Abstract
This paper investigates the emergence of imagination as a participatory ecological process among children and adolescents in a deprived post-industrial area of Benwell, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Responding to ongoing debates about representation and agency in More-than-Human design, we advance an ecology of imagination as a theoretical framework. We situate imagination as a dynamic, evolving network of relations among diverse and ephemeral spatial-temporal actors. Drawing on a summer of ethnographic fieldwork, the paper analyses three examples of imaginative play to illustrate how spatial, material, and affective interactions generate conditions for collective creative play between humans and non-humans. The discussion explores imagination as an ecological, transformative and distributed capacity that reconfigures relations between people, place, and environment. In conclusion, the paper articulates implications for More-than-Human design practice, advocating situated, playful approaches to support the envisioning and inhabiting of more just and sustainable futures.
Keywords
Imagination, More-than-human, Playscape, Children Participation.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1904
Citation
Pecorari, I., Crivellaro, C., Ruiz Arana, U., Kharrufa, A., and Vlachokyriakos, V. (2026) Toward an ecology of imagination in Benwell, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1904
Creative Commons License
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Included in
Toward an ecology of imagination in Benwell
This paper investigates the emergence of imagination as a participatory ecological process among children and adolescents in a deprived post-industrial area of Benwell, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Responding to ongoing debates about representation and agency in More-than-Human design, we advance an ecology of imagination as a theoretical framework. We situate imagination as a dynamic, evolving network of relations among diverse and ephemeral spatial-temporal actors. Drawing on a summer of ethnographic fieldwork, the paper analyses three examples of imaginative play to illustrate how spatial, material, and affective interactions generate conditions for collective creative play between humans and non-humans. The discussion explores imagination as an ecological, transformative and distributed capacity that reconfigures relations between people, place, and environment. In conclusion, the paper articulates implications for More-than-Human design practice, advocating situated, playful approaches to support the envisioning and inhabiting of more just and sustainable futures.