We care about participation!
As designers we are just passengers, the community is the expert. Community participation is essential to design places that work for all.
As a teacher & architect, it is my strength to distill the underlying motives of children, teenagers and adults, via made-to-measure activities.
Participation: All different stakeholders share their views, experiences, dreams or needs. Together we uncover their own, community-based set of requirements.
In greening schoolyards, we first teach children climate-lessons about the local climate challenges, and they learn the theory of play. This knowledge forms the basis for true co-design!
Secondly we co-design with children /community. We draw, measure, craft, and prototype. How to combine climate adaptation with our wished functions? It is especially the conversations during the design activities that offers the most input. We take all the ideas seriously, they inspire us with amazing, innovative ideas.
Thirdly, if possible we co-construct: if children, community craftsmen, parents, local experts, build together, a true community place is born. With our co-maintainance program children learn to take care of their natural environment.
We turn Grey spaces Green in a Golden process: watch this one minute video Space for Play – Grey Green Gold! about our process.
For each situation
a taylored participation!
Our made-to-measure participation takes into account the local challenges, the children or adults involved, the exact goals and the local situation.
Space for Play have set up and lead many participatory approaches, with diverse goals, such as:
- including children’s ideas
- teaching children new skills or about environmental issues.
- increasing local ownership
- enhancing mutual understanding between diverse user groups, such as host communities and refugees.
- integrating different needs within one plan.
- bringing in knowledge from local experts and organisations.
A participation process can be short – if participants’ input is most important-, it can stretch over several sessions, if the goal involves actually teaching or empowering participants through the process.
We lead workshops for all ages – children, teenagers, adults- in sharing and categorising their experiences, needs, wishes or alleged threats. Together we can translate these into a concrete set of requirements.
In setting up new participation projects, Space for Play build on the diverse formats we have developed: from dialogue sessions, social mapping tours, dialogue-& craft sessions, lesson courses, participatory games, interviews, discussion meetings, to longer municipal public participation processes.
We develop and lead each project to ensure strong involvement of all participants.
Let’s think about it and brainstorm out-of-the-box solutions with you!
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