Browse by author
Lookup NU author(s): Ivan Pecorari, Dr Clara CrivellaroORCiD, Dr Usue Ruiz AranaORCiD, Dr Ahmed KharrufaORCiD, Dr Vasilis VlachokyriakosORCiD
Full text for this publication is not currently held within this repository. Alternative links are provided below where available.
© 2026, Design Research Society. All rights reserved.This paper investigates the emergence of imagination as a participatory ecological process among children and adolescents in a deprived post-industrial area of Benwell, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Responding to ongoing debates about representation and agency in More-than-Human design, we advance an ecology of imagination as a theoretical framework. We situate imagination as a dynamic, evolving network of relations among diverse and ephemeral spatial-temporal actors. Drawing on a summer of ethnographic fieldwork, the paper analyses three examples of imaginative play to illustrate how spatial, material, and affective interactions generate conditions for collective creative play between humans and non-humans. The discussion explores imagination as an ecological, transformative and distributed capacity that reconfigures relations between people, place, and environment. In conclusion, the paper articulates implications for More-than-Human design practice, advocating situated, playful approaches to support the envisioning and inhabiting of more just and sustainable futures.
Author(s): Pecorari I, Crivellaro C, Ruiz Arana U, Kharrufa A, Vlachokyriakos V
Publication type: Conference Proceedings (inc. Abstract)
Publication status: Published
Conference Name: DRS2026: Edinburgh
Year of Conference: 2026
Online publication date: 12/06/2026
Acceptance date: 08/06/2026
Publisher: Design Research Society
URL: https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1904
DOI: 10.21606/drs.2026.1904
