Abstract
Spatial designers, who engage children in their design process, most often frame children in this context as experts in their own lives. Findings from a study based at the University of Sheffield, point to new understandings of this participatory role, in which children move towards the role of designer. Drawing on interviews including visual methods with 16 spatial designers and guided by phenemonography, the paper seeks to represent the designers’ perspectives on the under-explored area of child–designer interactions. Findings suggest that the designers understand these interactions to comprise a reciprocal and co-created space – a sphere of behaviours, actions and ways of being which together becomes an enabler of change. It is proposed that what Bhabha (The Location of Culture, 1994) refers to as a ‘Third Space’ in which the ‘dominant culture might be temporarily subverted and its structural systems of power and control renegotiated’ can be re-imagined in this co-design context. The paper weaves together theoretical discourse and empirical illustrations of perceived creativity, play and transgression, which – at their intersection – support a potential transformation of understandings of children as co-designers and of the design process itself.
1. Introduction
The value of engaging childrenFootnote1 in built environment planning and design has been extensively discussed and evidenced in research literature since the public participation movement gained prominence in the 1960s and 1970s (Adams and Ingham Citation1998, 16). Lynch’s ‘Growing Up in Cities’ (Citation1977), for example, pioneered cross-cultural research into children’s experiences and understandings of their environments, and was understood specifically as ‘a project to extend participatory processes to the young, with a focus on urban communities’. (Chawla Citation1997, 247) This work, and the body of research and practice that it subsequently inspired, has played to children’s strengths, acknowledging their valuable insights into the places that they use, and in some cases also valuing their capacity to re-invent their environments and imaginatively appropriate space (see also, CABE Space and CABE Education Citation2004; Hart Citation1992).
Based on the initial premises of child and youth participation discourses, numerous planning initiatives and design projects thereafter framed children’s involvement as a learning and development opportunity (Frank Citation2006; Knowles-Yánez Citation2005) or alternatively framed children as clients and consumers offering insights into the process of designing fit-for-purpose services (Malone and Tranter Citation2003). Such processes have been criticised for being largely consultative in scope, focusing upon service improvement rather than change process (Valentine Citation2004, 108), limiting designer–child exchanges to a traditional pattern of roles and power relationships. Additionally, the impact of interactions with children upon the designers themselves has remained under-explored and mainly anecdotally evidenced (Clark Citation2007), reflecting the dominance of the idea that children are the primary beneficiaries of participation, occupying the ‘becoming’ state of ‘learner’ and ‘future adult’, as opposed to active, competent and creative social beings (Uprichard Citation2008). Whilst some exploration has been tentatively made into the dynamics and processes of participation (Buur and Larsen Citation2010), deeper enquiry is needed into the dynamics and processes of spatial design participation; in particular those rarely reported processes which have also included children. This paper begins to address this gap, taking a phenemographic approach which specifically focuses on spatial designers’ perceptions of their own experiences.
2. Research context, methodology and methods
The paper draws on the findings of a series of interviews with spatial design practitioners (architects and landscape architects) who have had experience of working with children in spatial design. These interviews marked the beginnings of a three-year research project (January 2013–January 2016) funded by the Leverhulme Trust. The research is grounded in a theoretical perspective of the design process as a ‘situated social process’ (McDonnell Citation2012, 62), where reciprocal learning (Day, Sutton, and Jenkins Citation2011, 50; Percy-Smith Citation2006) and transformation can occur (Freire Citation1998; 30–32; Mezirow Citation1985).
Qualitative, semi-structured interviews took place with 16 spatial designers (8 female, 8 male; 16 EU-based, 15 of which were from the UK) over the period April 2013–June 2013. Our focus was upon the perspectives of designers only in this first phase of a much wider project in which focused ethnographies were also carried out across four live design case studies involving children. In those case studies, children were also interviewed and analysis of children’s perceptions are discussed elsewhere (Birch et al. CitationForthcoming). Perspectives of other stakeholders in the design process (such as commissioning or funding bodies, schools), though interesting, were not the remit of this project. Our attention to designers’ perceptions is based on principles of phenomenography as a research approach (Marton Citation1981). Using this as a guide, we understood our interviews not to be directly about spatial designers’ interactions with children in the design process; rather the designers’ personal experiences of that phenomenon. Whilst Marton’s phenomenography is considered as ‘pure’, the ‘developmental phenomenography’ of Bowden and colleagues (Bowden and Green Citation2005; Bowden and Walsh Citation2000) acknowledges, as we do, that findings have implications for learning and practice (Green Citation2005, 35). We also draw on the tenets of ‘new phenomenography’ (Linder and Marshall Citation2003, 272), which moves from the purer descriptive mode of research into one which allows for designers’ perspectives to be placed alongside researchers’ interpretations of the different ways designers’ experience have evolved and of relevant cultural theory. The central roles of this paper are therefore to discuss designers’ perspectives and present possible theory around such perspectives; in this light, the paper does not aim to interpret guidance for effective process and products.
