Lottie Child’s practice includes participatory, live art explorations of public space, utilising strategies of collaboration and spontaneous interaction.
These strategies can be conceived as ‘urban survival skills for the twenty first century’ exploring notions of play, the politics of the urban built environment, risk taking and the use of new technologies.
Through her work, people are invited to share their expertise and subjective responses to the notions of freedom of movement and anti social behaviour in increasingly sanitised and controlled urban environments. Her projects include Guerrilla Gardening, Tannoy Hijacking, Guide to Risk in the City, and Hi5 Game for Cyclists.
In 2008 Peckham Platform (then Peckham Space) hosted an event for a collaboration Child had initiated with net-art organisation Furtherfield.org. This collaboration, Peckham Street Training tours, introduced new ways of reclaiming public space for local people. The public event explored Street Training’s concepts of ‘the path of safety and the path of joy’, encouraging rediscovery of the urban environment through new moves and activities that were devised by a group of six local children from Year 6, Gloucester Primary School in Peckham. 30 people took part in the tours, with the children from Gloucester Primary School demonstrating to the public the moves that they had developed along the route from Peckham Square to their school.
In 2011 Child was part of Mobile Conference 2, a Peckham Platform tour of off-site artist projects in south east London. The tour aimed to provoke discussion on the theme of urban environments and changing social histories by visiting art galleries, a housing estate and a community centre.
