The Seven Sins Festival – Fri Jun 20 & Sat Jun 21, 2025

“Okay, sorry, I’m just distracted, I’m like a child here.”

by Aramiha Harwood, Troy innocent, Lucy Buxton & Carlo Tolentino

RMIT future play lab were invited to participate in the Sinner’s Roast event at Prahran Market, which ran over two nights – Friday and Saturday 20th and 21st June, 2025. The future play lab situated an urban play activation within the market. The urban play was set in 2050, to invite festival attendees to imagine their lives and the role of markets for themselves, their local communities and society in general.

A small-scale LARP (live action role play) was played within the market. A character, Mr Lone Avocado, enlisted festival attendees into participating within the game – offering a drinks card if they successfully finished the game. He sent them to meet a roaming CityAI character (cosplaying as an android), within the interior of the market. The CityAI directed them to a creative placemaker, located by the luminescent garden. The creative placemaker finally led players to some tables, lit up by blacklight globes in the middle of the dark market, where players were invited to play with tabletop musical instruments, paints, tapes and highlighters – while answering broad questions around speculative futures, markets, place and self.

Having the opportunity to play while speculating on relationships with Prahran market, markets in general, and the way humans shop and interact, drew some heart-felt and extensive responses from play participants. Engaging imagination and play, it seems, offered people the permission to engage with personal reflections – while also weighing up very practical considerations in the present and the future.

Interview Questions asked participants: how they ended up attending the Sinner’s Roast; what they felt about a market in general, and Prahran Market in particular; and how People, Money and Food might interact in a speculative future of 2050. While participants answered these questions directly, they freely engaged with concepts of play, speculation around the future, and their feelings about place and Prahran Market. These question responses, and broader/open themed responses, are outlined in direct quotes below.

What brought you both to the market tonight and what’s your connection to this place?

• We are, I don’t really get to do a lot with his family because I’m always at work. So it’s just the one time that I could come to one of these things and they’re always so much fun. I love markets for that reason, yeah.
• We live just up the street. Very close, very convenient. We heard the music. Yeah, it was hard to ignore. Came towards the music.
• Well actually I saw it on Facebook, but we are locals, well semi-locals here, so we shop here on the weekends. So I saw it and I thought, what a different way to utilise the market.

And what does the concept of a market mean to you?

• One thing I really love about markets, like every time I come to whichever market it is, and say in the case of Prahran Market, literally every time I come here, I remember… the other times I’ve come here. Like I remember coming here when I first got to Melbourne. I’m not from Melbourne but I’ve been here 40 years now and I remember the first time I came to Prahran Market in 1985. Wow 40 years!. Yeah and it’s got a lot of special meaning.
• I think I think community connection and also cultural, cultural connection. You see a lot of, you know, international based markets and. I think pretty much every every person here has come from a different walk of life. So I think it’s important to, you know, I suppose, just knowing ourselves where we come from. I think it’s important to view all of it, but yeah, because that’s probably one of the reasons that’s probably the main reason I go to markets and doing this kind of stuff.

We’re imagining that the shapes on the table we’re playing with represent people, money and food. So we’ve got three resources. Imagining that it’s 2050 –  How do you see these three resources working?

• I think markets are where people come together because you’re in your house. You’ve got everything, you’ve got the technology, and you’re going to need humanity and human connections… I think markets are going to become very, very important.. And they’re really going to provide… I think they’re going to have to provide space for people.. for humans to be human. And I think markets are going to enable spaces for creativity for human emotion, for innovation, and for people to connect in a human way. I think markets are going to be essential.
• I feel money is going to increase and connection will somehow increase, because we’re only getting more as the years go by. But food will obviously the same, which is why in relation to the markets, food is big, because we’ll have our money, we’ll have our people and connection to stuff, but food is big to make, because of what I just said.

Themes Around Play

• First of all, you’re obviously living it (play) and it’s live. You can basically touch it. (Our son) does game and that’s that’s cool Yeah, and  I’m totally happy for that to happen but he also knows that there’s a side of our lives where he needs to come out and he needs to experience and involve himself with other people and, People of all different demographics, you know, I think he gets a lot, a lot out of that. And you wouldn’t experience that if you’re just sitting at home on your sofa.

• I mean, just imagine, like two minutes back, he (son) was just literally saying, “I don’t want to be here, I want to go home.” What would he do? Go home, watch something. But now he’s sitting and interacting with the things which are around, not whinging at all. That makes a difference. If your community has availability of doing something outside and anyone can come, there is no, like, need to pay something. And he can come and just spend time and, you know, he can come out. Do spend time. Else people just go home and get busy with electronics and that’s it. Less talking among each other

Immersion and Interaction as an Experience with Play

• So, I’m definitely one that would be like, no, someone’s trying (to play) here, so let’s try and get involved and even if we don’t like it we don’t have to stay at it let’s just experience it and then move on and look sometimes those little memories the kids learn from that or go oh do you remember that time when and it might not be something major could be something quite, minimal but that remains as a memory in their mind so I think that’s really interesting.
• Oh look, it’s great, we’re totally different, old people, we’re on and we’re just chatting to a lady outside who’s a little old to go to, get through, got the instructions, we haven’t met her before, but yeah, great meeting people, just have that interaction with other people.