In-Common Sites: the entanglement of young adults, performance, and an urban green in the generation of a commons

ABSTRACT

Through an examination of In-Common Sites, conducted with young people to investigate their relationship with Mousehold Heath in Norwich, this article considers the possibilities of performance to not UK, only represent a spatially defined urban common but also to enact a commons. It is argued that performance is a generative social practice: the ecological potential of both performance and commoning practices lies in their shared commitments to participation, collaboration, and interaction among people and their environments. Starting from the sensory and affective encounters between body and environment, I reflect on contested and entangled acts of human and more-than-human interconnection.

KEYWORDS:

• Applied theatre
• urban commons
• young people's performance

In-Common Sites: introduction

Walking, running, tree climbing, riding BMX bike trails; urban commons afford young people opportunities for exercise and relaxation in the city – a space to be ‘emotional and emotionless’ (Aleksandr, In-Common Sites Workshop 4, 8th February 2022). As open, usually less regulated spaces than parks, urban commons offer a sense of ‘freedom’, diversity, and the coexistence of the unexpected and the imaginary within the city. Yet, metropolitan green space is often underutilised and undervalued, leaving it vulnerable to commercial development. In a time of climate crisis, when human use of natural resources is perceived to conflict with environmental conservation, what might we learn from common spaces used for public recreation and preserving biodiversity, and how might performance foster ecological relations between those publics and urban greens?

This article explores the ecological potential of performance not just to represent, but to enact a commons with young people in a metropolitan green space. It focuses on how the dynamics of openness, reciprocity, and networking in both performance and commoning practices can engender connection between people and the natural world. Through a critical lens, the article focuses on a participatory performance project, In-Common Sites (2021–22), which brought together Sprowston Youth Engagement Project members and me to explore how young people use and value an urban common: Mousehold Heath in Norwich. The project, developed within my role as a performance artist and researcher at the Portsmouth School of Architecture, was part of the AHRC-funded research study ‘Wastes and Strays: The Past, Present, and Future of English urban commons’.¹ This interdisciplinary study aimed to chart the unique history, legal status, and potential benefits of urban commons for health, biodiversity, and well-being. Within this context, In-Common Sites employed participatory arts, performance, and design-based practices to collate and understand a range of cultural interpretations of urban commons and gain insight into how creative modalities can engage young people as co-producers of knowledge (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Siobhan O’Neill. In-Common Sites. Performance for film co-created with the Sprowston Youth Engagement Project, Mousehold Heath, Norwich. 2021. Image: Annis Joslin. (film still).

Considering this joint focus, my investigation of the commons considered how dramaturgical and commoning practices might be mutually informing. Theatre, like commons, operates as a platform for communal and material encounters between people and place; in other words, it acts as a ‘field of exchange’, a term borrowed from theatre scholar Theresa May (2005, 85). As embodied and relational practices, they both possess the capacity to foster creative encounters with material resources, such as land, natural materials, or artefacts. Moreover, through processes of shared making and communication with audiences and communities, they create forms of social life. May contends that theatre’s capacity to address the environmental crisis rests in this ability to illuminate our interconnectedness. A potential evident not only in the narratives, issues, and politics theatre represents, but more so, in the way dramaturgical strategies can nurture attentive, reciprocal, and sustainable ‘ways of being in the world’ (2010, 5). This emphasis on the theatrical medium itself resonates with Carl Lavery’s call for practitioners to consider what theatre and performance can do ecologically, contrasting it with considerations of what might be argued for or represented in the text (2016, 229). While cautioning against overstating theatre’s potential to transform individuals and communities, Lavery recognises the capacity of dramaturgical strategies to ‘trouble conventional modes of thinking and feeling’ (2016, 230) and, therefore, ways of being together. Drawing from Lavery’s understanding of theatre within Alan Read’s ‘expanded field’ (as cited in Lavery 2016, 230), which encompasses diverse sites and modalities, I formulated a multimodal approach for the In-Common Sites project. Walking, sensory mapping, creative writing, image-making, conversation, performance, and digital tools enabled community participants to document everyday practices and articulate their commons knowledge. To be clear, the residency encompassed engagements with a range of user-groups, however, this article focuses on my collaboration the Sprowston Youth Engagement Project.

Given the research focus on the future of urban commons, I was keen to ensure that the voices of young people were incorporated and articulated through performance. As Busby, Freebody, and Rajendran (2023) outline, notions of ‘giving’ voice to young people in performance and research contexts pose significant challenges: the act of voicing often homogenises youth, while simultaneously being represented as unproblematically good and associated with social justice. Conversely, the suggestion to ‘amplify’ youth voices acknowledges the complex dynamics of authority in participatory processes involving both adults and young people. ‘Voice’ implies agency but, given the limited capacity of young people to effect structural and political change, utilising their experiences and emotions to ‘voice’ issues can become instrumentalising (Kraftl 2013). Moreover, as geographer Peter Kraftl argues, perceiving young people as capable and ostensibly independent agents tends to erase inter-generational relationships that shape childhood and define the social dynamic of the research or performance project. Kraftl’s proposal to move beyond conventional bonds between voice, agency, and politics is underscored by his attention to the ‘entanglements of biology and society’, surpassing traditional human-nature dichotomies (2013, 14). Consequently, he emphasises the relational nature of young people’s participatory engagement ‘with each other and in solidarity with adults’ and illuminates the importance of embodied interactions with the material world (2013, 15). Aspects of participation that Kraftl locates in both visual and performance research methods. Taking these considerations into account, I reached out to the Sprowston Youth Engagement Project to collaborate on developing the In-Common Sites in Action project.

