Redesigning playscapes with children and youth
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Redesigning playscapes with children and youth
more play, nature and community-centred cities!
New force in Western Balkan
REplay network is a think-thank-act based in Western Balkans, that has emerged out of the three year long eponymous project. We are a group of diverse experts dedicated to the development of creative, nature-inspired, and future-proof playscapes co-created with children and youth. We strive to create conducive conditions for more compassionate, nature-sensible, healthier, and thriving communities and cultures within them by engaging with the everyday life practices of children and youth – play – in their usual environment – school courtyards and streets.
We gathered around the problem of play deprivation in our cities, spatial standardisation of the formal playscapes and the shrinking and shortage of spaces for play in the cities. We believe this needs to change!
We are convinced that the future needs highly creative, adaptive, compassionate individuals and communities. Nurturing play and immersive play environments are one of the most important but neglected ways to provide that.
We are ready to share knowledge and methodologies we have already tested, and we are ready to continue spreading and strengthening the global network of initiatives dedicated to the development of better playscapes and better cities throughout our region.
Our growing network of play experts gathers:
architectspedagoguesartistsactivists
social workersurban planners
architects
pedagogues
artists
activists
social workers
urban planners
and we are working further on widening our scope.
REplay network has been established among organizations Škograd (Serbia), Gradionica (Montenegro) , QM (Albania) with the support from the European fund for the Balkans, and we are continuing our journey together with organizations from the wider Western Balkan region.
We envisioned creating a network from a three year long experience of working together, in a consortium of five play and nature dedicated organizations Gradionica (Montenegro), QM (Albania), Škograd ( Serbia), Kreativni Krajobrazi (Croatia), Paz!Park (Slovenia). We decided not to leave this to a singular project, rather to a dedicated conversation and action to which we have already invited more actors in the field to join us.
We wish for more organizations to become part of the action of transforming playscapes together with children and youth in the Western Balkans.
On our map discover more about our organizations and extended network of partners.
Play is what brought us together. The playfulness of the process is what kept us together. We assembled around the understanding that play is too important to be neglected, that play is our natural capacity and need as human beings. Through play we learn, we understand, we connect, we create, we invent and innovate! Play opens us to transformative processes and enables us to imagine alternative worlds.
Hyper urbanisation and centralisation of major cities kicked out nature from our cities in exchange for dry, predictable spaces that are only worsening the cities climate and pollution predicament. How can we create spaces with diverse ecological services, open for multipurpose functions – to play, to move freely and safely, to breathe, to plant, to live? Because nature is the ultimate playground, bringing back the nature in the city we are creating more space for play in the cities. For natural, more imaginative, explorative, developmental play situations in every street and every community.
We are redesigning the paradigm of producing and designing from for to with children and youth. The practice of co-creation and the highest level of participation is what drives us as human beings and professionals. It is a demanding process, requiring honesty and communal vision. It takes time, it takes unlearning but the result is worth the while – empowering, more durable, more sustainable.
