind it. There are certain - and these forces they were pushed by certain powers at play and often the intent behind it, they probably compete, sometimes contradict, create tensions or create adverse outcomes for health. On the other hand, we're social species, we're geared towards convenience, have the easy life, and the easy life is not necessarily a question of upfront facing conflict and tensions, right? So if we are navigating through life the easy way, so to speak, we are giving up that certain liberty. So but that liberty is up to you.

Dr Greg Mews: to choose it every day or in every decision where you have agency over in the moment so do I eat ice cream do I not eat it, do I walk down the stairs do I take elevator, do I want to spend my half an hour in the park or do I want to spend my half an hour in front of the computer eating my life absolutely. I recently just finished reading Atomic Habits and it all breaks that down it's like that incremental little little choices and it's the hard choice to get the flourishing results and the easy ones that just get existing. A quote I heard it says if you want to be a mayor a conductor a politician whatever you want to be and your punishment for wanting to be that you'll become that and equally your punishment for not wanting to be anything is that you don't become anything. That's heavy and to go into the realm of playing and breaking that down and unpacking a bit what I try to convey to parents and families is that we want to create environments because environments will create behavior and we've kind of missed that a lot but we all know it's true it's like that relationship what the heart's always known to be true you kind of need a sentence sometimes to plunk it in the head and go that makes sense. For example you go into a restaurant and the lights are bright and it's loud and you're going to last two seconds in there and you want to get out of there opposed to a nice restaurant where you can sit you can actually hear each other the light's nice it's not hectic we know environments create behavior but we have just surrender and we do it in our home but why don't we think it on a bigger scale like people just defaulting into the suburbs of neighborhoods where there's no interaction and you have to drive everywhere and it doesn't seem to be community driven in a lot of circumstances where is that loss where have we lost that so you're arguing for that the environment creates behavior.

Lukas: You know that I go with it along with that but to a certain extent because there is the power of will. So let's say for example you walk down south bank right and you say oh okay this is great for walking here but then you come up with your skateboard and you use every curb and things which is not intended to be skated on but your willpower for play is there so you're actually changing through your behavior that environment it's a designed intent so it's always I think it goes a long way and it has something to do with conscious overwriting certain transgressive forms of behavior and when you do that there's a sense of consciousness behind it but also in play and that is the beauty of play it's such a broad ambiguous concept that you find nurturing joyfulness within that and that's a powerful tool which is a live game and enforcer what sparked your interest in play from doing it from the urban standpoint of urban planning design and then you found yourself in the play realm what was that.

Dr Greg Mews: Well you know you can either go with the Albert Einstein quote you know play as the highest form of research play where the whole universe is at play right and if you use that as almost as a life philosophy you know all what we're experiencing is just full of wonder and you have the opportunity to be open to that wonder in your everyday life and play is a great window to look at the work and it physically opens up our view and it physically opens up our view oh from the physiological point it makes perfect sense when you delve into the fulfillment it brings.

Lukas: Something I've been doing recently that people laugh at me instead of saying oh thanks so much when I leave I was telling people remember to have fun the reaction I get from people at service stations or any interactions remember to have fun they always say yeah good one but isn't it just the base of I'm glad you do why are we doing this otherwise and I understand and I'm not the one saying let's be happy all the time that's not real.

Dr Greg Mews: That's not real and that's the part of life it's a dynamic right so what we want to come from a space of genuine joy and I think same thing with happiness right happiness is such an elusive concept and you always in the fleeting moment you will have it and then it ceased to exist and that's almost that's why I always prefer to use the term well-being there's a constant nice undercurrent which keeps you steadily flowing and out of that you can have these sparks you know coming out of it and that creates a dynamic so the baseline of this nice flow being well that's where we want to be and not being so violent in spiking up and seeking happiness and then going into depression.

Lukas: Highlight the importance of happiness and that's the expectation I should be the culture of the should and I should be happy the other polarizing nature of that is what's the opposite because if I'm not one I'm the other what about joy what about reflection what about all these things they're not necessarily happiness it doesn't mean they're bad or depressed or depraved.

