Crafting Play:ces - Urban play by co-creation

Other conference contribution, 2013

This workshop departs from an idea of a hands-on, co-crafting playground that explores the intersection of crafts, play, and space in new ways. It is also an exploration of how participatory crafts might be more than just a specialized crafter’s act of making and how play might become more than just a child’s activity. The notion of “play action space” is an extension of the standard urban playground, the physical equipment and space, to a participatory social process of making and crafting a play space. In this action space, we want to inspire and engage participants, including children, in play and interaction and perhaps discovery in their urban environments. By co-crafting an urban play space with children and citizens, this project aims to speculate on whether such a DIY craft activity could become a catalyst for: 1) collaboration and knowledge-sharing between different types of citizen roles such as amateurs and professional craftsmen, children and adults, producers and users, etc., 2) activating inactive spaces or even local livelihoods, 3) opening up for possibilities in what are normally thought as predefined, functionally determined urban environments, 3) new arenas for craft production, 5) encountering the unexpected and spurring the social imagination… The research questions for this project are: how can a “crafted action play space” act as a social platform for imagination, play, and co-creation between different stakeholders of different ages in the urban environment? The workshop is to be carried out in two phases. In the first phase students and teachers prototype crafted play spaces from willow tree, etc. In the second phase students will invite the public to engage. Let´s Play!