informal urban practices

The previous suburbs our combined group studied were Collingwood and Albert Park, we chose to continue with Collingwood and based our occupation in Smith Street. For the occupation we decided to interview people about the informal urban practices that they were undertaking in Collingwood and their opinions on what Collingwood has to offer in regards to it’s formal and informal spaces. We were extremely lucky with the people we interviewed, one woman was heavily involved in the aboriginal and african communities in Collingwood and stopping public drinking in the Smith Street area. Another man we spoke to was a street artist who had done street art in Collingwood, however he felt that the gentrification in the area of Collingwood over the years had taken away some character from the suburb. The time conditions we initiated our occupation in showed a notable difference in the type of people in the area of Smith Street between Saturday afternoon and Monday night. The most notable difference was on the weekend people seemed to be coming from outside areas to visit Collingwood but on the Monday the people we encountered were usually residents of the area.

Elliot Henkel, Jiazhen Ken Chen, Oscar Langley, Tim Bagnara

So we went to Preston Sunday morning and then Monday morning. On Sunday we asked people four questions:
1. What are you doing with your Sunday?
2. Do you do this activity every Sunday?
3. Do you do this alone or with friends and family (social or quiet time?)
4. How long has Preston been part of your Sunday routine?

Then on Sunday, we just generally asked people about their day, and kind of let them talk about themselves or whatever else it was that they wanted to talk about.

We initially felt awkward about just straight-out asking people about their lives, so we decided to make it into more of an ‘occupation’ perse. So we went to Woolworths, bought a few packs of Cupcakes and some paper and made a sandwich board and taped it to Nick that said: “Have a cupcake and tell us about your day.” We thought that giving people cupcakes in exchange for/encourage conversation would be a little more of a subversive tactic and kind of a fair exchange.
We where asking them to stop and do something that wasn’t the norm in terms of how you would usually behave in that particular space especially since we where strangers baring cup-cakes.

We found the people of Preston to be quite reluctant to speak with us. They didn’t trust that the cup-cake was free. Our actions where very out of the ordinary. The public felt suspicious of us. We think this has to do with the issue of safety in the area.
The participants that did approach us and then became comfortable with the situation where very willing to give us information about their lives.