Sødalskolens Tunnelbelysning

The ideal co-creation case, where local participants, artists and several official bodies came together, to mitigate a situation where the locals felt very unsafe, in a tunnel leading to a school. The project was completed in October 2020.

Sødalskolen is a school located in amongst a natural setting, with a tunnel leading from the main roads, as the primary route to the school for most pupils. Hundreds of children use this tunnel several times a day. The tunnel had increasingly become a place for unsettling activity, with items being set on fire in the tunnel regularly. This created a lack of feeling safe, for people -and especially the children- using the tunnel. For this reason the tunnel was on our radar, as a candidate for an intervention, to try and distract from the feelings of being unsafe.
In 2019 we started a series of workshops with pupils from Sødalskolen, to gain an insight into their perspective on what lighting their tunnel should have, to try and mitigate the lack of a sense of safety in their area. Luckily for us, the pupils had already worked on a series of ideas, in connection with a LEGO contest, to create technologies for the future.
Naturally, the children had brilliantly wild and completely unhinged creative ideas, which were discussed in the workshops, together with a lighting designer. The goal was to work towards a handful of viable concepts, that could be implemented in a cooperative process from beginning to end.
This very refreshing and fun way of co-creating turned into a main concept of displaying drawings made by the pupils in backlit display-cases throughout the tunnel. The drawings were first conceptualized by the pupils and then drawn up in large format together with an artist. Then the drawings were carefully selected for locations throughout the tunnel, to enable a sense of storytelling for passersby.
Finally a sensor-system was sketched out by the pupils, together with the lighting designer. An important feature would be the ability of the system to increase lighting in the panels behind the drawings, as people approached them. Audio sensors were also integrated, to allow for full lighting in the case someone would shout in the tunnel, as the pupils felt that the ability to have very strong lighting if someone was attacked in the tunnel, would give them a sense of safety.

Experience:
Sødalskolens tunnelbelysning necessitated a great deal of sketching and planning on the process of going from co-creation to a finished useable system successfully. It’s easy for a process like this to become watered down and not reach its full potential, if the co-creators (the pupils in this case) were not supported in the needed way.
Highlighted circumstances, that I dealt with in this project:

Defining scope and framework of concept with a focus on mapping out key specialist participants, to guarantee a high return within ideation process with local citizens.
Facilitating workshop making sure communication between specialists and participants was understandable and conducive to productive and enjoyable sessions, for both sides.
Drafting and finalizing contracts with designers and contractors.
Advising on technical parts to make sure that fixtures and auxiliary components chosen, were right for the framework of upkeep, for the future.
Developing and executing press package consisting of photography, descriptions, publication etc.