The emphasis of our interviews was on the process, and not on the product. The question guide was split into four main sections. Before discussing work with children, we began by exploring the designers’ own creative process. We asked designers to talk through this as well as represent it through drawing. Next, participants were invited to answer questions around the theme of design process, visually depicting this with either a new visual layer or a fresh drawing. The rest of the interview interrogated the designers’ experiences and perceptions of working with children in spatial design, using both spoken and visual methods, building up a third visual and narrative layer. This stage included asking what it was like to involve children in their design process, what their motivations were and asking them to describe their most successful project example of working with children. This specific project (see Table ) was then used as the basis for more specific reflection on their interactions with children, the relationship of these interactions to the design and creative process and ultimately their perceptions of success in this context. We concluded with more general questions summarising what designers perceived children to bring to the design experience and how engagement with children and young people had affected the designer’s personal design process and/or practice in wider terms (if at all). Each interview lasted between 60 and 150 min. 15 interviews were conducted face to face at the designer’s work place or other space chosen by them and one interview was conducted via Skype. The designers’ relevant experiences with children were situated in different kinds of spatial design projects. Table lists only those projects specifically chosen by the designers in the interviews as their most successful (i.e. we did not seek to document a comprehensive list of all relevant experience).
Table 1. Spatial design projects described by interviewees: type of space, ages of children involved and stages of design process children involved in.
The data from the initial 16 interviews were coded (with the help of NVivo software) and the emergent themes or conceptions reached are summarised below under headings of creativity, play and transgression which together become a critical analytical viewing tool akin to a prism. This analytical lens emerged from a wide reading of literature discussing design, childhood, learning, creativity and play and from the interviews with designers themselves.
3. Creativity
3.1. Identity and novelty
The field of creativity is explored by a wide range of disciplines. The resulting work and theory has been helpfully categorised according to emphasis: traditionally the four P’s of creativity, process, product, person and place, and additionally a fifth – potential (Kozbelt, Beghetto, and Runco Citation2010, 24, 25). The emphasis of this study has been on creativity as ‘process’ and also the concept of ‘little c’, or everyday creativity (as opposed to ‘big C’ creativity), which relies on context-specific understandings of originality and social meaningfulness (Kozbelt, Beghetto, and Runco Citation2010; Richards Citation2010). However, in responding to questions about creative process, designers also made reference to other ‘P’s’ – particularly person and place – these various aspects inevitably being interrelated. It is important to note that this study aligns with a recognised extensive body of research which frames creativity as a collaborative process (see Paulus and Nijstad Citation2003; Sawyer Citation2007, Citation2010).
Recent associations of creativity with the knowledge and market economy (Clifton Citation2008; Florida Citation2002), reflect a fundamentally utilitarian approach to young people’s ‘creative development’. This, however, often conflicts with the creative process itself and its more subtle nuances, which revolve around people’s relations, identities and cultures. Willis’s Common Culture (Citation1990), for example, explores creativity as a process of identity formation, which is integral to young people’s everyday cultures. This idea resonates with discussions around designer identity. Dent and Whitehead (Citation2002), for example, advocate that designer identity may be linked with possibility thinking; a phrase also employed by educationalist, Craft (Citation2013), to describe creativity. Referring to the design process, Dent and Whitehead (Citation2002, 10) suggest that a designer opens up to ‘occupy multiple subject positions and shift, manoeuvre and negotiate within and across [discursive frames]’. In our study, a few interviewed designers spoke of the central role of creativity in both their personal and work lives, regardless of children’s involvement, conceiving for example that: ‘imagination is at the heart of everything that designers do’. One person viewed creativity to be an innate human quality, that has enabled humans to evolve and several understandings of creativity focused on the physical making and building of something during design. For most designers we spoke to, creative process was understood, to a great extent, in association with change of some sort and the introduction of something new such as: being influenced by an idea that previously was not there – being inspired by things or by people – or a new direction for a design which arises by accident.
