The Playable City Sprint, a collaborative initiative by the Watershed and the British Council, brought together international artists and creative entrepreneurs to explore the concept of a playable urban environment. Participants developed prototype projects over five days, focusing on themes like love and location, water, and cycling, while discussing the feasibility and aesthetics of their ideas. The project emphasized collective creativity, public engagement, and the blending of technology with art, reflecting on the varied dynamics and processes of collaboration.

1. Collecting
Ideas Debris
at
International Playable City Sprint.
The Playable City Sprint is a Watershed initiative delivered in collaboration with the British Council.

2. Collector of Ideas Debris
In any project, there are many reasons
why ideas need to be rejected: they are
impractical, expensive, too time
consuming, they don’t fit the
developing aesthetic of the piece, don’t
fit the brief as well as another idea or
simply because the discussion moves
on...
It was my job to collect up some of the
ideas that weren’t within the final
prototypes presented as part of the
Playable City Sprint.
Jo Verrent, March 2012

3. Playable City Sprint?
In February 2012, the British Council
and Watershed brought together artists,
designers and creative entrepreneurs from
across East Asia and the UK, for a five-
day sprint around the theme of The
Playable City, including installation
artist Tine Bech, games designer Julian
Sykes, sound artist Kathy Hinde, visual
artist Mathew Trivett and product
designer Vahakn Matossian.
International guests include Australian
theatre makers Leticia Cáceres and
Angela Betzien of RealTV, Japanese
Product designer/sound artist Yuri
Suzuki, visual artist Megumi Matsubara
also from Japan, Korean duo Bang & Lee,
and Malaysian composer Ng Chor Guan.

4. Playable City Sprint
The artists were
divided into
three groups
and had
five days
to create their
prototype project and
present it to an open
audience at lunchtime
on the Friday.
Gulp.

5. Group A: love and location

6. Quick to focus on
LOVE - where did you fall in love? Have your
heart broken? Have you first kiss? First met
your love? Link to Valentine’s day
LOCATION - mapping Bristol locations,
geocache style scavenger hunt, using GPS
navigation - transportable to other cities
MUSIC AND THE MIX TAPE - remember the
time and effort people put into creating ‘mix
tapes’ for loved ones?
SOME ELEMENT OF LIVE EVENT -
meeting people, finding objects, interacting
STYLE - slowness, retro/old fashioned but
also mashed with new elements too

7. discussions on...
Is having your heart broken too ‘sad’ for the
theme of ‘play’?
How do we avoid ‘cheese’? Is it ok to focus on
love? Are we all comfortable with that?
Use people’s own narratives? But these can be
crushingly dull and uninteresting...
Can we say the places are romantic? Do we
know? They might be dull, sad, sleezy,
unexpected…
Is it a one day event? something to build over
a month, a year, across years but with a new
focus each Valentines day?

8. the app...
The app shows a compass, a heart shape off to one side
– turn the phone and follow the heart, the heart
indicates direction of travel. You know what? We’ll
build it using AppFurnace ...
As you get nearer, can the heart get bigger, beat
faster? Will you get a text element as you get closer?
A message, a love note, a line from a song? A tweet,
love poetry, a puzzle, Shakespeare? You don’t get the
whole story. As you get nearer your phone could
blush, can your phone go hot and cold? Can it show
red and blue – nearer and further, or love / loss? Can
it be subtle? Can it be whimsical? Can it show simple
red pulses, getting stronger as you get nearer?
You arrive at the place – how do you know – the app
beeps? A symbol appears? There is a sound – a track?
A mashup of tracks?

9. the disgarded ideas...
You get a bag – rose tinted glasses (a red filter
would mean that we could show images whose
true content was only visible to those with the
glasses on - messages, codes?)
Your heart on your sleeve – those who are playing
could wear small hearts on their sleeves – these could
be the tags that play the sound if we use hyperlink?
You find a heart on the wall covered in audio tape
played with a glove, a prod, the head from a
dismantled tape deck. Can you tell what song it is
(after experiment – no, but it looks and sounds cool).
These could ‘mark the spots’.
Retro & modern – playing with switching points.

10. other thoughts...
How do you join in? A set number of people targeted? By
postcode? By demographic? People pick up fliers and join up?
Invitation – how do we ask, how do we involve? This is the start
of the journey. something handwritten, or from an old
typewriter. Its the frame. Beautiful stationary, scent?
Sentiment, romantic gesture. It’s a contract, you enter into a
contract with the Heart cartographer.
Meet the heart cartographer at the end – the final destination.
Who is he/she? Young? Old? Dance with him. Slow dance with
him – he is old. Meet him at the beginning – he sets the process
off? He is in a bar and has a pen that writes by itself .
How does it fit with the mix tape? Licencing? Maybe you have to
sing the track – karaoke style? You have to record yourself/
video yourself doing so and upload to the site?

12. Group B: radios and rafts

13. the initial focus...
WATER, WATER, WATER...
LOCATION - mapping Bristol locations, geocache style scavenger
hunt, using GPS navigation - transportable to other cities links
to Bristol, Watershed, water and its resonance culturally
no one uses the waterways much in the winter
it costs 45p to get a boat licence
water as a place of no residual culture, a place in flux, a place of
fluidity.
projection onto the water, projection onto the sail of a boat, a screen
on the water,
sound travelling through water
Is the behaviour of the water or the behaviour of the boat that is
interesting?
A desire to be low tech and local.