Dr Greg Mews: And coming back to your previous question which hence that to half of it is to the new suburbs right so you can arguably say well we're creating now planned master plan design products which take all the boxes let's say you know it's best-case scenario follow all the guidelines you have a nice open space system in there you have well-designed playgrounds or play spaces so to speak and everybody has a backyard and freestanding building the dream you know they're seeking to have but there's something which is inherently socially broken that's something the intangible and play for my understanding brings that in and then you can let's say look into an older more established suburb probably a few houses don't have necessarily the good open space system maybe have just a footpath or even no footpath but then for some reason there are a lot of kids playing on the streets right so then you think so what is the story here what is going on here and that brings that back to my earlier comment with which referred to the world within the world what kind of conditions nurturing conditions were involved here to create a socially constructed world within the world which facilitates it and that's where we have to pay attention and that's unfortunately because we're in the system geared so what's paying attention to materiality we lost that focus and play is a great opener if you want to understand life and possibility understand play.

Lukas: And it seems like we've created a culture of resourcing our satisfaction or resourcing our existence we need to have this thing that injects into us to make it feasible or make it any worthwhile and I know it's very we're going to the other end of the scale but in the end you can't take it with you you know you can have all of these trophies it's not going to matter and what about that joy along the way and that's the art of living.

Dr Greg Mews: There's a great French philosopher which I always use in some of my lectures he's a Marxist but he touches on and there is a subtle idealism in him and he described that concept the over so this is the state of existence when life becomes art it's a higher state of existence so you speak but if you say play is the art of existence so then that is essentially the over and if we can create and facilitate conditions where not just you or me but everybody can achieve that over within that external material world which is not equally distributed to everyone but everybody has that possibility and why do we deny that why do we have generations of adults which literally forgotten how to play I mean how do they want to move and have find joy in life if they have not founded spark or perhaps maybe in a formalized way let's say with sports or so you know they're dedicating it to a fraction of time it's part of their weekly routine that's when they're allowed to have play but what on earth led to that kind of condition where we created a system which just allows us to you know be joyful in a certain moment what do you think it is what is the contributor to that.

Lukas: Oh I have some thoughts about that you know probably because I'm using a lot of these post Marxist theory it helps me to understand that in the contemporary conditions of the markets how it all works and how we can modify and enable them products like these new suburbs right so it's really that we've to extend on a larger scale if you generalize we're society probably we lost a bit the way we've we drifted too much into materiality I always say we lost the materiality and each one can ask itself like how far do we identify with material things there there's nothing wrong with them you know you can enjoy a nice experience and all this but the thing is not to get too close to attached and that's the art of play in life right you enjoy whatever it is and when you played enough with it then you're moving on so they're not no hard feelings and that's the beauty about children often in most cases they're very forgiving they're of course there's a dark side of play when they're rough together but then they learn something about life so the early phases when they negotiate the rules for life right everything is ambiguous open and you co-create it to an extent because of course they have been genetically imprinted in certain programs of how to make sense of the world but in the earlier stages they're much more open and that's the beauty of it so if you understand how children play you become more attuned to the possibilities of life if you choose to give them space and time.

Dr Greg Mews: It reminds me of that story of Picasso walking through the square the lady says draw me a picture he does a scribble he says what is this a child could do this he says it's taken me 30 years of practice to be able to do it be act like a child and to draw like a child because it's around what you're saying it's the play aspect and you know play for me is about the process and play in general it's not not for me personally but play about the process not the outcome and the culture is completely reversing that and additionally the being not the doing so what do you do how are you oh so busy I'm sorry about that there's a default why it's and it's held on a mantle and we wear it as a trophy how we are busy what have you done for us oh no time for myself and it's fleeting in the scheme of things not to get morbid again we're here for a split second and it comes back down to the way of how we designed this world within the world through dialectics or you say black and white thinking right I just gave you an idea from from my book.

Lukas: What I'm yes I'm so excited about that don't tell me how long have been a long time process or four years five years just at my pure interest because I have the aspirations to write a book and I have the aspirations to study in an academic type of way but realistically I know that's not gonna happen but I admire the fact that there's people doing it and when in regards to reading a book how how many hours a week.