3.2. Shared possibilities
Although several designers were openly unsure of how children, when involved in design, might specifically affect their own creativity, there was wide acknowledgement of creativity – especially in design – as a social process, as relational and as collaborative (Montuori and Purser Citation1997; Perkel Citation2007). Some designers’ reflections gave insight into how they understood this collaborative process, as they revealed an embrace of change, ‘shifts’ and ‘manoeuvres’ which were specifically associated with children’s involvement. Those shifts sometimes came about through designers wishing to catalyse children’s imaginations, willingly making, as one designer suggested: ‘creative detours to trigger [children’s] imagination outside their everyday life’. On the other hand, designers commonly felt that their own creativity was sparked by children’s perceived openness to possibility; the ‘what if’ element that children were noted to bring into the design process. This sometimes took the form of surprising ideas which were very much valued:
They came with some completely whacky ideas […] it’s almost that thing where you go completely whacky and you come back a few steps rather than starting here and not feeling like you can go much further. It’s almost like it gave a little bit of a license.
Well they’re not shy, I mean you couldn't do this workshop with adults or with only very, very few. Like so many adults don't have much access to their creativity and childishness […] It’s, it’s great and you do sometimes get adults who really like to get in there and get their hands mucky but they are a minority and if we do sort of mixed workshops we do sometimes find that the adults tend to watch and just let their kids get on with it, with the exception, the exception of a few.
I think all creative processes in some ways are a childlike kind of process that allow you to engage in something in a more kind of immediate way, so in some ways I think everybody involved in design has to be in touch somehow with some of those kind of faculties.
4. Play
4.1. A habitat for creative collaboration
Cross-disciplinary research has shown positive relationships between play and various skills and qualities of creative processes, from flexibility, divergent thinking and insight to combinatory imagination (Russ and Fiorelli Citation2010). One of the most common definitions of play focuses on the idea that there is no external goal guiding the play behaviour. This ‘functional’ approach frames play as having no clear immediate benefits, no extrinsic motivation and being done for its own sake (See Smith Citation2009, 4). Such a conceptualisation removes the possibility of employing play and playfulness as a strategy in design, which by its very nature is goal-orientated. Alternative approaches to framing play have, however, been proposed. Particularly relevant to this paper is the ‘criteria-based’ approach, which is essentially based on the simple idea that people can recognise play when they see it. Taking as its starting point the characteristics of behaviours judged by observers to be play, this approach allows for a spectrum of playfulness, from non-, or less playful, to playful behaviour and, importantly, research has shown that play understood within this framework can coexist with perceived external constraint (Smith and Vollstedt, cited in Smith Citation2009, 7).
Dominant paradigms locate play in childhood, with children understood as expert players. Play is variously understood as a means for children to explore and construct meaning and identity, to develop skills and to learn. For Colin Ward, in his classic study of the ‘Child in the City’: ‘Play is often, at the same time, training in motor skills and sensory awareness, exercise and excitement and warfare with the adult world, as well as providing a disturbing parody of this world’ (Ward Citation1978, 97). Yet Carruthers (Citation2003, 511) proposes that adult creativity and children’s play are mirror processes; the former being understood as practice of the latter. The ‘imaginary scenarios’ and ‘novel suppositions’, which are key to adult creativity, are also part of a child’s capacity to imagine the non-existent within pretend play (Carruthers Citation2003, 511); these potentially then become a shared communication platform for adults and children in creative interaction.
In our study, designers’ interview responses revealed a sense of how a communication platform, a bridging, playful space was felt to be co-created between adult designers and children. Drawing on Sawyer (Citation2007), Bayram accordingly frames play as a habitat for creative collaboration (Citation2010, 23). From interviews, it was clear that sometimes, children would bring the playful element; at other times it was the adult designers. On the one hand, children’s playfulness often gave licence for designers to do things differently. As one participant expressed: ‘you felt like you were really creative, everyone thought it was going to be one thing and it ended up over here’. Children’s playfulness thus opened up a series of exciting possibilities, that would ‘allow a window into their world’ whilst also creating a means for shared understanding, as the designers’ words express below. The children she worked with had suggested that:
… the ceiling looks like cheese. That is actually what we thought, you know, this ceiling detail is like Swiss cheese and the idea was that it was responding to their perspective […]so for me that kind of meant actually it worked, we actually saw what they saw.
