Anamaria Csintalan is a student in the MA Expanded Spatial Practices program at Leeds Beckett University (LBU). She completed her undergraduate degree in Interior Architecture and Design at LBU in 2023. Currently, Anamaria is focused on developing a series of counter-practices to address the depletion of national woodlands and forests in the.  

The research project investigates the impact of anthropogenic activities upon UK woodlands and forests. The Anthropocence is a term to describe the present geological period; one where humans have become a dominant force shaping the physical landscape. In the context of climate crisis, woodlands form a public resource to alleviate climate change and support biodiversity. The project acknowledges that the complexities of land stewardship and nature restoration are inextricably linked. The researcher focuses to investigate the complex factors that disconnect young people from natural environments. The research project establishes that human and nature relationships, are contingent across interdisciplinary dimensions, that are encompassed beyond spatial boundaries, through social terrains, power discourses and institutional dimensions. For this reason, the researcher seeks to curate and facilitate a participatory event with secondary school students, engaging young people in a ‘Ritual of Resistance’ a performative urban planting event into afforestation practices, situated on local secondary school premises. This event will form a search of new forms of community organisation by probing alternative possibilities of spatial conditions to resist top-down control of urban public spaces through the possibilities for shared, negotiated ‘commons’ among young people and their local environment. As such establishing a forum for teaching and a call for civic participation. The project forms a direct response to the newly launched GCSE syllabus titled as ‘Natural History’. As a critical response to this syllabus, the research project has the objective to challenge traditional teaching methodologies through bottom-up spatial practices. 

The researcher has actively engaged with young people during the project development, by co-designing a portable kit to catalyse social relations in the outdoor. The researcher has focused on young individuals as a focus group of study, to expand the local voices of vulnerable marginalised groups in decision- making processes. Together, this methodology aims to tackle the challenges of young people disconnect from natural habitats, by advocating for symbiosis. The aim of the kit is to form a model that can be employed holistically by local schools, whereby the event delivers an avenue to test and evaluate the toolkit in a public engagement with the focus group. By placing the matter of ‘theatricality’ right at the core of design-making, an interrogative structure was constructed as a prototype. Additionally, the grafting of imageries, texts and voices: and the becoming of a ‘scene’ are a tangible formation of discourses this project aims to investigate. Therefore, by operating in interdisciplinary terrains of teaching, urban planning, performance and film, this research aims to probe new relations between a plurality of interrogative mediums and design possibilities. The research also operates at the intersection of public policy and youth work initiated through the optional modules, which assisted to acknowledge the interdependence between design, humanities and social sciences. Consequently, the research project will form a catalyst for reclaiming social bonds in the outdoors, by encouraging a cultural shift towards more sustainable developments. 

Programme Structure

Stage 1 – Activating the commons

Introduction: Participants of the workshop will be provided an invitation and agenda setting into the forestry sector to outline young peoples

agency in space. Establishment of collective agreement on project tasks and guidance on the manual handling of tools will be acquired.

Stage 2 – Enacting Commons

Demonstration: young people will be provided a guide how to plant tree saplings. Implementation: a process where students will be immersed into the environment and actively participate in planing activity using the knowledge, kit and the supplied resources.

Stage 3 – Monitoring the Commons

Co-creation: of future strategies of ecological management and surveillance of environments through collective pursuits and strategies of conflict resolution.

Stage 4 –  Expanding the Commons

Reflective Practice: Determining an expanding the network of solidarities showcased through a digital platform system.