Dr Greg Mews: Oh I don't know I mean it's been largely based on my PhD I could use to utilize big chunks of it but I think.

Dr Greg Mews: It comes back down to this process - what do you like, what do you enjoy? The product or the process? And I quite like the process. So you know, a couple of hours every day, I just literally write something out of my brain that I can read.

Lukas: So that's awesome. And the interesting thing is because you're focusing on public space to understand play, and there's something which gives me hope for society. Because often what we are conditioned in, how we base the rules for the system, is that we're living in this endless world of competition, right? Everybody needs to compete here in this marketplace. If you want to go for bigger pretenders, it's all about competition and it's an efficiency measure, performative, you know, then bidding and all this.

Dr Greg Mews: But what I found is when people go their way every day into a public space - in Canberra, Garema Place for more than a week, every day from very early morning to very late - and I was sitting there and looking at people, right. So I created this massive data set of how people play. And to a degree it's reductionist because I'm just looking at play from my perception view, but actually I could categorize what kind of play occurs. And then I got a bit of an understanding what type of play activities do happen most. So I use some of these concepts from other thinkers out there - Roger Caillois, one of them - and he distinguished between four types of play, which is vertigo, you know, twisting, shaping, turning around, you know, swinging for example. Then there is competition, well no don't need any explaining. Then there is simulation, so when you actually engage in dreaming and creating, they'll be pretending that this table is actually a massive canvas. What I found out is actually that from all these four forms of play is that competition is the least one which people most engage in as part of their everyday life in public spaces. So they don't, they're not intrinsically motivated to go after it.

Lukas: No, no, no, no.

Dr Greg Mews: That is from, I don't know, I looked into a thousand instances of play as part of that throughout the week, and most people engaged in any other form except play for competition. And that shows me something - maybe it's because we have dedicated spaces, formalized places where we do that, or it's simply not part of our everyday life existence. This is an artificially created one. And then I looked further into that question of competition because it sparked my curiosity and tried to understand the meaning behind it. That there's nothing wrong with competition, but the thing is what probably we have perhaps not well understood in our society is about competition within yourself. If you are willing voluntarily through play - play is a voluntary activity - if you want to push yourself to set a goal, then you can do in self-competition with yourself. But never compete against another person, because each one of us is a product or in the process of coming from a different world within the world and so had different conditions which made them who they are in this moment in time. So by understanding that diversity of life, I mean there's difference and maybe whatever difference there offer lends itself better to another condition. But at the end, setting up entire societies based on peer-to-peer competition is actually ripping us apart in the long run rather than actually creating this. And I'm not saying it's not about originality - the originality occurs through the creative spirit which sits on each other when you see yourself internally. And then through collaboration you elevate that because and you find it as a connecting principle of what makes us actually human. We are social species. And through competition we play that in a small scale, but we play against each other, and this is a form of game of course. But I think it's in the long run a pretty self-destructive. And we look at the result of such a competitive environment - look at people's wellbeing under that, look at the comparison culture, look at the impact of social media with this fake mirror filter in front of you. It's having a - there's - we're removing the experience from self completely. And that's what I try to encourage in a similar way within interactions in play. So when it comes to an educated parent saying you don't need to dictate their goals, support them to achieve their own. Nothing's more satisfying to someone engaged in play to achieve their own goals, not yours, not the other person's.

Lukas: And you've articulated it beautifully as you always do - that you've created that internal, internal self. You're contributing to internal identity, you're contributing to the self-worth, the values, the accomplishment, the identity of self and the values around you. To go back to your observations around playing competitive nature and no one generally not gravitating towards it - do you think that is a product of there being so much competition in the environment around them that when they're intrinsically motivated to play they're like, I'm not even going to go into that realm because I get enough?