We’re slightly anarchistic about it, it makes me laugh and it’s quirky, it’s like making Frank Gehry architecture for dogs […] so the children burst out laughing and within seconds you’ve got the whole room laughing but, actually, there’s a serious edge to it, then you go ‘well do you think these designs are any good?’ […] so we end up having a conversation.
4.2. The unpredictable other
Zimmermann and Morgan (Citation2011) describe play as a dialogical space where players engage in creative communicative action. Play, they argue, enables the construction of dialogue and thus enhances communication because players are required to respond to something unexpected, which is not under their control. These communicative instances often depend on the intersection of flow and unreflective behaviour (Citation2011, 51–52), whereby players participate in a continuous action/re-action process that involves genuine disclosure and acknowledgement of perspectives. Key to their understanding of play is a presence of the ‘Other’, that is to say not another person, necessarily, but rather the space between players which is often an unknown – a question or provocation perhaps (Citation2011, 31). Citing previous writings [Hughson and Inglis (Citation2002); Romdenh-Romluc (Citation2007); Vannatta (Citation2008)]; Zimmerman and Morgan draw attention to the unreflective, unconscious or what might be called ‘I just did it’ kinds of behaviour which occur in play. There is a sense of the importance of the moment and of spontaneity playing a key role. In other contexts, this might be understood as a kind of improvisation as part of an emergent group process (Sawyer Citation2007, Citation2010). For example, this designer describes building with a child:
No, we sort of made it up as we went along. [laughs] We did, yeah, originally we had the wood. Okay, what shall we do? What can we make with it? So we start to make a box and we start to add something to it and we did it sort of together. [sketching] What's missing, which bit is missing? Like if you’ve done this, how we do the wheels? How are we going to do the wheels? Yeah, so it was very much thinking, as we made it.
It’s exciting, I mean when you normally go and see adults you sort of know what to say, you know, what the expectations are … But when you do it with the children, it's always unpredictable, I think that's another positive thing.
I think the fascinating thing about when I've worked with young people is that, they're so unpredictable, in terms of what they are going to come up with and I think, you know, when you work with communities and adults in communities, to a degree, you can't help but kind of second guess what they're going to say and you normally can anticipate some of the things that they're talking about. I think the wonderful thing about children is that there's unpredictability and that sometimes they come up with things that you would never have thought of and they're not afraid to say the wrong thing and I think that's fascinating.
5. Transgression
5.1. Playing with the rules
Known for its subversive qualities, play has been discussed as means for breaking down social boundaries and for constructing new ways of being (Hope Citation2005, 363). Mainemelis and Ronson’s study (Citation2006) makes a strong case for viewing play as a transgressive act. They describe it as a threshold experience, i.e. ‘the transitional space between inner and outer reality’ (Citation2006, 87). Children were many times seen as design partners, or sometimes clients or collaborators who consented to or perhaps even facilitated imperfections; they were also perceived to be refreshingly unafraid to say the wrong thing. Frequently, children were described as questioning, critical, uninhibited, ‘not prejudiced [nor] partisan to things’, as an architect put it, which the designers perceived as an exceptional quality, giving children the freedom to embrace the unexpected with an open mindset. Children’s abilities to think and act outside (be free from) social norms of adulthood were discussed almost without exception across the interviews. This is not to say that children are universally uninhibited beings, acting as if there were no rules; rather the architects perceived an openness in children’s communication and this was refreshing to them. Unlike an adult style of adherence to the ‘status quo’, children were implied to respond more to the moment, with more spontaneity, paying less heed to rules concerning what is polite or expected of them as this designer expressed:
If you go in there with a closed mind then there’s no point in being there, you have to go in prepared for the curve ball to be thrown at you […] in every consultation that we’ve done there’s an idea that you missed, because you’re becoming a bit adult and straight-laced about it.
…approach the whole thing with a sense of humour, it breaks down barriers. If you take it too seriously then the kids will get put off.