Founded in 2012, the Sprowston Youth Engagement Project (SYEP) is a resource for young people up to 25 years old living in and around Sprowston, a Norwich neighbourhood adjacent to Mousehold Heath. The project offers health and emotional well-being advice and orchestrates diverse physical, educational, and recreational programmes, including two youth cafes, a community gardening project, and a football club. For lead youth worker Claire Lincoln, interest in the In-Common Sites proposal stemmed from young participants’ existing involvement with a community garden and her plans for a horticultural training initiative. Based on our shared principles to promote youth participation not, as Helen Nicholson describes, ‘something which is done to the participants’ but more ‘with them, or by them’ (Nicholson 2014, 15), we introduced the project at SYEP, allowing members to make an informed decision about participation. The partnership started with me facilitating interventions and drop-in workshops in the regular youth clubs. During these activities, young people could engage in two ways: peripherally, for instance, voicing a 30-second wildlife animation set up alongside other digital activities in the club, and immersively, creating and discussing personal maps of the Heath in a dedicated workshop. These engagements offered insights into the project’s themes and methods, as well as me as a practitioner, aiding participants in deciding whether to join. Moreover, in a mutually informing introduction, they shared some Mousehold Heath experiences – the sport of BMX biking, the best location to view the sunset, the delight of Zak’s burger bar.

Four older participants, aged 16–18, decided to participate and take the performance-for-film project forward. Though small in number, members of this group already held leadership roles within SYEP and were able to act as a conduit, introducing themes, stories, and occasionally other young people into the performance-making process. While their collective engagement was highly committed, individual reasons to participate in the project were multifarious, reflecting personal interests in environmental issues, Mousehold Heath itself, performance, film, and social ties. The In-Common Sites in Action project unfolded from here in four phases. By way of explanation, I will first elaborate on my concept of performance-for-film. Initially, as my research investigated performance-making as a means for participants to explore their lived experiences of Mousehold Heath and envision alternative urban common futures, I planned to co-create a site-specific performance in the Heath. However, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting social distancing measures prompted a shift from a performance for public presentation to a performance designed for film. In practice, the focus remained on the collaborative performance-making process, emphasising a co-devised approach.

In phase one, the young participants engaged in walking explorations of Mousehold Heath, employing creative mapping techniques to document their impressions of the environment and its users through observations, photography, audio recording, sketching and creative writing. Secondly, in eleven facilitated drama-based workshops, the group explored their experiences, perceptions, and imaginings of the Heath, drawing inspiration from initial impressions, personal stories, and ecological research to devise performance material. Thirdly, over two weekend shoots in Mousehold Heath with filmmaker Annis Joslin,² the devised performance material was captured based on a collaboratively crafted storyboard. The participants contributed to storyboarding, setting up shots, and filming. Due to the focus on performance-making rather than film, participants did not participate in the technical editing process. However, the group did view and provide feedback on draft edits and their suggestions informed significant changes to the final film. Finally, the film, In-Common Sites,³ was featured in the ‘Wastes and Strays … On the Road’ exhibition, touring the four case study cities, Bristol, Brighton, Norwich, and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In Norwich, it was screened at Frere Road Community Centre to an audience of participants’ families, SYEP members, and local council members of the Mousehold Heath Conservators, and was followed by a post-screening discussion.

Commons, commoning and the urban common, mousehold heath

The historical conceptions of common land and the contemporary understandings of the terms common, commons, and commoning encompass a multitude of profoundly distinct meanings. In England, the term ‘commons’ typically evokes the feudal land management system where commoners held rights of use over common land, regarded as the ‘wastes’ of the manor (Linebaugh 2008; Rodgers et al. 2023). This framing of commons denotes spatially determined natural resources with the potential to sustain human subsistence. However, as contemporary discourse has evolved, the focus has shifted from a physical common space to an exploration of the social systems through which commons are produced (Bollier and Helfrich 2017; Harvey 2012; Linebaugh 2008). By directing attention to the actions and interactions involved, a broader understanding emerges, which not only emphasises practices of stewardship but paves the way for new forms of social, cultural, and creative commons (Kirwan, Dawney, and Brigstock 2016; Stavrides 2020). Forms that might include what Sue Mayo describes as ‘the temporary community’ of a performance project, which involves the temporary grouping together of human bodies, time, space, and place (Mayo 2014, 35). In-Common Sites, attended to these plural meanings. By situating the research in a geographically defined public green, I sought to explore both access to and preservation of natural resources in an urban environment. Meanwhile, my focus on the practices of inhabitation and performance, within the site and as creative practice, delved into more relational and embodied notions of the commons.

Historical roots as common land underpins the continued existence of much metropolitan green space in England’s twenty-first-century cities. Many urban parks, sports and recreational grounds trace their antecedents to common land where citizens exercised common rights such as grazing livestock or gathering resources (Bowden, Brown, and Smith 2009). However, far greater extents of urban common have faced enclosure due to processes of industrialisation, suburbanisation, and the privatisation of public space. Today, Mousehold Heath spans 184 acres of heathland, woodland and recreational land, but historically, it stretched c6000 acres to the northeast of Norwich city (Rodgers et al. 2023, 44). The history of Mousehold Heath is replete with narratives of enclosure and resistance. Notably, it was the site of encampment for Robert Kett and his followers during the 1549 rebellion against countrywide enclosures. Kett’s rebellion remains a defining narrative for the citizens of Norwich. Moreover, histories of commons and common rights embolden a sense of public ownership, fostering an understanding of the urban common as ‘a green space owned by all’ (Rodgers et al. 2023, 1). However, misconceptions about ownership often prevent citizens from recognising the vulnerability of urban commons until they are threatened by commercial development.

