Reimagining Socially just Environments through Children’s Perspectives: An Innovative Approach for Civic Participation

Traditionally adults make decisions for children particularly about how they live and play. Children, particularly those hard-to-reach are usually not heard. In this paper we draw on an innovative approach to facilitate children in expressing their viewpoints about what a socially just environment looks like from their perspective. Seventy-five children living in a disadvantaged area of greater Western Sydney, 7–12 years from ten local schools, used digital mapping to share power and responsibility with local government authority decision-makers to co-design a safe, healthy environment from children’s perspectives. Explaining the community spaces they selected, in terms of their significance for children’s respect, autonomy, identifications, safety, social and cultural meanings, children uploaded images of their creative work, pinpointing the location onto a digital map, to portray what is essential for them in their community and to advocate for social justice. We conclude digital mapping is one means of amplifying the voices of hard-to-reach children to engage directly in place-based change grounded in children’s understandings of otherwise invisible socio-spatial processes underpinning and reproducing social differences.