Designers also discussed children’s capacity to understand the implications of the design process. Unlike adults, who were viewed as tending to think with specific agenda in mind and ‘self-edit more’, ‘children can handle virtually everything […], in a way they’re less inhibited by the drudgery of daily life experience’, an architect argued. Yet children were not thought to be locked into an ‘imaginary’ world; they easily broke down barriers between real and unreal. Children were often understood to exhibit a greater capacity than adults to handle abstract ideas and transform them into applicable, tangible outcomes:
It’s surprising, actually, they can also bring a very practical understanding of what’s important within the environment to them, which can be overlooked by adults […], they don’t see any reason why [crazy] stuff shouldn’t be part of design, whereas adults, we ‘have ‘taste’.
… they wanted a wind turbine because it’s a windy spot and they wanted to be green and when everybody said, ‘oh well it’s in a residential neighbourhood; the neighbours might not like it, one of the kids went: ‘ well after school we’ll go knock on their door’; there was no like, ‘oh we've got to through planning and we’ve got to do twenty-one days public consultation in the town hall’, they were just going ‘well I'll ask Mrs. and Mr. so and so who live opposite if they would mind’.
5.2. Unravelling roles
Freedom from red tape was not seen as an automatic given when working with children. Those architects working in school settings, often reported barriers, which could prevent everyone from thinking broadly and imaginatively. Whilst many designers felt that an enabler of positive transgression was their use of structured design engagement activities and clear objectives, this element of careful organisation, planning and perhaps control was perceived as quite different from the usual school hegemony. Doing design engagement in school settings presented problems sometimes in dealing with adult stakeholders’ occasional tight and inflexible concepts of ‘good’ design and of design process, especially one that doesn’t make too much mess. As one architect phrased it: ‘You have to listen out for the teacher saying, “oh, no, you can’t do that, so don’t do that’’’. In response to this, designers themselves were keen to flout the ‘rules of school’ to some extent because they found that children’s inherent interest in transferring their ideas between the real and unreal can be the most exciting part in the design process and, to some extent, because of their own styles of working. A school-based architect’s response to children’s liberated notions of school design here illustrates: ‘you can do whatever you want, and if it’s a school as a football pitch, that’s fine, we’ll take something from it at some point’.
Additionally, transgression of societal (school-based) norms around learning and participation was found to be part of the designer-role, for some. Whilst children may be uninhibited in many ways, designers sometimes felt they had a role to help children, especially older children, voice their ideas:
As a kid in school you’re not invited to ask questions, or if you've got an idea that might be a bit left-field then you generally shut up, because, otherwise, you're the odd ball, whereas I think where we're successful sometimes [is when you] feel you’re enabling them to be a bit freer.
Elsewhere children played roles, for example, in the brief development and in detailed design as ‘interior architects’, through to post-occupancy as ‘evaluators’. As one designer explained, ‘[…] we were constantly doing things with them and bringing back results and moving [the project] on, so there was a definite sense that they were contributing’. This ‘give and take’ process was seen as fundamentally collaborative and immensely fulfilling, as an architect reflects: ‘[...] that has been the most rewarding to me, [seeing] a group of students work right the way through a design process. I very much felt they were kind of co-designers in the process […]’ Practitioners reported seeing children gaining a sense of confidence and pride in both their capacities and their surroundings, which they helped to shape through their own input. Above all, as the designer below explains, having a choice to participate in the design process, perhaps unlike other enforced social and educational contexts, enabled children to experience a sense of power and agency:
[…] they had a sort of a positive feeling that they could help make change, they had some power, some agency in the design process; they could see they’d made a difference. I think they could see that, so I think some of them genuinely felt they’re contributing, because they could back out of it, opt out.
6. Transformation
6.1. Losing control, gaining collaboration
Previous paragraphs gave examples of how designers and children alike have been introduced to sometimes unfamiliar, and often inspirational, creative trajectories within the design process. The transgressive quality of creative and playful designer–child interactions should not be confused, however, with their transformational potential: if the first is about breaking down boundaries, the second is about re-interpreting meanings and building new understandings. O’Sullivan’s (Citation2003, 327) understanding of transformation as a ‘deep structural shift in basic premises or thoughts, feelings and actions’ serves well here.