Another lesser-known narrative involving Mousehold Heath is the challenge by the Pockthorpe community against Norwich Corporation’s plans to enclose the Heath as a people’s park in 1865. Despite their defence, the community ultimately lost the legal battle, leading to enclosure in 1884 and the transformation of the heathland into a public park. This history persists tangibly in the landscape and citizens’ inhabiting practices. The pits and hollows formed by commoners’ quarrying activities emerge as distinctive features of Mousehold Heath. Likewise, landscape modifications resulting from enclosure, such as planting trees and laying sports grounds, continue to shape users’ engagement today. A field accommodates a kick-about, while a pit’s ‘steep drop’ affords ‘spectacular gymnastics’ on a BMX bike (Tim-Holt Wilson, Walking Conversation, 17th August 2021). These modifications, coupled with the introduction of byelaws by the newly established body of ‘Conservators’, aimed to manage recreational use and ensure ‘orderly’ conduct in the now publicly owned, rather than, common land with common rights (MacMaster 1990). Regulations expunged existing rights to enact subsistence practices and certain leisure pursuits, reflecting broader trends of enclosure and control over green spaces and the behaviours of the working classes.⁴

The principle of control through regulation persists today, with current byelaws governing permissible behaviours and activities within the Heath. While regulations ostensibly aim at environmental protection, the potential criminalisation of individuals who, for instance, forage or stray outside designated activity areas is troubling. Byelaws also attempt to mediate negotiations among diverse user groups; for example, kite flyers, skateboarders, singers, and musicians are reminded not to ‘give reasonable grounds for annoyance of other persons’ (Mousehold Heath Conservators 2005). Consequently, tensions emerge. Where the openness of the site affords citizens agency to shape ecological and social relations within it, legal boundaries produce quasi-resistive and contested acts. Furthermore, the regulatory framework tends to prioritise normative, predominantly adult pastimes, often marginalising the recreational activities of younger citizens and perpetuating biases against them.

The conflict between regulatory control and city-dwellers’ agency to appropriate urban green spaces underscores concerns about environmental protection. Despite offering a sense of freedom, diversity, and the unexpected in the city, urban commons are often underutilised and undervalued, leaving them vulnerable to commercial development (Rodgers et al. 2023). While it is important not to disregard environmental degradation, public authorities should certainly encourage citizens to engage in embodied and affective experiences with the urban common. Such interactions have the potential to cultivate feelings of connection and responsibility. Moreover, considering the mounting evidence linking connection to nature to pro-environmental behaviours (Whitburn, Linklater, and Abrahamse 2019), promoting engagement may have broader implications beyond the common itself. As anthropologist Tim Ingold aptly argues, reversing the disengagement between human agency and the non-human environment is imperative in addressing the ecological crisis (2011).

The emphasis on regulation to safeguard natural resources by constraining users’ interactions with the Heath aligns with Garrett Hardin’s concept of bureaucratic governance as effective management of environmental commons (1968). Hardin argued for enclosure to prevent the ‘tragedy of the commons’, where shared natural resources face depletion due to overuse and exploitation driven by individual self-interest. However, subsequent literature, notably Elinor Ostrom’s work, challenges this perspective by showcasing existing commons that are sustainably managed under community control (Ostrom 1990). Nevertheless, Hardin’s thesis remains influential, giving credence to narratives of environmental destruction around the idea of common property and the necessity of national or private management as the most equitable means to maximise shared resources (Ruivenkamp and Hilton 2017). The challenge lies in the failure to perceive how commons emerge dynamically; rather than a ‘self-evident resource (object) that only waits for its appropriators (subject) to exploit it’ (Borch and Kornberger 2015, 6), commons are shaped and reshaped through human endeavour.

In recent years, there has been a noticeable shift away from conceiving the commons primarily as a physical space or delineated natural resources towards recognising the social praxis of humans involved in caring for these resources. Peter Linebaugh’s introduction of the term ‘commoning’ in 2008 directed attention towards the practices and processes of producing and reproducing a common. Linebaugh emphasises that commoners focus on human deeds rather than title deeds, engaging in collective, cooperative labour to explore how to cultivate the land and what might grow there (Linebaugh 2008, 45). Thus, commons are not merely shared resources or bodily actions but arise from their interrelation. The commons, as an activity, expresses ‘relationships in society that are inseparable from relations to nature’ (2008, 279). This understanding of the entanglement of human relations with the natural world draws attention to the social relations and iterative practices that characterise the commons as an alternative mode of production. Consequently, perceptions of what is produced extend to encompass various ‘tangible’ and ‘intangible’ commons, including knowledge, cultural and social commons.

In the urban context, the focus on actions and interrelations directs attention to the myriad ways people inhabit, experience, and interact with common spaces. For architect and activist Stavros Stavrides, urban commons emerge in sites open to public use where there is no controlling authority or rules are laxly enforced (Stavrides 2020). In such sites, citizens can navigate and often challenge prevailing urban orders to create shared spaces rooted in cooperation (2020). Critically, commoning encourages creative encounters with material resources and within social interactions. Making and doing together necessitates negotiation, and as such, commoning practices ‘do not simply produce or distribute goods but essentially create new forms of social life, forms of life-in-common’ (2020, 2). In which case, can the efforts of young people cooperatively building dens in Mousehold Heath, or indeed, co-creating a performance there during the In-Common Sites project, speak to the ‘collective inventiveness’ associated with commoning?

With an emphasis on encouraging creative and social encounters, commoning might prove potent as a tool to think about applied performance practice. Commoning and participatory creative practice already share certain characteristics, most obviously, an interest in fostering participation, ways of collaborative working, and the dynamic interplay between participants and their spatial and social environments (Hamilton 2018). In commoning, the focus is on organising forms of sharing, leading to open and inclusive processes where different experiences, understandings, and practices can be negotiated. In my applied performance practice, I explore how disparate experiences, opinions, and perceptions can be brought together, stimulating creative exploration where interrelations within and across individual lived experiences may be propagated. In alignment with May’s perspective, theatre’s polyvocal, embodied, malleable qualities make it a fitting setting for exploring issues of identity and community (2005).

Furthermore, as commons emerge through interrelations between the human and the more-than-human, a commoning sensibility may draw the attention of performance participants and practitioners towards their encounters with artefacts, materials, and sites. This shift encourages sense-making to expand beyond solely narrative forms, embracing alternative modes of expressing the embodied, relational and affective aspects of participants’ worldviews. The creation of processes and capabilities such as openness, reciprocity, interrelation, and networking, as described above, is where I see a potential for participatory performance practice and the commons to be mutually informing. In this respect, I echo Carl Lavery’s proposal that the ecological impact of theatre lies not in any explicit eco-critical message it conveys but ‘in the more oblique possibilities inherent in the theatrical medium itself’ (2016, 229).