Dr Greg Mews: It would be interesting to carry out some further research on that I must say. But generally I would say we are as a society create certain conditions which we favor certain behaviors, right? So if we are actually co-producing or co-produced over so many years a system which favors and values competition as a driving force, then of course other parts being left behind. And we're also - if we are becoming, in our process we're always becoming these products of these environments - so how far are we programmed or conditioned to operate that way? Because we have normalized that concept that we do not even question the narrative or that concept as society. Why should we take that this is the way how everything is? But no, it doesn't. The thing is if you step out of the self in that sense and observe life from a remote distance, from a calm point of view, you will see how this kind of sense of madness actually reveals itself. And the way of how we design environments is I think to a degree a really good reflection of our collective values. And also the way of how we perceive ourselves in material.

Lukas: And you've just given me some clarity on question I ask myself all the time. I go out, I travel a lot and go out to semi-rural to rural communities. I'm going out there and I look over to the right and there's a whole housing estate surrounded by farmland, surrounded by beautiful amounts of land, and the gutters are almost touching. And I just think why, why on earth would anyone want to come all the way out to the countryside to live on top of a person? But when you look at that collective mindset, the collective value - that's it, they're going out there because, oh I can, it means I can have this house. Meanwhile they're not considering the impact on their children, the impact on their own health, the impact of not being able to walk to the shop. Another great statistic I heard you reference was which I was amazed about, was the distance to shops and other infrastructure in Australia - a huge percentage is a kilometer, 30% under a kilometer and 50% under 5 or something?

Dr Greg Mews: It's amazing. Our default in Australia is that oh we have to drive because everything's so far apart. You don't have to, you don't want to. It depends actually how we make do. And you know, we're looking at Germany and the other European countries that have the culture of transport on bikes or out there probably traveling the same distance that we are. I mean you know, my commutes were 12 kilometers when last time I was in Germany, so one way on the bike, but beautifully through the landscape, right? So from my town through fields and forests all the way to my work.

Lukas: To go into your role now, let's flash forward. Can you just break down your role at the university now for listeners?

Dr Greg Mews: I'm lecturing in landscape architecture at the moment, and keep in mind I have a background in urban design and planning. And I'm putting my energy into two and three types of units. One was health and wellbeing and how we can create landscape for wellbeing. The second one was - because I've been doing a lot of work transcending global north, so to say, and global south, so countries in Africa, Southeast Asia and so on, where we embedded some of these theories for change. What I said, how we really socially create this world within the world, and then out of dreams, particularly working with young people, how we can utilize their dreams and translate them into some tangible outcomes. How we can co-create better outcomes for communities. And so we applied that in Sierra Leone and received overwhelmingly successful results, and that wasn't celebrated at some of the UN-Habitat conferences. So that was really heartwarming breakthrough, but it confirmed one thing - that we are, if we are willing to be open-minded to re-educate ourselves and carefully willing to listen, deep listen to each other, we have the chance to really co-create a different kind of future and renegotiate what we are.

Lukas: Because the word you've mentioned a few times there - co-create - so can you break that down? I know it's to break it down in a broad sense there's a podcast, but in the context of supporting African towns and children in Africa, what does that co-create relationship look like?

Dr Greg Mews: Well so let's say start from you and my within the world. So we are quite privileged, you know, middle-aged males, you know, standards. But we really have a quite privileged life. So our dreams might be very different to somebody who has not had that privilege. So when you go into these communities in Africa, it was important that we just work with on equal eye level and give way to their dreams. It's not about our dreams which we're imposing in a colonial sense onto a different society and coming and saying now because we were living in so much material wealth and we tick a lot of health parameters, you need to do have that now too. So we took that arrogance aside and applied quite a decolonial way of thinking at it. And so that means it's all about you, and it's in fact actually not about each and one of you individually, it's about what you can dream together. And that is a powerful message because you have to negotiate through all your differences what is worthwhile. What comes back down to this question of mattering - what really matters not just to you individually but to a whole bunch of people. And that is the core to co-creation - by agreeing through democratic processes of what is matter, worthwhile, keeping agreeing about a need, not a want.

Lukas: Exactly.

Dr Greg Mews: And I think that's where we have to be really careful in the way of choosing language. Often we are ending up in these wants, and that is working with desires. And there's nothing wrong with desire as I mentioned before. However, the way of how we're interpreting and how we're utilizing that concept to justify certain narratives in society is concerning. So given what we are - let's say in built environment landscape being - so to a degree from a power concept perspective, our job is to create meaning, which means we're working with visuals and desires, so we seduce people.

