Large, temporary, bent wood, architectural structures sit arranged in a rough circular pattern on a grassy clearing next to a pine forest on a sunny day. The structures are constructed with lengths of wood fastened together in a mesh line pattern that forms an arch. They are organically decorated with sail cloths, string, and pieces of paper that have been attached by hand. A group of young children, all wearing green hoodies and with some wearing sun hats are walking out from between the structures holding pieces of paper looking like they’re off on a mission. They are joined by two adults. In the centre-left foreground, 5 adults sit in a circle looking like they’re having a discussion.

Affective Encounters: Reflections from Lle Llais

A photo of the person.
A photo of the person.
Multiple authors
16/04/2025

“It is of the essence of life that it does not begin here or end there, or connect a point of origin with a final destination, but rather that it keeps on going, finding a way through the myriad of things that form, persist and break up in its currents. Life, in short, is a movement of opening, not of closure.”

Tim Ingold, Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description

Between July to September 2024, members of the Public Map Platform team designed and delivered four, multi-day long public engagement events across Ynys Môn, titled Lle Llais (Voice Place). These were more than just gatherings—they were multi-sensory encounters, working with and within unique Welsh language, landscapes and cultures. Lle Llais connected people to place, inviting children and young people to move, to touch, to sense, to look, to build, to listen, to smell, to speak and to play.

Lle Llais was designed as both an engagement event and research enquiry—connecting young people and families with the Public Map Platform project, while also prototyping a new methodology, which we call Affective Encounters. Rooted in arts-based research, the methodology brings together temporary architectural structures known as the Rural Roaming Rooms, site-specific artistic engagement activities and embodied experience. It asks: what happens when we listen to each other and location not just with our ears, but with our hands, feet, eyes, skin, and breath?

In the dunes of Newborough Beach, clusters of a classroom of children gather, all wearing paper bee masks. A flock of small people, smelling pine needles, sitting on logs, the earth, leant against trees, poking each other with sticks, drawing what catches their eye. Gathering things they like to touch, and spending time describing what they feel. The sun pours down. It’s a warm September morning. The teacher announces they’re about to head to the next activity station. A team of bees wearing green jumpers and grey shorts take off down the long forest path. One of them shrieks “can we be in the forest every day?”

These moments—and many more—are now part of the Public Map Platform map: a layered, living record of children’s site-specific experiences and perceptions of specific places in Ynys Môn. As we move forward, this work is shaping both the development and utilisation of the affective encounters research methodology, and the ways in which local authority planning decisions can centre the voices, needs, and knowledge of children, young people and their families.

Key learnings from Lle Llais

Our forthcoming research paper, Affective Encounters, outlines the practice-based methodology, research and key findings arising from the design and delivery of Lle Llais. Summer 2024 was the first delivery of multiple Lle Llais events, and we learnt a lot through the process. Here are some of the key recommendations for anyone interested in designing meaningful site-specific, arts-based engagement events with children and young people:

  • Work with local youth groups over time. Co-design works best when rooted in relationships. Future events should be embedded for at least six months in collaboration with established local community groups.
  • Public Map Platform Mapping is at the heart of Lle Llais. Communicate to community partners and citizens how Lle Llais events gather citizen experience and knowledge of Ynys Môn (or other locality) and explain how and why this data will be included on the Public Map Platform map.
  • Carefully plan production. A clear pre-production schedule is essential, covering everything from arts programming and commissioning to transport, storage, risk assessment, and insurance.
  • Keep the format light and frequent. Shorter events held more often make it easier to maintain energy and adapt to participants’ rhythms.
  • Staffing matters. Successful events need realistic staffing plans and clearly defined production roles—especially when people management and coordination are involved.
  • Sensing Site. Future events should attune to and work with the linguistic, cultural and ecological context of locations.
  • Accessibility for everyone: Future events must be designed in a way that ensures event sites are accessible for diverse bodies and minds.
  • Ensure inclusive events: Ensure all Lle Llais events include all types of people, including marginalised groups. Inclusive events create an environment where everyone feels valued, respected, and has the opportunity to reach their potential.
  • Targeted support: Ensure time, money and resources are made available to invite and support families who don’t have an abundance of leisure time and who don’t drive or own a car.
  • Ephemeral architecture enables intra-action. Using architectural installations such as the Rural Roaming Rooms invites enhanced connection between children and young people, the environment, their senses and each other. Continue to use the Rural Roaming Rooms to engage the public with Public Map Platform.
  • Ceremony creates meaning. Including choirs, bards, and processions brought moments of communal participation, joy and reflection. We saw how powerful these elements can be.
  • Language counts. Future events must ensure bilingual staff are present and that all communications are written in accessible, colloquial Welsh. Welsh speakers should be involved in proofreading and testing bi-lingual materials.
  • Simplify engagement tools. The activity cards should be written in clear, concise language, and on a paper on which it is waterproof and easy to sketch and draw onto. Survey tools like Kobo should include more embodied, sensory-based questions—and explore why Welsh speakers often chose to complete the survey in English.
  • Capture what can’t be spoken. Each activity station should have a dedicated researcher-facilitator capturing field notes on sensory engagement: touch, smell, sound, sight, taste.

These practical reflections sit alongside our academic and creative findings, grounding theory within the textures and contexts of site-specific lived experience. Together, site-specific, arts-based and ephemeral architectural research methods form the foundation of the affective encounters methodology, which views site, embodiment, architecture and the arts as connected and entangled.

What’s next?

We’ll be sharing our research through academic publication and a presentation due to be shared at the 2025 International Sociological Association Conference in Rabat, Morocco. And plans are already underway for a second round of Lle Llais events on Ynys Môn this July—refined by what we’ve learned and guided by the voices of those who took part the first time.

The aim? We will continue to weave together art-based research, ephemeral architecture and site-specific encounters, and include these experiences on the Public Map Platform. We work towards ensuring embodied experiences of young people aren’t just heard and felt, but become embedded—into policy, into process, into place.

Working towards a future that prioritises the wellbeing of people and planet.
Public Map Platform is being led by Cambridge, Cardiff and Wrexham Universities and is part of the Future Observatory - the Design Museum’s national research programme for the green transition. The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.