Young adult encounters in an urban common

Walking is the most popular mode of public engagement with natural green spaces, with or without a dog, in similar proportions (Natural England 2019, 14). Walking is not only a common pursuit, for within theatre’s ‘expanded field’, it has also emerged as an aesthetic, performance practice, as well as a situated research method (Heddon and Turner 2012). Understood by Rebecca Solnit as an ‘engagement of the body and the mind through the world’, walking advances modes of paying attention and making sense through which knowledge and affect can be mutually generated (2001, 27). Considering In-Common Sites’ joint purpose to chart everyday inhabiting practices in Mousehold Heath and to enable young people to creatively engage with and interpret this common space, walking together emerged as a productive starting point.

On two shared walks, the young people and a youth worker from SYEP, alongside myself, conducted ambulatory investigations of Mousehold Heath, gathering observations and impressions. In a project aimed at exploring collaborative practices, my invitation for the young people to guide our walks to places that held personal significance was crucial, for it supported their agency in determining which aspects of the Heath we encountered and shared. Drawing on their knowledge as regular users, they collectively devised the routes, while their physical interactions with the environment enabled me to go-along with their embodied experiences. In this way, the walking explorations enacted Sarah Pink’s suggestion of ‘co-participating in practices through which place is constituted with those who simultaneously participated in her or his research’ (2015, 97). In other terms, the participants and I became entangled in a social practice of commoning that produces place.

As the young adults led our journeying, the route unfolded along trails in which directions emerged contingently in relation to the environment and the social collective. Journeys sometimes took us to sites of shared interest: the pond that bubbles with frog spawn in spring and the café known for its popular burgers, both common favourites. Other times, we explored spots with individual associations, like a giant oak tree or the bench where a romantic tryst occurred. Anthropologists Tim Ingold and Jo Lee conceive of walking as ‘a profoundly social activity’, noting how correspondence arises in movement through shared timings and rhythms and in conversation prompted by close proximity (2008, 1). In our collaborative walking, as one young person’s journey ended, another’s began potentially in unfamiliar territory. Moments of getting lost led to negotiations over coordinates and potential routes. Consequently, knowledge of the Heath was collectively shared. Moreover, arrivals unfolded in an intentioned sharing of stories; the ancient oak, for instance, prompted Cora’s tale of childhood tree climbing and familial high jinks, culminating in a muddy tumble between daughter and father. Her narrative illustrates how bonds to the natural world are often forged through affective relationships with family or friends. Narratives recounting connection with nature also arose through the convivial relations produced by walking together. Like commoning, I observed how walking in affiliation with storytelling started to foster ‘a culture of sharing’ (Stavrides 2020, 5).

Within this culture of sharing, where the group directed me to their places of interest, I introduced creative scores – designed sets of tasks intended to sensitise the participants to observe, reflect on and share their experiences (Keinonen, Jääskö, and Mattelmäki 2008). The creative activities, including listening exercises, sensory mapping, storytelling and digitally capturing images, aimed to encourage playful, sensory and relational engagements with the environment. In this way, walking became less pedestrian and more ‘an embodied multi-sensorial and multi-directional’ activity that encourages diverse ‘connections with the material world’ (Myers 2011, 188). In other words, an attentive eco-dramaturgical praxis. Moreover, through this approach there was reciprocity between the young people, who shared their stories and experiences of the Heath, and myself, devising creative scores to enhance their heathland encounters. This exchange points towards the barter of knowledge and expertise that theatre scholar Alison Jeffers (2016) speaks of, or in terms of the commons, the mutual sharing of resources. Consequently, we developed an attentive sense of paying attention to the natural world during the shared walks and coevally generated a common pool of images, stories, actions, and impressions as resources for collaborative performance-making.

With smartphones in hand, participants digitally captured aspects of the Heath that resonated as either ‘treasure’ or ‘trash’, a straightforward yet open invitation designed to elicit valuations of the commonly shared resources in this urban green. Accordingly, photos were snapped, capturing a mesh of birch trees against an azure sky, a deposit of cereal pieces engrossed by rain, an L-shaped branch momentarily offering a seat. As further images were shared, I noticed how the participants started to find ways to represent their connection with the environment. Take, for example, Figure 2 – Cora’s photograph featuring her two black boots alongside water-filled footprints, making the contact between her feet and the earth tangible. Within the image-making process, firstly, there was an awareness of the impression her walking feet left in the earth, and secondly, she shaped the materials to effectively re-present the encounter for the image. Ecodrama, described by May, encompasses ‘work that explores the beingness of the natural world in such a way that … things around us are more alive, we listen better, and we have a deeper sense of our own ecological identity’ (2005, 95). In this context, walking, paying attention and re-enactment became a means to ‘listen better’ and to reflect on interconnections with the environment which, following Tim Ingold, is perceived not as a physical world that exists in itself but as a commons where materials unfold in relation to the beings that inhabit it (2011, 30).

Figure 2. Footprints. In-Common Sites, Walk No. 1, Mousehold Heath, Norwich. 2021. Image: Cora (Sprowston Youth Engagement Project).

In her definition of ecodrama, May speaks not only of the capacity of performance praxis to foster ecological sensibilities but also of work that considers environmental issues as its theme (2005). In another image of foot-to-land contact, an interaction developed that engaged with these two potentialities for drama to be ecological. Here, youth worker Claire’s vegan trainer was framed by Matt beside a cluster of mushrooms. Where an attentive regard of the natural world brought the mushrooms into awareness, this listening extended beyond immediate materiality to resonate with connotations of shared mycelium roots. The trainers, as Claire explained, were manufactured from a fungus-based material, offering a more sustainable alternative to leather footwear. Though a small instance of where a sensory encounter prompted ecological thought, the sharing of knowledge around sustainable developments in the fashion industry sparked the group’s interest and subtly brought broader ecological issues into relation with this immediate natural environment.