14. then...
A walk on the banks...
a radio station transmitting to different
receivers on the banks – as the radio goes
past it ‘speaks’ from different receivers...
a radio show that is also a tour...
a real record as a takeaway, a turntable
floating downstream...
‘You know when you go to an aquarium
and there is always a tank for the local
crappy fish too - the dull, brown, muddy
ones. I like them, they are my favorite.’

15. the disgarded ideas...
items from a living room floating along - an
extension of images seen after recent global
disasters - tusnami/flooding... a floating city of
debris... tables, armchairs, standard lamp, television
- with the television still working as it floats.
composition using foghorns, using recorded sound,
recorded from under the water (did this - not much
sound, none of it very interesting!).
the raft is a scientific base station - from it each
member of the group performs their own experiments...
Its a billboard - an advertising hoarding... a radio
signal that moves so you have to move too...
create an island on a atoll - an island rising up from
the water... or a waterbed on water - to give the sensation
of being in water, whilst being on water (but being dry)

17. lost and found...
HAVE: one raft pulled by boat and a licence to be
on the water. A transmitter and a number of
‘radios’ to pick up the transmission.
WANTED: one narrative arc...
lost the city, found the sea
lost everything, find salvation
Two sides, two audiences.
Two groups - alone and yet together - need to get
them to loose sight of each other and then find/
reunite (tried this - lost signal)
‘10 ways to survive a shipwreck’ - to form key
element of the narrative

20. Group C: lights and bikes

21. Starting Points
THEME (water, natural verses
man-made, site specific...)
METHOD (graffiti, lights, sound,
combinations...)
PURPOSE (got to involve real
people doing real things,
participation/presence, wide
reaching, public awareness, social
purpose...)
FEEL (fun, light, real, joker/
mischieveous/subversive,
playable...)

22. maybe...
NATURAL VERSES MAN-
MADE (the idea of projecting
man-made images and constructs
onto items in nature - trees, rocks,
surfaces)
LIGHT INSTALLATION
(creating an experiential light
installation where participants
were able to input their images of
walking through a space onto the
space too, perhaps by text)
WATER (projecting onto running
water, projecting movement onto
still water...)

23. Or (after a walk...)
CYCLING
Bristol is a cycling city,
Cyclists are passionate about
cycling
Pimp Up Your Bike (culture of
avid cyclists customising
bikes)
fits values of social purpose,
physical real activity, needs
people to become involved, and
uses light

24. Choices
could set up play between ‘tribes’ based on different locations, ‘types’ (ie students), those who like
certain things - or simple colour choice - show off your membership. I.E. The more reds there are,
the stronger, the more ‘red’ can infect others...
mappability - could map the areas cyclists use - the safe(er) spaces, the most popular places/
routes - website tracks your route and that of others - the streets light up.
can play against yourself and/or play against others - best routes from A to B, fastest time to
cover a route, safest way to make a journey, number of ‘meets’...
literal proximity - when you meet someone else, the lights change colour
use your bike to ‘write’ with across the city
change how people feel about their day - make them happy
play ‘tag’, score points, play ‘rock, paper, scissors’ - one colour trumps another
make it green - colour changes to green when you go through a green area - parks and green
spaces - or safer areas go/glow green?

25. How?
Lights - Programmable? Responsive? On the
wheels, on the handlebars, on the cross bar?
LEDs? Fibre Optics? Electro-luminesent wire?
How hackable would it be (would someone be
able to show themselves ‘cycling’ through
Debenhams? On the motorway?)
Is it a phone app or is it something on the
bike? Bluetooth? GPS? Bikes need to
communicate with each other and with server
- in real time or upload later? Power how?
Is it a bike we customise and hire out? Theft
risks? Do we go through bike shops? Offer
customisation classes & encourage viral
spread of knowledge?

28. And what did I learn?

29. Headlines
PRIVILEGE - the amazing enormity of the project and the sense of responsibility and
privilege that all involved felt (and that I felt being able to observe it - Thank you).
KNOWLEDGE - how willingly people share, how excited people are to tell you what they
know, how no one thinks you are stupid for asking questions, how many perspectives there
are on just one subject...
GROUP DYNAMICS - watching how groups form, storm and reform, the ebb and flow of
dominance, the impact of tiredness, cultural dynamics, numbers-based dynamics,
expertise - owned and perceived - all fascinating to witness...
OBSERVER - the role of observer, who gives it power, who doesn’t, how it is used by people
(confessional, sounding board, way to ‘spy’ on other groups...
OPENNESS - watching Watershed’s ethos of openness infect others; watching who lets you
in, when and why; watching agendas play out and become rewritten...
PROCESS - how best to devise, develop and shape a process, how much to let it run, when to
intervene and when to stand back - giving away and keeping control...

30. The End
by Jo Verrent
www.joverrent.co.uk
photos by Jo Verrent &
Manami Yuasa,
Head of Arts, British Council Japan