interview 1
The city of Madrid and the role of children in it have undergone intense transformations in just a few years. From an incipient recognition of the children’s community as political subjects with rights, as well as mere users, to the transformation of the city into a hostile territory and the “disappearance” of minors from its public spaces during the quarantine imposed by the COVID-19. Marta Martínez Muñoz is a sociologist specialising in public policy and children’s rights.
Marta Martínez Muñoz
Sociologist
Ask an initial question that would work as a starting point for the construction of cultural policies that put children at its centre.
How can children be supported to be commissioners of policies or strategies?
How can we enable more children and young people to become protagonists in their own civic culture, society and environment?
Does anyone else have the feeling pandemia is increasing the silence of the children in public sphere? Are there any public studies about it?
What kind of creative, imaginative and experiential spaces can we create to engage children and make them actively participating, yet in a playful approach?
How do we talk with children about complicated concepts and policies that many adults do not even understand?
Could city planners have young mentors? Can cities develope through children´s views and thinking? Surroundings which are safe and fun for children are environments that everybody likes.
Can we approach the children without parental guidance or surveyance, to build these new cultural policies?
what would it be like to listen to children?
How can cultural institutions secure the equal access to culture for children, and how can these institutions be more successful, if they involve children when they carry out their activities?
How are children’s voices being centered, surveyed, engaged with to construct these cultural policies?
GREAT point of view. The key is to create spaces of listening. So How can we establish effective spaces where we can listen to the children without the intervention fo adults?
What is the new role of the state?
My take-away is the involvement of children in a co-creating process of articulating an appropriate cultural policy that will empower them through the way and increase their physical and emotional well-being. In what terms is such an endeavor feasible, taking into account intersections of class, economic status, dis-ability and ethnicity?
How can we get governments more involved in the different cultural projects that emerge all over the world? How can we get them to believe in them as a need and a must?
Whose voice/who might we look to reach in the first instance and why?
Is there a challenge concerning translation what children need/want into policy?
With several social, cultural and economic scenarios in an urban environments, in families or on children’s worlds , how can we find common denominators in public policies aimed to children, as explained in the interview?
How do we enable the space (and power) for children to give voice to their needs and potential?
Could children be map makers of their ashtonisments/dissapoinments in the city?
how can we engage institutions in our reflection on policy for children since they meet children only at home or in political election time ?