While I framed the activity as a simple way for the participants to attribute value to aspects of the Heath, the notion of value itself becomes complicated when applied to the commons. The complexity emerges from associations between value and capitalist modes of productivity, efficiency, and consumption. In the urban common setting, however, our research in Wastes and Strays suggests that consumption does not diminish but rather enhances the value of urban resources for the community (Rodgers et al. 2023). In environmental discourse, some environmentalists support this notion of managing natural resources as a commons for human health, enjoyment and use. However, other ‘deep’ ecologists argue that the natural world has an intrinsic value and right to existence (May 2005). Scholars have critiqued anthropocentrism, which defines how humans have assumed authority over the world, contesting, for example, that ecological crises arise through the ‘arrogance of humanism’ (Kopnina 2012, 239). These debates extend to theatre criticism. Una Chaudhuri suggests that theatre has often treated the natural world merely as a scenic backdrop for a wholly social account of human life, thereby objectifying nature as an inert entity awaiting appropriation or exploitation (1994, 24). Viewed through this lens, my invitation for the participants to assign ‘treasure’ or ‘trash’ value to aspects of the urban common appears to reduce the natural world as solely for their, and more broadly human, benefit. However, while the intention to evaluate might have seemed simplistic, the imaginative modes of forming those evaluations were not. Aligning with Lavery’s perspective of locating ecological value within the dramaturgical practice itself, sense-making within the creative tasks emerged in more complex and nuanced ways.

In the creative valuation process, the young people assigned negative value to littering as an aspect of urban common life. Their documentation of each discarded object along the path illustrated, on a local scale, the destructive tendencies of human consumption alongside a lack of care for this natural environment. Perhaps my invitation to look for ‘trash’ resonated too literally, but the common grievance of rubbish among users was strongly felt by the young people too. Thus, the attention paid by the participants to litter in the heathland aligns with Kraftl’s concept of reconnecting emotions from ‘everyday life’ with a sense of ‘what matters’ (2013, 15). What mattered here were the human behaviours that led to discarding unwanted rubbish throughout this commonly shared natural environment. However, by adapting a task inspired by walking artist Phil Smith (2012), I encouraged the group to imaginatively rather than literally reflect on the way people consume and discard resources and products. The activity involved the participants creating a blot on the landscape by holding up a commodity to obscure the view, captured in a photographic image. Consequently, a Coke can smudged out a clump of gorse bushes, and a weathered brick erased a playing field. Thus, objects people routinely ditch in the Heath, one an everyday consumable, the other a remanent of a building were framed in relation to the common’s biodiverse ecology and its recreational offer for citizens (Figures 3 and 4).

Figure 3. Coke. In-Common Sites, Walk No. 1, Mousehold Heath, Norwich. 2021. Image: Cora (Sprowston Youth Engagement Project).

Figure 4. Brick. In-Common Sites, Walk No. 1, Mousehold Heath, Norwich. 2021. Image: Claire (Sprowston Youth Engagement Project).

Common spaces, as Stavrides proposes, operate as threshold spaces, where they are perceived as boundaries delineating an inside from an outside, yet ‘this act of separation is always and simultaneously an act of connection’ (2020, 5). In this context, urban commons serve as ‘passages’ connecting urban and ‘natural’ environments through which human and non-human beings, objects and materials flow. Furthermore, as ‘entering can be taken as an intrusion’ (2020, 5), the alterity of the human-made objects, typical of city streets but now present in natural heathland, drew the young people’s attention. However, it was not simply the discordant connection between object and environment that piqued the participants’ attention, for the performative task itself had called for them to envision interconnections. Performance, akin to commons, acts as a threshold space because in theatrical representation, meaning unfolds across multiple ‘passages’ between material and metaphoric worlds. In the ‘networked quality’ of theatre, Lavery locates our capacity to recognise how ‘the human being is always part of a larger assemblage of objects, technologies, and processes’ (2016, 231). In this way, performance praxis offers a contrast to narratives of human domination over non-human others.

Returning to the young people’s images, the assemblage of a hand (human/performer) holding up a commodity (object/prop) in relation to the Heath (nature/space) generated multiple connotations regarding ecological interrelations. Unfolding across the ‘passages’ between these dramaturgical elements, associations with global commodification, throwaway culture, and urban development reverberated in relation to environment conservation and usage of green space for human health and well-being. Thus, meaning arose through human encounters with materials, and messages formed around the entanglement of human relations with the natural world, destructive and beneficial. While the participants’ concern over rubbish might have led to advocating a simple anti-littering message, framing found ‘trash’ in relation to the urban common, its biodiversity and its recreational offerings, encouraged the participants to explore more nuanced interpretations. While the group incorporated some of these issues into the performance, it is perhaps the dramaturgical process of networking connections that imbues ecological significance.

Performance-making as a social commons

Our co-exploration of Mousehold Heath yielded a multitude of impressions: personal narratives, embodied experiences, images, soundscapes, and written reflections, forming a common pool of resources for the performance-making process. In a workshop reflecting on the walk, images of foot-to-ground encounters opened into discussions on how the urban common offered a unique physical experience in the city. With its entanglement of hollows and woodland, the terrain had afforded an immersive experience, evoking sensations of ‘freedom’ and ‘getting lost’ (Adam and Aleksandr, In-Common Sites Workshop 2, 25th January 2022). Furthermore, in personal narratives shared in the workshop, the participants revealed how they had turned to the urban common for recreation and relief amid the COVID-19 pandemic induced school closures. Cora spoke of how perambulations with her mother provided temporary reprieve from caring responsibilities for her father. Aleksandr shared how he initiated a running regime in the woods, significantly improving his health. Adam discussed dog-walking and photographing flora on route to share on social media with friends and so stay connected. Drawing on these personal and embodied experiences, the group sought to represent the physical and psychological benefits of the urban common in the performance. However, their visions of its future unfolded in dystopian scenarios depicting urban development encroaching upon the natural environment.

