Pimp My Bench Films

Young people can often experience public spaces as areas of control and exclusion, creating a sense of alienation and being unwanted. The groups they form to combat this in turn alienate the wider community.

The Bench project asked four groups of under-18s to redesign a traditional park bench to improve how they can be used and to reflect the community they will return to. Students from Littlebourne, Herne Bay, Canterbury and Whitstable (the latter two towns had active dispersal orders for teenagers) created recreational, private, music making and meeting spaces around their benches.

The benches were placed back in the street where the young people hung out and local people were asked for their opinions, the interventions were filmed and made into short films with artist Laura Wyles.