Critical Reflective Essay on Child Protagonism

In support of the Meaningful Play project

Background of the study

With the increasingly fast-paced lives in cities and evident decline in mental health and well-being, social evils like child maltreatment, negligence or abuse, are becoming highly prevalent in many homes. According to Straits Times, there has been a steep increase in physical and sexual child abuse cases over the past year (Tan). Occurring within domestic spaces and closed doors, the consequences of child maltreatment leave its victims helpless thereby distorting their image of adults in whom they can place their trust. This isolates them further and curbs their ability to speak up for their safety or find solace in any “authority”/adult figures in their lives. The issue stems from society’s justification of certain actions through a smokescreen of culture.

The functioning of society is designed to cater to adults, pushing children into the blind spot reducing them to passive participants. The world we live in today is designed especially for grown-ups who can communicate and make sense of social cues but ignores children and their ability to speak up during times of trouble and harm. Words often fall short for these young children adding to the difficulty, especially in speaking up about such grievous issues.

The dynamics of child-adult interactions need to change, given that there is a lack of a child-friendly system to express or escalate the victim’s grievances. This problem requires the intervention of a design solution that creates a system helping children communicate with the help of multi-modal systems that are relatable to them, thereby empowering them to be vocal social actors. This not only establishes the importance of their participation in society, but also creates the scope to explore a new avenue, Child Protagonism.

Theoritical framework

The theoretical framework highlights the interrelations between key concepts and theories that this research would be based on. Concepts like humanity centred design and social cognitivism probe the intended behaviour intention that is child protagonism, forward. With meaning-making and semiotics as the foundation, the project aims to design a semiotic system that is child-friendly, intuitive and relatable, to foster child protagonism in societies and to empower children to be social actors and speak up during experiences that are detrimental to their well-being and safety. This would thereby drive design for social change/good forward.

Approaching the problem with system design insights and enabling an environment to co-design, the research situated in Singapore involving the audience (children) and multiple stakeholders will ensure effective, efficient and long-lasting solutions. This includes the active participation of children as informants, testers and users, and the support of teachers and child psychologists. The actualisation of the same could create a more inclusive and child-friendly environment for tomorrow’s citizens. Drawing inspiration from value co-creative and social inclusivity, theories like humanism and social cognitivism would help tremendously in anchoring the project’s outcome to humanity centred design.

Stakeholder mapping

The mapping helps in contextualising the journey of complexity to simplicity in achieving the goal of social change in this project. In the literature review, although multiple authors enumerate child protagonism and flesh it out in theory, they fail to outline the implementation of the same. The research gaps that arise during the literature review help to anchor the journey of knowledge gathering and direction. The design of a semiotic system that fosters child protagonism would be a means of communication that fosters empowerment and inclusivity. The thus resulting cultural semiotics would not only benefit the child of society but the society of tomorrow.

The purpose of this design intervention not only becomes to address a social issue, rather to manoeuvre the identity of the society by fostering child protagonism, wherein the child becomes an active agent in change for good and is actively part of the design process, from research to execution. Although situated in Singapore, the research aims to design an intervention that could be adopted globally, making it generative and future-casting.