To be clear there is no immediate threat of building development on Mousehold Heath. However, concerns were voiced by the young people and by participants in the Wastes and Strays research more widely about the uncertainty regarding potential future development. This anxiety may stem from a broader awareness of the increasing loss of public land to commercial development in recent years, coupled with a growing understanding of the role green spaces play in mitigating the impacts of climate change in cities. Moreover, focusing research efforts on Mousehold Heath to advocate for the protection of urban commons may also have influenced participants’ perceptions of a potential threat. Regardless, the possibility of losing the heathland featured vividly in the young people’s imaginations; it was an issue they wished to explore in the performance. However, to facilitate this exploration, I contemplated how to enable the participants to playfully engage with the issue, steering away from didactic depictions of a dystopian future.

Just as acts of commoning foster openness and flexibility, participatory theatre-makers cultivate adaptable practices, being ‘responsive to the narratives and cultural memories of the participants with whom they are working and artistically imaginative’ (Nicholson 2014, 152). In this manner, I proposed an improvisation to bridge the group’s present and future concerns, involving navigating the common while wearing shoes typically found on city streets. Drawing on Tim Edensor’s insight that walking is contingent on the environment, I was interested in how we might enact the distinction between urban walking, marked by following ‘signposted routes along bounded walkways and conveyors’ (2008, 125), and an improvisational mode of walking that responds to the rugged terrain of the Heath. During our next Mousehold Heath walk the participants careered down slippery slopes in brogues and sunk into muddy immobility in high heels (see Figures 5 and 6), prompting much hilarity. Yet, as a metaphor for stepping into the shoes of future citizens inhabiting a built-upon Heath, the co-performance of material elements and human actors resonated with meaning around shared experiences of precarity.

Figure 5. High Heels. In-Common Sites in Action, Walk No. 2, Mousehold Heath, Norwich. 2021. Image: Cora (Sprowston Youth Engagement Project).

Figure 6. Siobhan O’Neill. In-Common Sites. Performance for film co-created with the Sprowston Youth Engagement Project, Mousehold Heath, Norwich. 2021. Image: Annis Joslin. (film still).

The notion of mutual exchange wherein the young people shared their stories and in response I devised an improvisation to expand those narratives into performance, reverberates with Jeffers’ conceptualisation of the ‘informal barter’ (2016, 210). By acknowledging that knowledge is not innate but rather ‘generated through relationships with each other’ (2016, 216), she draws attention to the mutuality between applied theatre practitioners and participants engaged in collaborative performance processes. The practitioner cannot work without the stories, ideas and lived experiences of the participants from the community in which a project takes place. The community participants make recourse to the practitioner’s professional expertise to craft their stories, ‘offering insights into theatrical form and technique as well as possible challenges to the community’s narratives’ (2016, 202). Following this understanding, the performance-making process entailed a mutual exchange: the young people shared their experiences and imaginings of Mousehold Heath, while I contributed my skill in crafting a theatrical metaphor, where walking in the shoes of future citizens pointed towards the potentiality of the built-upon heathland the young people feared.

The exchange was not merely about trading the participants’ knowledge for my craft; rather, in the reciprocity of sharing, new knowledge and skills were generated. Revisiting Kraftl’s perspective on young people’s agency (2013), which emphasises its inter-relational grounding in cooperative engagements with each other and adults, the aim here was not for participants to share their individual experiences to be authored into a cultural representation by the theatre practitioner. Instead, through their participation in devising processes, the young people also acquired skills to craft their lived experiences into dramatic form. Drawing an analogy to a musician improvising within an ensemble, Stavrides notes that efforts to expand commoning are not entirely unexpected nor absolutely innovative; rather, they resemble a craft. As the craft is shared, it ‘keeps on producing spaces to be shared’ (2020, 157). In this manner, the participants built on the improvisation to generate their own theatrical metaphors, extending associations to reverberate with other issues of shared concern, such as the impact of habitat loss on wildlife diversity.

Cora and Nikola developed a scenario where a pair of fluffy bunny rabbit slippers walked through the woodland to a boundary road, ending up squashed under the tyre of a passing car (see Figure 7). Meanwhile, as shown in Figure 8, Alexandr generated images of an office-suited figure with a crow’s head walking across open heathland. With the urban represented in their choice of work and domestic costume and the natural world conveyed in their wildlife characters and the heathland setting, the young people’s images subtly unsettled human and other-than-human dichotomies. Furthermore, in the film, the group’s collective decision to intersect the actions of walking slippers and work shoes with the gradual building of a brick wall to blot out a wooded landscape expanded associations with urban development (see Figure 9). Networked together, these affiliations conveyed something of the threat the young people perceived if the built environment was to consume this urban green environment any further than it has done.

Figure 7. Siobhan O’Neill. In-Common Sites. Performance for film co-created with the Sprowston Youth Engagement Project, Mousehold Heath, Norwich. 2021. Image: Annis Joslin. (film still).

Figure 8. Siobhan O’Neill. In-Common Sites. Performance for film co-created with the Sprowston Youth Engagement Project, Mousehold Heath, Norwich. 2021. Image: Annis Joslin. (film still).

Figure 9. Siobhan O’Neill. In-Common Sites. Performance for film co-created with the Sprowston Youth Engagement Project, Mousehold Heath, Norwich. 2021. Image: Annis Joslin. (film still).

