How children understand their local environment: visualization and participatiqn. Madrid 2009-2014

Abstract

The thesis explores through eight case studies in the Comunidad Autonoma de Madrid (CAM) visual testimonies of how children perceive their local environment. The motivation for exploring this issue is the evidence that there is a new perception of children’s landscapes due to the fundamental changes that have occurred in their urban environments over the last forty years. The object of this research was an empirical study in an educational context to obtain images of this new landscape through the child’s visual voice and through these visual testimonies obtain data that may help to establish participation processes with children in environmental education and help architects and urban planners understand their physical and spatial needs in urban spaces. The researches strategies of visual methodologies and action research were those found investigating Colin Ward’s work and how he describes the child in the city. The tools for visual literacy and participation were already established ones by educational institutions and projects such as: the ILE’s “El arte de saber ver”, the UNESCO’s “Growing up in cities project”, the Art and the Built Environment project, the JCUD’s in Oxford Brookes University “Making better places project”, and Celestine Freinet’s and Jo Walton’s (from The Campaign for Drawing) method for printing postcards. The research was undertaken by a random sample of 6 to 16 year old school children in 8 schools in four different localities. 235 questionnaires, 59 interviews and more than 322 visual testimonies were obtained, as also a case study research of the local landscape around their schools. The studies took place from 2009 to 2014.