This interactive design workshop draws on the extensive research of Monash University’s XYX Lab to make inclusive public spaces by designing with diverse people, cultures and places.

XYX is a collective of designers and researchers whose remit is to utilise design methods and applications to mitigate gendered inequity in urban spaces. In particular, this workshop will build from the XYX Lab contribution to Who’s Afraid of Public Space on show at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art entitled ‘Keep Running’. ‘Keep Running’ makes visible the Lab’s data, gathered through crowd-sourcing the experiences of women and gender-diverse people as they embark on outdoor leisure and sporting activities in public spaces. Like ‘Keep Running’, this workshop will reveal the importance of data as a core consideration in design. Data provides the evidence designers – and their many collaborators – need to make powerful, well-informed recommendations and interventions with regard to public space. Data and statistics usually remain buried in disparate reports, articles, and policy documents. Making them visible alerts the public to the challenges facing women and gender-diverse people as they traverse the city; but also allows people to see themselves within the statistics and the stories that lie beneath them.

This workshop provides the opportunity for participants to build a design response to urban spatial inequality through making visible the experiences of those for whom urban experiences are frequently challenging and threatening. In conclusion the group will consolidate their responses to demonstrate how design can shift us towards more inclusive communities.