Spatial commons, as forms of interrelation between people and a yet-to-be-created physical environment, are ‘unstable and malleable’ (Harvey 2012, 73). In an urban context, this transitory state makes the commons open to contestation over differing uses, often centring on ‘present vs. future uses and different possibilities for future use’ (Foster and Iaione 2016, 302). Where the young people brought in the contestation over housing versa green space in the Mousehold Heath context, I introduced a present-day conflict over land management plans to extend heathland in contrast to woodland, potentially impacting biodiversity and usage.⁵ It was an issue I had learnt about through interviews with local conservation volunteers, who were working with the wardens to restore heathland back to the extent of its coverage in the 1970s. Moreover, I thought the contestation over what natural habitat to conserve might encourage the young people to reflect on more complex, detailed notions of ecological responsibility beyond the dualism of the built and natural environment. To ‘think through’ the differing perspectives, I suggested staging a debate where participants presented each habitat's ‘pros’ and ‘cons’. Cora and Nikola argued in favour of heathland, emphasising increased ‘diversity’ in ‘plants’ and ‘smaller animals,’ while acknowledging how trees divert nutritional resources away from underlying vegetation (Cora In-Common Sites Workshop 7, 1st March 2022). Meanwhile, Adam and Aleksandr advocated for wooded environments, highlighting how trees provide ‘homes’ and ‘protection’ for a range of creatures (Aleksandr In-Common Sites Workshop 7, 1st March 2022). Additionally, Adam discussed benefits to humans, including oxygen production, while Aleksandr pointed out recreational benefits for users. As the debate unfolded, the group weighed each environment based on aspects of biodiversity, wildlife habitats, urban air quality, cost efficiency, and users’ experiential engagement.

‘Thinking-in-common’, as proposed by Stavrides, transcends mere agreement on thoughts or topics; it entails ‘thinking through shared experiences and shared questions’ (2020, 215). During the discussion, participants shared their environmental knowledge and Heath experiences, yet subtle rivalries also emerged under the surface of debate. These dynamics may reflect Kraftl’s observation that in meetings with adults, young people are encouraged to suppress emotions to present reasoned argumentation (2013, 15). In applied performance practice, such social tensions necessitate a responsive facilitator, one who considers what participants bring with them into each session, asking questions like ‘How does this shape what we do? What is the social health of the group?’ (Prentki and Preston 2009, 9). Operating within this sense of stewardship, I set out to not only mediate the social frictions but also to introduce a new proposition to inspire collective creativity. Firstly, I shared how these conflicts resonated powerfully among Mousehold Heath users more generally, evident in instances where individuals have berated conservation workers engaged in tree removal. Secondly, I encouraged the group to explore a dramatic mode of expressing the conflict itself, rather than merely articulating opposing viewpoints. This approach aligns with Kraftl’s proposal for ‘an expressive, rather than instrumentally representational/representative, form of knowledge production’ (2013, 15).

The development of performance material to reimagine the heathland/woodland dichotomy unfolded tangentially alongside other creative explorations, including haptic engagements with mud, shared narratives of plant cultivation, and interactions with Mousehold Heath wardens. Akin to emergent commoning practices, performance-making evolves through iterative processes, where participants discover as they go along. In one iteration, the group sought to re-enact heathland restoration by planting heather plants, for through the project, they had gained a deeper appreciation of the labour and care invested by conservationists in preserving the heathland. However, this re-enactment conflicted with Mousehold Heath byelaws prohibiting users from disturbing the ground, even temporarily. Site-specific practices require responsiveness to site-specific conditions, both material and legal. Moreover, as eco-dramaturgical praxis serves as a ‘field of exchange’ (May 2005, 85), I enabled dialogue between participants and wardens to explore possibilities. Through discussions, participants gained insight into the legal restrictions governing users’ engagements but also these boundaries were negotiated. Thus, negotiations led to an alternative dramatic scenario of harvesting and scattering heather seeds, fostering an exchange of conservation knowledge between wardens and young people, which was further shared with audiences through the film (Figure 10).

Figure 10. Siobhan O’Neill. In-Common Sites. Performance for film co-created with the Sprowston Youth Engagement Project, Mousehold Heath, Norwich. 2021. Image: Annis Joslin. (film still).

However, the young people went on to co-create another interpretation of heather regeneration, but this time through dramatic metaphor. In the scene, Aleksandr carried a potted heather tenuously balanced on his head, placed it on the ground, and hovered with a spade in hand as if to plant the heather. Moments later, he removed the pot and heather to ferry it, again precariously poised, away to another location. Metaphor, as a mode of theatrical representation, communicates across embodied and material elements, along with the spoken word, facilitating ‘an organic exchange of meaning-making’ (May 2005, 85). Furthermore, it serves as an invitation to thought; metaphor does not prescribe meaning in advance but instead encourages connection by thinking of one thing in terms of another (Rebellato 2009). In other words, metaphor functions as a commons and generates meaning through interrelation. Therefore, the dramatic action stood in for the group’s inability to plant heather plants and troubled the issue of bye-law regulation. In the embodiment of precarity (heather balanced on a head) and indecision (to plant or not to plant), associations reverberated across the contested heathland regeneration and the young people’s conflicted feelings to resonate with broader uncertainties around the capacity of humans to act regarding ecological crises. Where the resemblance of seed scattering gestured towards the ‘real’, the metaphor networked together plural ambiguous and affective affiliations.

In its evocation of interconnectedness, the theatrical metaphor not only engaged with the creative potential of commoning but also leaned towards an ecological theatre. In environmental theatre, May observes that environmental conditions co-produce the effect of a production because the meaning-making process ‘is dependent on the polyphony of the speaking landscape’ (2005, 97). In other words, situated dramaturgical processes amplify the voice of the environment within a multivocal commons of human and nonhuman actors. Rather than ‘giving’ the landscape a voice, which implies standing ‘outside of or above it’ (Heddon and Mackey 2012, 181), voicing here signifies a more-than-social agency, akin to Jane Bennett’s concept of vibrant matter, wherein an ‘animal, plant, mineral, or artefact can sometimes catalyse a public’ (2010, 107). In the performance of not planting, the features of the terrain co-acted with the performer to produce and reproduce meaning. A collaborative quality that was accentuated by the repetition of placing the heather in various locations across the Heath: in woodland, heathland, meadow, alongside the sand of a golf course bunker and the carpet laid over a BMX bike trail.⁶ Thus, the action inferred the potential for future heathland restoration, or perhaps biodiversity restoration more broadly, across diverse environments.

