Watershed’s international Playable City programme puts people and play at the heart of the future city, re-using city infrastructure and re-appropriating smart city technologies to create connections – person to person and person to city. Our international programme and network reaches across five continents and includes our Australian Playable City of Melbourne.

Leading this work for Watershed is Hilary O’Shaughnessy and her team of producers who develop and deliver Watershed’s Research partnerships and programmes including South West Creative Technology Network, Bristol and Bath Creative R&D and Playable City.

Hilary is currently attending the Melbourne International Games Week in Melbourne where she is speaking and co-hosting with Troy Innocent, an Australian artist, designer and educator.

Hilary and her team first welcomed Troy to Watershed in 2018 when Troy was undertaking a research trip to find out more about Playable City. Inspired by his findings, on his return to Melbourne Troy created the world’s first Playable Tram, using AR to create a 32.5 metre long musical score that you can listen to as the tram passes you by.

Hilary paid a return visit to Melbourne earlier this year to act as an advisor, speak at conferences and events, and share Watershed and the Pervasive Media Studio’s approach and methodologies with Melbourne’s creatives and companies. Hilary presented at the Creative Summit and hosted workshops at Swinburne University and at Bendigo Technical College where she met with representatives from Creative Victoria to talk about sharing our Bristol Methodologies with their new Creative Hubs in Bendigo. Troy is just about to release a report on his research, which includes official accounts of his time in Bristol visiting the Pervasive Media Studio, which will be shared among the international play and creativity community.

Troy and Hilary are now in conversation with the Melbourne Festival and ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image) to create a series of work for 2020 and 2021. As part of this ongoing work Hilary is now in Melbourne for Melbourne Games Week to continue the plans for international knowledge exchange and to engage more partners in the growing, global Playable City network.

Find out more about what Hilary is doing on Twitter - twitter.com/PlayableCity

---