Let it snow: Child-snow affordances during the snowy season in Brno Czech Republic

• Authors: KAPLAN Daniel
• Year of publication: 2020
• Type: Appeared in Conference without Proceedings
• Description: There has been a decent amount of research on children's activities in the winter season or seasonality in general suggesting that outdoor activities of children are less likely to occur in winter than in other seasons. However, the impact of snow on child activities is often overlooked. The presented research considers the impact of the snow on the intra-actions with the environment. Affordances were used as a tool to describe the relationship of children with the public space. Drawing from the new materialism, I want to stress that snow has its agency as well as the children. Therefore, the main goal was to describe children’s winter activities through the affordances as well as to encourage scholars to conduct more research in the winter season. The research was carried out in Brno, Czech Republic, in a residential area, a housing estate. The findings were collected during the winter season between 2018 and 2020. Nonparticipant observation was used as the main research method. I focused mostly on every child visiting the area. When necessary, I have conducted short informal interviews with caretakers or children to explain the complex mosaic of children's activities. All fieldnotes were recorded electronically on the tablet. The presented findings suggest that affordances and spatiality of affordances have changed in the snowy season as artificial man-made places were almost exclusively abandoned, however, previously empty places were buzzing with life. It is also worth noting that the active/passive actualized affordances have changed overall. Snow also significantly influenced perception of the danger of falling or throwing objects. The main research question is 'How the snow changed the occurrence of affordances in public space?