The second training week of the TRADERS project focussed on PLAY and participative methods for working with children and young adults on art and design projects in public space. Starting from an empirical case with children in the city of Gothenburg, the training week explored debate and writing as a method for research and reflection. This 6‐day training acted as a mutual learning and research process between the TRADERS Early Stage Researchers, peers, stakeholders, a child group and three invited experts. The training week was hosted by HDK, School of Design and Crafts, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

The first, introductory day gave the research team an insight into the local context of the city of Gothenburg, particularly on the child perspective and the vision to involve children and young adults in democratic processes. These presentations were followed by the ludic intervention ‘The inauguration of the Office of Public Play’ at Götaplatsen, one of the main squares in the centre of Gothenburg. We moved on to Guldhedstorget to perform a series of playful guided tours, designed by the Child Culture Design students of HDK, School of Design and Crafts, in collaboration with pupils from ISGR, the International School of the Gothenburg Region. The tours aim to introduce diverse perspectives on children’s freedom to move in the city.

During the next few days, the research team worked in smaller groups. These groups consisted out of the TRADERS ESRs, peers, researchers from other host institutions and both associated partners: Kompan and Göteborgs Kulturförvaltning. Each day of the training week started with a “Public Time“, a play session performed in public space, inspired by Augusto Boal’s Games For Actors and Non‐Actors and/or the Archive for Public Play.

The actual training week started with a workshop with a group of children from the 4th grade (10 years) from ISGR located in the Guldheden neighbourhood. The workshop aimed to research the element of “time” in relation to public space. From Tuesday until Thursday the research team reflected on the process and outcome of this workshop in relation to “free play” and the input of three invited experts: Lieselotte Van Leeuwen – psychologist, Lottie Child – artist and Nils Norman – artist. These experts provided the research team with a text (before the training week) and a presentation and feedback sessions (during the training week). Each of these reflection days started with a lecture‐presentation by the expert (input session), followed by a group discussion “Listeners, Speak!” (first output session) and a reflection-trough-writing session “Readers, Write!” (second output session). The Listeners, Speak! sessions aim to transform the listener – as part of the audience – into a more active contributor or co-speaker (dialogue) during the group discussions. Readers, Write! is a method and toolkit, designed to facilitate arts and design researchers working with academic texts for artistic research and aims to develop a more extended written synthesis trough dialogue and writing small reflections. Each of these three days ended with a final reflection led by the expert of the day, using a grandstand as probe. These end‐of‐the‐day reflections, called “Fikatid”, took place in various public space locations in the neighbourhood of HDK.

The overall process of reflection, split into three stages of writing, developped into a more elaborated reflection made during the last day of the training week, Friday 15th. This final reflection was generated and supported by individual writings of each participant in the shape of a letter to “the editor of this training week”. The training week was closed with a meta mindset by Michael Kaethler (TRADERS Meta-framework).

Public Time

Fika Time

Readers, Write!

Readers, Write!

Workshop with children

Workshop with children

Fika Time

Fika Time

The Inauguration of the Office for Public Play
Second TRADERS Training Week: ‘Play’ *
May 10-15, 2015
HDK School of Design and Crafts / University of Gothenburg

* The program of the Training Week is closed to the members of the TRADERS project.

The second training week of the TRADERS project has a focus on PLAY and participative methods for working with children and young adults on art and design projects in public space. This 6-day training acts as a mutual learning and research process between the TRADERS Early Stage Researchers, peers, stakeholders, a child group and experts. It aims to explore the values of collaborating with children and young adults in participatory art and design projects addressing public space matters, as well as to express new perspectives on the role of the designer/artist in relation to this. Starting from an empirical case with children in the city of Gothenburg, the training week aims to explore debate and writing as a method for research and reflection. The training week is hosted by HDK, School of Design and Crafts, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Download the Program “The Inauguration of the Office for Public Play” (TRADERS Training Week #2: Play)

In addition to our offices in Gothenburg and Brussels, we just launched a 24/7 service: www.officeforpublicplay.org
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Office of Public Play is an artistic research platform exploring what influence “play” can have on the cultures, shapes and functions of the city and its public spaces. Play unites and builds bridges between cultures and generations and seeks to contribute to a qualitative, liveable and sustainable city. Through workshops, debates, actions and presentations the Office wants to show the importance of play in the everyday life of cities. The Office for Public Play is part of the PhD project “Kids in Space: what children can learn us about the design of public spaces” of Annelies Vaneycken.

In March 2015 Urban Futures Lab took place in The Hague. Under the framework of Agenda Stad this workshop was organised by World Design Forum in collaboration with STBY and U CREATE Centre of Expertise Creative Industries. Naomi Bueno de Mesquita (Design Academy Eindhoven) participated in this project as part of her secondment at STBY.

For the duration of a week the former Cabinet of the Prime Minister in the Hague opened its doors to accommodate both students from the Hogeschool of Utrecht as officials from the Ministries of Interior Affairs and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment. The students participating in this workshop were involved in the subject Creative Industries. Their backgrounds was in communication & journalism, commercial economy, communication & multimedia design, digital media & communication and media & technology. In different sessions the students were asked to develop and test probes under the supervision of coaches from STBY, U CREATE and World Design Forum. Probes is a method that is used in design research to present ‘what if’ questions. The probe can be an animation, an object, a drawing, a model, a map,… The probes that were made in this workshop gave an impression of a provocative scenario of the city of 2050. The aim of the probe was to provide insights into the values and motivations of citizens as they think about the presented future scenario for the city.

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Digital forms of mapping enable people to make themselves the centre of their universe, creating a map specific to their desires and necessities. It makes it unclear what the impact is of “YOU ARE HERE” – being always in the centre of the map and no need to orientate yourself – on the collective experience of the city and collaborative practices in it. A web application game YOU ARE NOT HERE made a first attempt to explore this question.

On December 17th Naomi Bueno de Mesquita, TRADERS researcher at Design Academy Eindhoven, tested the web-application together with 9 researchers of the Urban Interfaces group of the University of Utrecht. In the game YOU are no longer in the middle of the screen. Instead, various dots are shown, representing the players who are scattered around the city. The participants had to find out where they were positioned on the screen by physically moving and observing how the dots reacted. After they found themselves they selected a dot to follow. The first person that was able to get near to the dot that he/she was following won. Players started using different strategies of collaboration to explore their position, for instance by giving clues with pictures while still competing. They furthermore started using text messaging to comment on the game and its development.  These interesting findings with regard to (new forms of) collaboration will be further explored as ways to feed more interaction with the city and with people outside of the game.