Dr Greg Mews: into these kind of worlds which we are sharing with them so that's to a degree the success of our jobs right but being conscious of that and saying this is not about what we bring to the table we are the facilitators and we're actually conscious about that so we are actually being we're paradigming a new way of existence so therefore this is more about you and the more we actually empower you to co-create which works with openness and ambiguity you don't know where the process ends up with yeah but it enables the environment for trust and again it comes back to life-giving forces yeah which is very much we arguably we play with them together yeah at equal eye level and then negotiate a way forward which is beneficial not just to one but to a collective that's where identity comes from identity in relationship is that correct

Lukas: could those things be summed up as relationships as well like within your the social construct that could be a relationship and then your relationship with the broader world just trying to put it into a term that people can maybe relate to and then you're creating environments within environments from a tangible sense

Dr Greg Mews: precisely it's very relational very very i mean it's interesting of how we when i had that conversation with my students a couple weeks ago around space and time yes so it's very deeply philosophical but when you come back and there's another great writer david harvey and he had a big go at space and time defining and what is really inside and where is probably keeping in mind and where we position ourselves and how we understand space and time yeah so space for example you can take three approaches from that the first one is the abstract rom of space yeah so we think there is a measurable confidence like in the room where we're sitting in or where the listener is sitting in so you can actually apply a measurement a tool that's something concrete solid it's abstract you know we can create a plan and then we put it in and then it's there so this is one form of space yeah there's a second form of space which is actually the relativity it's a relative space right and it comes from albert einstein so let's say when we're you you live down here in the gold coast i'm coming in brisbane so it takes me an hour to get here if i actually choose to walk from my work to my home it takes me 45 minutes so geographies of time play a big important part how much space you bridge in order to create a world within the world yeah so that creates more resources if you live further away but you also have time let's say you take a high speed train where you can compress that space time yeah and then there's of course the third space what you just touched on it was the relational space and that is a space of dreams where memories sit all this intangible yeah and arguably you can superimpose that on to these other two spaces and that creates a sense of messiness right and probably when you have to ask me which space is the real the right space like if you think about black and white and it's like no probably they all work together yeah but that creates this messy and complexity around it and if we work with openness and complexity why on earth are we trying to put it into one of these boxes yeah why are we as the individuals are conditioned to always think about this is absolutely must be absolute why don't we let it open be and choosing again what matters within these different conceptions of time space yeah space time yeah

Lukas: and look at children in their exploration of environments and play they they use the tangible space through absorption of their senses to gather an understanding of the intangible

Dr Greg Mews: precisely the huge disconnect i observe time and time again is where we're trying to teach children from an intangible place about tangible things like care for the environment and the child goes where is it it's everywhere what's in it everything and poor alex of four-year-olds going what on earth are you talking about instead of just exploring experience in the environment and that being i like the world that world is a representation of that and you know another one is when they're trying to teach social interactions oh alex don't go in james's space he's looking so perplexed come what are you talking about i can't see it touch it anything now wonders there's that confusion around identity in space relationships as well and that kind of adult power unbalance right when you're saying what is right what is wrong shapes these small spirits already yeah and impacts their life in quite traumatic way because often we don't even think about it because we're used to it that is the word how how we become to learn to exist in yeah but you know these are like you know clean sheets of paper you know they are beautiful full human beings and we are saying you are not a full human being because you did not have these experiences what we had so we have to burn you now into the shape you in this past yeah because this is a way of how we are existing but the thing is when you look around and see the violence and all this physically and spiritually around ourselves we ask yourself like hmm why are we doing this to them yeah and and why are we recreating children in a model of ourselves which are so flawed in ourselves oh yeah you know i understand we are flawed and that's it that's a part of the ones you don't okay let's get someone perfect to teach all the children good luck i'm not saying that but all i'm saying is why we're teaching about our own bad habits and our own lacking understanding

Lukas: and i mean from a parent perspective to protect them you know everybody i would say it does a good intention do their very best to raise a child

