The Archive for Public Play

The Office for Public Play installed its office at A-venue during the Growing with Design exhibition.

The Archive for Public Play aims to generate knowledge on ‘free play’ — the unstructured play that children initiate themselves, without control or supervision by adults. Besides treasuring free play as cultural heritage, this collection of personal stories, photos and open instructions wants to reactivate public space through re-enacting contributions of the archive. This installation invites you to contribute to the archive by memorising and narrating your favourite free play activities as child, or from when you were a child. The archive is inspired by the painting “Children’s Games” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1560).

This work is part of the Office for Public Play, a research platform exploring what influence free play can have on the culture, shape and functioning of the city and its public spaces.