Playscapes - RE:play

What is your dream plays
cape?

What is your dream playscape?

The notion of playscapes recognises play as a continuous realm of life through which we engage with the world around us – learn about ourselves and about the world. By bringing play and nature together in playscapes we aim at transcending the notion of a traditional playground in its form and elements, thus widening our understanding and recognising that nature within us takes place in the nature around us.

Recognition of existing natural elements (infrastructure) is the first step to redesigning playscapes. Looking at natural elements in search of shadows, shelters, paths, views, openings, and barriers, allows us to enhance them with simple structures – thus enabling communities to take local actions while reducing consumption, shortening dependencies, and creating context-specific design solutions. An abandoned green corner can easily become an amphitheatre for learning and exchange.

Source: high school courtyard in Bar (ME), by Gradionica

Playing with natural elements allows children to engage with cycles of nature and to understand its regenerative capacity through seasons. By leaving nature compounds to decompose provides nutrients for the soil and feeds the ecosystem. Thus, while it can be a great play activity, navigating leaves and branches can support the ecosystem.

Source: primary school courtyard in Ljubljana (SE), by Paz!Park

Sensitising our bodies to diverse species is another important activity of redesigning playscapes. Multi sensorial experiences of looking, smelling, touching, hearing, and tasting, allows a deeper connection with the natural world, higher appreciation of and care for it. By learning about different species, the way they grow and they flourish in this world, we lay a foundation for our communities to grow equally diverse and prosperous.

Source: primary school courtyard in Zagreb (HR), by Kreativni Krajobrazi

Planting as a committing act of life is a profound activity of redesigning playscapes. What and how we plant matters and therefore it is of great importance to include children in local actions of diversifying the natural world through playful planting. Through such actions children can see the immediate results and can get empowered to remain responsible and care for it to flourish.

Source: primary school courtyard in Zagreb (HR), by Kreativni Krajobrazi

Co-inquiry is a self-revealing path to redesigning playscapes that occur through motivating children and youth to remain epistemologically curious about their surrounding. Reciprocaly to the understanding of the world around them, co-inquiry of children and youth as a process creates space. It does so, first in the realm of ideas, where different concepts are tested and eventually through joint deliberation and negotiation some of these concepts materialise in the real world.

Source: multiple locations, by Kreativni Krajobrazi, Qendra Marrëdhënie, Paz!Park, and Škograd

Appropriating space by children and youth inserts new meaning into public space while unequivocally embodying the presence of this otherwise segregated group beyond prescribed norms. The agency of subjects in public space further influences their role and status in society. Thus, spatial appropriation by children and youth is both a tool and an important result of redesigning playscapes.

Source: high school courtyard in Bar (ME), by Gradionica

Staging encounters between communities of children and youth with communities of adults is an essential activity of redesigning playscapes. Navigating discrepant power relations and allowing more subtle (and often marginalised) voices to be heard is a delicate act that requires provision of respectful audience, one that takes child and youth proposals seriously and with commitment. Facilitating local exhibitions of work results in festive atmosphere, on the spot, proved to be very effective for local community mobilization supporting child and youth initiatives.

Source: primary school courtyard in Ljubljana (SE), by Paz!Park

Source: high school courtyard in Bar (ME), by Gradionica

Source: primary school courtyard in Ljubljana (SE), by Paz!Park

Source: primary school courtyard in Zagreb (HR), by Kreativni Krajobrazi

Source: multiple locations, by Kreativni Krajobrazi, Qendra Marrëdhënie, Paz!Park, and Škograd

Source: high school courtyard in Bar (ME), by Gradionica

Source: primary school courtyard in Ljubljana (SE), by Paz!Park

Following the basic premise that play happens everywhere and all the time, playscapes invite us to think of our cities as all-encompassing playful environments, rather than places with functionally particular, secured, and fenced areas dedicated to play. Such a perspective shift allows us to see playscapes as stories and experiences that connect us, enabling us to re-imagine and re-design them to fit our needs.

By involving local communities, particularly children and youth as the main protagonists of these stories – in the process of their re-designing – playscapes hold the great capacity to create a sense of belonging and ownership – an indispensable quality for building a more responsible and caring relationship with each other and with the world.

For the past 3 years our organizations have pioneered in co-producing such playscapes together with children and youth in the Western Balkan, and here we would love to share with you our main achievements and approaches.