Dr Greg Mews: without saying yeah yeah and but it always that comes back to the way of our how we constructed the social worlds within the world because they had coming out of a social world constructed which was full with trauma so they have been impacted of their life to condition within certain narrow boundaries and so within these boundaries they're doing their very best but i'm not saying then we can co-create a very different future and that's where i found ambiguous concepts invisible concepts or concepts which you can't grasp and confine are really the transformative ones because they can elevate our spirit in that sense and give us these forces how we can actually have a conversation and escape that so for example my urban lovability concept right if love is intangible and i'm not saying the physical laughter that i'm i'm talking about more the compassion that type of life so where you are open and willing to share something with another person knowing or not knowing doesn't matter but there's something you're happy to willing to give a compromise to make a contribution so if you give that contribution that is in connecting principle for example yeah i have plenty of water you are very thirsty i have abundance of course i'm sharing no worries right so when it becomes scarce then it becomes a different negotiating part but then even then when you share there's more beauty in that because together we're stronger but it needs a certain actualization around it so and if people have been deprived of a lot of these experiences how could they know any different but often when you show no matter what kind of instances kindness from a compassionate point of view that can be a very powerful transformer and joy and play you will see when you want to learn about how this lovability works look at children playing with each other yes there might be you know we're competing and saying this is mine so because the ego is full in its development but often they're very forgiving they don't they they have a fight and five minutes later they go apart and then five ten minutes later they're starting from scratch again yeah adults don't do that no i know in 1984 we had a conversation and you were really insulting me so therefore i did not talk to you today how dare you

Lukas: exactly yeah precisely right but so it doesn't happen overnight so again it comes back down to this idea of becoming it's a process as you so eloquently elaborated on earlier and it is a question of mattering and of values again and unfortunately i think we do not create enough time in space to have these kind of quality discourses around what really matters there was an opportunity that perhaps the window is still open since we covered is hitting all our societies people are contained at home they can they deprived of social connections we all agreeing digital world is simply not the same as it is true face to face yeah as many of our fellow citizens actually experiencing at the moment down in melbourne or sydney yes victoria so on and i hope when they come out of the lockdown that they take the time to really reconsider some of the yeah and positions

Dr Greg Mews: the brilliant thing about if you could say anything brilliant about the a pandemic would be that it is prompting that reflection on one's first needs absolutely what do i actually need here and the amount of people having a career change the amount of people saying actually i don't need to go work in an office in the middle of the city and business is going actually we don't need that we just wanted it because it was just what we've always done so there's great opportunity and a mutual friend of ours steve kanowski taking that opportunity to say well i've got a great opportunity to adapt and create some wicked big change at this point in time and i've spoken to other schools and and promoted the same concept of saying well isn't now the perfect time for change you're not going to have not everyone so everyone's a bit jumbled up everyone's a bit uncertain and let's act now

Lukas: yep in that word that pops up i've got my notes here and i've written it a few times a certain verse uncertainty is that's what's driving our social constructs and our environmental living is this need for certainty it's just a it's just a word that keeps popping up for me recently

Dr Greg Mews: yeah it's a good question i mean here again we're starting with working with dialectics yes so yeah right and and i'm a friend of always creating new knowledge which actually overrides dialectics now so i mean it's a good starting point because it shows you where the tension is right and as if that pops up in your life at the moment a new social world within the world you you see there is there's some tension going on at the moment and timed if you experience this tension this is time to put energy into it and have this conversation so certainty is often that masking itself under comfort but certainty is also which is good for us probably periods of time to rest and rebalance yeah before you go out and have your next joyful endeavor yeah so when you start playing another play activity so to speak and that's when you become uncertain where you go with trust into the world and could create something different yeah of course it's a balancing approach you need to have time for certainty let's say i know i for certain i need my good eight hour sleep because then my brain function is optimal next morning so i'm grateful if i can get that happening but from there i let myself every day is a new day i'm born every day in that sense yeah and then i give myself into this uncertainty and see how i'm journeying through this day so yeah in so it's more matter of how you use this concept to shift a paradigm so what ki