In this way, the ecological contribution of theatre may be found in its potential to generate meaning through the interrelation between material and metaphorical worlds. However, such open modes of sense-making equally ‘make the world problematic, multiple and complex’ (Lavery 2016, 233). The theatrical metaphor generated by the group articulated something of the complexities regarding pro-environmental action. The representation of heathland conservation illustrated how publicly held assumptions about the generic value of tree planting can conflict with the preservation of local, historically embedded biodiversity. Moreover, the tension between environmental protections and citizens’ leisure usage was further problematised in the subtle reflection of civic decision-making that prioritises adult recreational activities like golf over youth leisure sports like BMX biking, despite both having similar environmental implications for biodiversity. While the dramaturgical and social practices of performance-making can foster ecological interrelatedness between the human and more-than-human world, ambiguities, multiplicity, and contradictions are always ingredients of common space.

A more-than-social commons

In conclusion, the participatory research project, In-Common Sites, offers a nuanced exploration of how applied theatre can serve as a platform for engaging with and representing environmental sustainability, with a particular focus on amplifying the perspectives of young people. Rather than adopting didactic responses that instrumentalise the experiences and emotions of young participants and promote educative or eco-critical messages, the project prioritised collaborative and multimodal processes. Through these processes, participants were enabled to explore complex connections between their personal experiences, the urban common, and broader issues of community and environmental interconnection.

Through critical reflection on the intersections between commoning and applied theatre practices, I have underscored how collaborative, creative spaces encompass a dynamic interplay between participants and their social and material environments. As a crafted space of agency, the process emphasised mutual relations and negotiation among young participants and with facilitating adults. This was evident in the exchange of knowledge and expertise where participants shared their lived experiences of the Heath while accruing skills to shape dramatic metaphors and the performance more broadly. Moreover, the informal barter extended beyond participants and performance practitioner to encompass Mousehold Heath’s wardens, wherein the young people gained insight into conservation practices. The collaborative devising methods also yielded a plethora of personal and collective viewpoints, narratives, images, and actions, which in turn provoked negotiations over what to communicate to an audience. Through the process, the young people gained confidence in their understanding of environmental conservation at the local scale, enabling them to not only create a nuanced interpretation of its complexities in performance, but also to conduct an interview with warden William Stewart for a youth radio programme (William Stewart interview by Adam, Sprowston Youth Radio Programme, 22nd March 2022).

As the eco-dramaturgical approaches employed in the project encouraged diverse sensory and affective connections with the material world, Mousehold Heath itself became actively involved in the co-productive process. The documentation of litter during the shared walks exposed the destructive impacts of citizens’ engagement with the urban common, prompting the young people to advocate for enhanced environmental stewardship. Furthermore, participants’ deeper exploration of the physical and psychological benefits of the urban common during drama workshops and improvisations supported their recognition of mutual dependency with the natural world. While discussions on the urban common’s future evoked fatalistic imaginings of a built-upon Heath, playful and relational modes of engagement engendered a caring and nuanced response. Moreover, the dramaturgical processes, which facilitated networking connections between participant performers, material objects, and the heathland environment, offered a different perspective on human-environment interrelations, emphasising the potential of performance praxis to cultivate ecological sensibilities.

As the group iteratively developed performance material, themes of urban development, environmental stewardship, and human-nature interrelations surfaced organically, challenging simplistic dichotomies between urban and natural environments. Through metaphorical representations of heathland restoration, land management, and usage, the group navigated complex and contested issues of legal regulation and environmental conservation. Theatrical metaphor, as an aesthetic mode of expression, facilitated nuanced explorations of interconnectedness and uncertainty, inviting participants to engage in an ephemeral and networked mode of sense-making. In this process, the urban common emerged as a co-producer of meaning, accentuating the entanglement of the human and the more-than-human within a multivocal commons. Consequently, the social commons fostered through the medium of theatre expanded to encompass a more-than-social commons.

Viewed within the global climate crisis context, metropolitan green spaces offer sustainable solutions to counter the effects of rapid urbanisation on public health, well-being, and nature conservation. However, despite their potential, publicly owned green spaces often remain underutilised and undervalued by citizens, leaving them vulnerable to commercial development (Rodgers et al. 2023). When human use of natural resources appears to conflict with environmental protection, notions of the commons and practices of commoning provide valuable insight into the complex entanglement of human relationships with the natural world. In this article, I have argued that performance praxis, akin to a form of commoning, can cultivate ecological awareness. Through the exploration and representation of mutual dependency between themselves and their urban common environment, a group of young people engaged in a process that fostered a sense of environmental stewardship and also emphasised the significance of collaborative action in navigating local scale challenges posed by the climate crisis.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank everyone at the Sprowston Youth Engagement Project who participated in the performance project for their collaboration and their commitment to generating an insightful and imaginative vision of Mousehold Heath.⁷ My thanks also go to the Mousehold Heath Conservators, Wardens and conservation volunteers for their support and their expert knowledge of the Heath.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The research project’ Wastes and Strays: The Past, Present and Future of English urban commons’ was carried out by the universities of Newcastle, Portsmouth, Exeter and Sheffield. It is funded for three years by the Art and Humanities Research Council. See https://research.ncl.ac.uk/wastesandstrays/.

2 Annis Joslin is a socially engaged artist and filmmaker based in South-East England. https://www.annisjoslin.com/.

3 The In-Common Sites film can be viewed here: https://vimeo.com/748291327.

4 For further discussion on control in the Victorian urban park, see Kirwan, S. ‘Controlled natures. Disorder and dissensus in the urban park’ in Kirwan, Dawney, and Brigstock (2016).

5 For further details on heather restoration plans, please see Norwich City Council. (15 March 2019) Mousehold Heath Conservators (2005), Meeting Minutes Appendix 2: Mousehold Heath management plan 2019–2028: Consultation summary.

6 In the wild-build BMX tracks, bikers laid household carpet over the trails to compact the earth, so protecting the jumps.

7 Members of the Sprowston Youth Engagement Project who participated in the project are credited in this article either by their real names or one generated by the author. Permission has been given to the author by the participants and, where appropriate, the participants’ parents/guardians.