Though her educational background is in law and drama, Alex Bonham is now a PhD student at the University of Auckland where her thesis focuses on urban development. Titled How May a Playful Practice Co-produce the Playful City, the thesis project draws a parallel between the structure of play within the theatre and within an urban context – both of which allow actors or users to interpret and add to the environment.

Perhaps it is this commitment to play that helped her in her journey to the local board, and encouraging urban inhabitants to take an active role in creating a more playful city will certainly be one of her aims as a board member. “The PhD gives me the opportunity to adopt a phenomenological methodology to consider a playful aesthetic of leadership, as a way to shape the playful city,” she says.

She believes that everyone has the right to play and that we are all agents in creating a playful city. Part of her thesis work has consisted of creating maps of Auckland from various perspectives – showing different interpretations of the same landscape and allowing people to create their own lenses to see the city through.

Bonham won the highest number of votes in the recent local body elections and she says, “…it wasn’t an enormous step to consider standing for the local board of Waitematā. I’m taking a theatrical mindset to new urbanism with the goal to create an all-age-friendly city that works for children, youth, parents, seniors; for people’s whole lives, not just work lives.”

She continues, “It is a terrific opportunity to have the chance to contribute to the planning of tangible urban frameworks from a position of political power, to give people more opportunities to participate in the life of the city both economically and recreationally.”

You can see an exhibition curated by Bonham called Auckland and the Meaningful Map, which portrays creative maps of Tāmaki Makaurau through the eyes of different mapmakers, at Auckland Central City Library until 13 November 2019.