Dr Greg Mews: kind of paradigm do you want to exist in so i can come you know again my essentialist extension extend existentialist argument do you want to exist within certainty which i can if you give it too much energy can put you into stagnation and into and corners you because it masks life it's not it's not feeling alive when you play for example you you engage in vertigo twisting all this boy you quickly feel life because your physical body is like you know pumping blood and all sorts of things if i would actually be certain and i would sit in the chair all day my butt would keep pumping slowly slowly but i see life passing in front of my eyes instead of actively engaging it yeah but it's all about the balance and that's why again i think we can depart here from the dualism and think about again between what brings us together i mean i probably put that to you what do you think what brings certainty uncertainty what holds it together what is an umbrella term which can reconcile with it yeah

Lukas: it comes down to that what it what's the meaning of that word to you doesn't it like you mentioned at the start there but if you use experience of course it's just different experience different experiences right yeah some experiences are more certain yeah have a higher probability to occur than others right yeah or percep it's just perception oh and perception is also quite ambiguous yeah because my sense of sight is not as good as yours yeah so i perceive things differently than you yeah wow so like even within both of us sitting in this room you know my word within the world is looking at you and i see you here in nice wooden panels behind you and you see myself from a different angle so you're again having a perception of this world from a different angle so but the thing is the more we all overlaying looking at us ourselves we actually have some common shared rom in it and that is what makes us real yeah

Dr Greg Mews: i think we had a conversation about one time was like it's not based on your experience it's our relationship using our senses to talk it's not your experience isn't real minor experiences and will it's actually what's happening between this space which is actually the real

Lukas: when we had that chat i was like i think i just broke my brain sorry nothing to freaking you get that feedback lately

Dr Greg Mews: almost no i say the same it's good it elevates and articulates and we need to have these conversations because it's important otherwise you're just this passenger is a subject of what you've accepted when it comes to your students as you mentioned there and they're moving into the realm of landscape architecture when they graduate and they leave what do you want them to take from their years at university into being a landscape architect

Lukas: oh probably criticality how so

Dr Greg Mews: oh well in every respect right so we work in landscape architects work at all scales right so they work on the big issues the climate change issue all the way down to garden design right yeah and and what i probably if i can express a wish to them is actually that they never lose the sense of play to play around with concept and question whatever they encounter because imagination is more valuable than any kind of learned knowledge yeah and criticality is a way of looking at the world through a playful window right and a window which allows for imagination to occur thought of course is useful as a tool because it helps you to deconstruct a certain way and understand where the tension points are but to be honest even every theory is what we call reductionist it's a reduced way of understanding things that's why we have them theories on yeah but if you want to experience life in its fullest that goes beyond language and play is again once more a very powerful concept because if you were existing in a playful state and you're experiencing the word as is through all the senses that is more than anyone can you know yeah transcribe to or you know or translate to it this is just the way of how existing so you're embodying a different paradigm in that sense yeah

Lukas: and when is a adult have we felt that sense of pure joy and fulfillment that you get as a child where all aspects of your your life feel joyous and it's completely embodied when you reflect on it and then you reflect how your body feels yeah head to toe everything encapsulated your book when it's when is it going to be released

Dr Greg Mews: well i i submitted it so it hopefully depends how long the editors take i think early next year yeah transforming public space through play

Lukas: i'm excited about that thanks that's so exciting what what do you hope people to who do you want to read it what do you want them to get out of it

Dr Greg Mews: well thanks for asking first of all i'm going to be just happy when that thing is done despite of the fact actually i did enjoy the process of creating it but again it's probably why you want it done because you're like well the joy's gone now yeah exactly yeah i finished next thing yeah i'm thinking about the next project right but it's targeted for anybody who is willing to open the window of play yeah and understand whatever we are can from a professional context see in the world so it's it's an awareness to it it's a framework and yeah it's literally the development of what i call the city play framework yeah how we can unders and understand public spaces in dense urban centers yes through the window of play yeah and and see the four possibilities and potential a particular space confined space or whatever is in the brief holds for life-giving forces yeah and that often overwrites functional designs and also almost can be applied as a mitigating effect before you come in as a designer and you say you get to open a new brief and you get a taboola rasa approach you start a hole from scratch from for the side i said no understand life first and if you want to understand the most complex part of life study the play activities in that space and if you gain and that understanding you see how you can gently modify the conditions to nurture that more rather than saying let's take it all out and then we put our design handy thinking head on and because i envisioned that and then this will have to work for everyone yeah which is often doesn't yeah and just don't present the resource there's a resource here you go this is for you to do in not be in just doing doing yeah