Where transgression invites experimentation and improvisation, transformation is a learning and change process that requires critical reflection. In learning theory, Mezirow (Citation1985, 24) posits that this process of re-evaluating one’s given beliefs and knowledge derives from a feeling of ‘disorientation’ or discomfort. For the designers in our study, children’s participation in design has not been a process without concerns and discomfort (for the designers themselves). Dilemmas and challenges were talked about around a number of themes such as: children’s potentially unruly nature; practicalities and politics associated with involving young people and adults within their institutions. One designer felt that she had insufficient teachers’ input to complement that from the children; it felt like an incomplete collaboration process:
we kind of came up with some ideas and brought in a palette and, you know, come into the room and one of the staff members was like ‘I don't like yellow’ so automatically we were in big trouble […] but I felt like if they had been involved in this process then all these decisions can be made much easier because they feel like they’re part of it […] so it was just a kind of missing piece.
when they get a little haywire is to distract, divert them, but you’re having to do that, you’ve got twenty to thirty kids in a room and, you know, it takes a lot of effort to keep the workshop on track and find a task to distract the disruption with, and that's, that just makes it hard and you don't know what you’re going to face when you go in.
I love hearing about [the use of the building], what it’s enabling people to do, and sometimes they’re unexpected [outcomes] for the people who are using it, that's great but is the architecture what you thought? Yes, of course it is, [laughs] I’ve stayed up all weekends and late nights to make sure it is!
I think sometimes through […] either the speed of the way that the process is going or the project programme, there's not really kind of time or money to directly implement something that children might suggest and I think children do like quite direct results from things as I was sort of explaining before, and so I think for a child it […] might be a bit of a, feel like a bit of a letdown.
6.2. A new way of seeing
Practitioners’ reflections on their collaboration with children showed not only a strong sense of design as a relational process; they also demonstrate a desire to transform the architectural professional culture and design outcomes in such a way as to make them more relevant to lay people and perhaps less pompous, for example:
I do believe fundamentally that good design improves people’s lives and whether that's something as obvious as somebody in a wheelchair being able to get into a building or just a beautiful pink spot painting juxtaposed on a nice green wall in my kid’s room.
[…] I think it’s about de-snootifying design.
[…] the time spent on site and observing people on site has become more important to me I think, since working with children […] when I’m working with adults on a project, if I'm not working with children, [I’m] trying to encourage them to speak openly.
I know a certain project we’re doing in our other office where they did some of the activities that we’d done with the children with a whole kind of community group, you know, taking them round the site and doing a similar thing to the balloon game […]
7. Summary: a space for transformation
To conclude, we draw on Edmiston’s (Citation2010) suggestion that when children play on their own they do not need to leave their imagined worlds; however, when children and adults collaborate in play scenarios ‘they create spaces in which significant ethical contemplation can take place’ (Edmiston Citation2010, 203). Previously in this paper, the three themes of creativity, play and transgression were noted to emerge from both literature and our interview data; these themes, we suggested, came together to form a ‘prism’ for viewing what happens in designer–child interactions. What is seen to occur through such interaction is a co-created space or atmosphere of potential – often for transformation. That space, in design process, proves not to be easily definable or singular across all designers’ experiences, but more complex and spectrum-like. We might understand that space between the designer and children as a space into which creativity moves or in which it is generated: as a ‘Third Mind’. Such a concept was immortalised in Burroughs and Gysin’s (Citation1978) beat generation work and book of the same name, which was named as such because their collaborative cutup technique was felt to lead to text as if a third mind – a third person – was present. The designer–child interaction, perhaps characterised by a sense of the ‘Other’, can also be understood as a playful space, one of possibility and improvisation. A re-imagination of Bhabha’s (Citation1994, 2) notion of ‘Third Space’ as a space of transgression, where re-negotiated roles and identities of ‘professional’ designers and of ‘lay’ children may be formed in design collaborations; this third space may be one where rules are disregarded by one or other or both parties. It is a space which both designers and children can potentially access, contribute to and – crucially – one in which they can understand and learn from each other.
Funding
This research was supported by a three-year Leverhulme Trust Research Grant (2013–2016) under [grant number RPG-2012–682], Principal Investigator: Rosie Parnell.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the architects and spatial designers who took part in interviews for this research.
Notes
1. ‘Children’ is used in this paper to mean anyone under the age of 18 years and is used interchangeably with the term ‘young people’. This reflects the research data presented.
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