Lukas: do you want us can you tell us urban synergies it's your little baby so to speak you what what is what is it about i know what it's about i've read the documents on park assessments and things and they're great and we get very excited about them and how do you break it down

Dr Greg Mews: thanks yeah it wasn't my passion project it's been more than seven years now i mean we kept it always very small informal and boutique rather than making it a big thing so because we used it as a vehicle as a social entrepreneurship model yeah to to bring difference into being so yeah and focusing on really what mattered to everybody who was part of the network and a big part of it was a focus on well-being for children yeah so we started and did a lot of work with including the assessment sheet of how we assess play value of a particular play space and there were some of these products that came out of this journey where we helped to facilitate transformative change in that sense so in in the canberra context and that says we you know we did big shaping space for gen zed forum where we said we want to create child and use friendly environments for the whole city so how do we do that how can we become work with this uncertainty and bring certainty into it so that's because i play with it and then of course the power of co-creation kicked in and a whole set of principles and strategies came out of that process and the government started then to action that and we were part of that journey onwards and and you know it's often it's an open-ended process and dynamic but we pushed let's say we we did make a contribution to the act context in that way forward for example i mean we did of course do more work in in africa and in europe but yeah yeah

Lukas: what excites you most about the future of landscape architecture and play

Dr Greg Mews: well the thing is i think what the pandemic has shown is the value of open public spaces for well-being for health and well-being for the broader population no matter where you live if you're in a suburban context you know why doing the way of the park's infrastructure we're closed cause you're not allowed to touch them you know touch playground equipment but you were able to walk right so i i found and i've written them with another dear colleague of mine a paper around that where we observed what happened here in australia

Lukas: the title oh you did hear that oh yeah please ego

Dr Greg Mews: it was titled on the life and death of of public space during cover yeah yeah yeah that's great yeah and so we just had a conditioned eye for that and looked around what happened during this first phase of lockdown in in australia and and what we found is that was a temporarily an opening where everybody opened that window to paradigm a different set of existence which escape commodification if if i gonna come back to my marxist thinking is commodification in the sense you do not engage with products you you have no other choice but to co-create with people next to you yeah and become very creative to co-create spaces where you can share togetherness for example that means people in their front yards had their dinner picnics out there and then you could see people walking by you could not get close but at least you got some kind of you created a temporary so a social space so this big way you actually invited and it had social connection so social encounters to the degree and or you walked around and what you saw with all these children doing all these chalk drawings on the street you know here we go the over in the making yeah and because people were hyper localized yeah forcefully but it created that opening for a time and created this condition for reflection and a time for questioning yourself what really matters to you in life yeah

Lukas: hundred 100 100 and we'll put the link to that in the show notes for the listeners to read because it's a good read and we any anywhere else our listeners want to find out more information about your work where can they find you

Dr Greg Mews: i think the search engines the web has it all they yeah

Lukas: and i'll also put the i'll just put the link into the ted talk and some links to your special as well but thank you so much for joining us today on play it forward but also thank you on a personal level you always inspire me to not just think bigger but think deeper and i think that's one of the most valuable things we can take into our daily existence and having impact on children's lives and our communities lives and i can't wait to continue to work with you at the aip and have amazing impact and once we get a bit more projects together under the belt with aip and get in the field a bit more i'd love to have you back on and we can discuss more action-based community-inspired stuff happening so thank you for being with me

Dr Greg Mews: i'm grateful and you know all power to you thanks so much

Lukas: thank you for joining us on another play at forward worthy podcast if that didn't get you thinking deeper and bigger nothing will thanks for joining us and i look forward to joining us again soon on another play it forward worthy podcast