Grey goes Green in a Golden process (1) provides children in densifying cities with inclusive, diverse, and accessible spaces to play ; (2) empowers children and their communities to take climate action, learning how they can adapt their city to climate-challenges, through a fun, hands-on process. (3) provides cities with tools how to turn the little leftover spaces into climate-adaptive play spaces while empowering their young citizens;
National
Netherlands
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Mainly urban
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
Yes
2023-01-31
As an individual
First name: Renet Last name: Korthals Altes Gender: Female Nationality: Netherlands If relevant, please select your other nationality: Portugal Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Voorhelmstraat 25-105 Town: Haarlem Postal code: 2012 ZM Country: Netherlands Direct Tel:+31 6 51105235 E-mail:renet@spaceforplay.org Website:https://www.spaceforplay.org/
URL:https://www.spaceforplay.org/ Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): https://www.instagram.com/spacefor_play/
URL:https://www.linkedin.com/company/spaceforplay/ Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): #space4play #greenplay #inclusivecities #citiesforplay #childfriendlycities #urbanchildhood #resilientcities #resilientcity #climateaction #righttoplay #sd11 #righttoplay #equalcity #realplaycitychallenge
Yes
New European Bauhaus or European Commission websites
Our urban challenges demand an interdisciplinary approach, in which integrated design solutions, education, and citizen empowerment are strongly interwoven.
It is our duty as adults to equip the youngest generation with tools of positive action, helping them to learn how they can adapt their city to the climate challenges, in a positive way.
Grey goes Green in a Golden process (1) provides ALL children in densifying cities with inclusive, diverse, and accessible spaces to play ; (2) empowers children and their communities to take climate action, learning how they can adapt their city to climate challenges, through a fun, hands-on process. (3) provides cities with tools how to turn the little leftover spaces into climate-adaptive play spaces while empowering their young citizens;
By just greening schoolyards without a strong didactical process, cities miss out on many opportunities. Grey goes Green in a Golden process helps cities, schools, designers, and communities to join forces in greenifying their cities together with their future generations. Our didactical approach & more than 17 years of pedagogic design experience have resulted in an acknowledged ‘Golden Process’: Climate lessons, Co-design, Co-construct, Co-maintenance: this process truly empowers children and their communities, creating future climate & play ambassadors.
We are borrowing the planet from our children. But our heritage for them is negative…. We messed up their climate. Can we make up for our negligence?
Besides our own actions, we believe it is our duty to provide the future generation with tools so they learn how they can take action by integrating their own needs with climate-proof solutions. We should teach children how they can transform their environments themselves, by co-designing, and re-using instead of adding new; It is our objective to teach children how they can change their urban environment into a more equal, more fun, and planet-proof city. We focus on the following urban climate challenges: heavy rainfall and inundations, decreasing biodiversity, bad air quality, and urban heat islands. Children learn about these challenges and more importantly learn how we can help overcome these in positive ways! Through a hands-on process, of designing, digging, and sowing, children never forget this project.
We also know that the number of children living in cities will continue to increase in the upcoming years, and inequity between children is growing. Children have the right to play, but in global context, there are insufficient play spaces. Our goal is to provide equal access to (diverse!) play for all children
How do we counter these two in one solution when there is “no open space’ in cities? Schoolyards are the key. All schoolyards in one city added up to equal the size of a large city park!
Our goal is to transform grey spaces around schools through a strong participatory process, into co-designed co-constructed, and co-maintained circular climate-proof schoolyards.
In the golden process, we combine soft, hard, and aesthetic objectives giving children and the community a positive feeling and impact in their neighborhood.
Soft Objectives: in the Climate lessons children learn about local climate aspects (rainwater, urban heat stress, air quality, and biodiversity) and about the importance of reusing materials. They learn to link this to their own direct context. Children learn to think about their own right to play, the needs of their peers, and the needs of their community members. In a co-design session, children combine this input, think outside the box, and designing great ideas and concrete solutions.
Children are empowered, consulting adults, being taken seriously, co-designing, co-constructing, and taking care of their own environment gives pride and responsibility.
Another objective is to create (awareness about) more equal chances to play for all genders. Standard paved schoolyards are overtaken by boys; girls show more sedentary behavior and take up not more than an average of only 1/3 of the space, often in the periphery. Therefore, one of the objectives of co-designing more diverse and differentiated play spaces is to offer equal chances to play for all.
The benefits of freely accessible green spaces for all, positively influence the liveability of the neighborhood.
Hard Objectives: paved schoolyards without play opportunities and without greenery, do not benefit the children or the surrounding community. The climatologic benefits of added greenery - in terms of heat, rain, air quality, and biodiversity – are there on the community level: Cooling islands, places for stormwater detention, larger leaves surface, and more indigenous plants. The more green schoolyards a city contains, the larger the impact at the city level.
Aesthetic Objectives: Upgrading schoolyards with a good urban design, with plants, shrubs, and trees, can influence the surrounding community (re-use of materials, edible plant, etc.)
We achieve an inclusive project, not only financially, but also in our design.
Economic inclusion: Usually schools are limited in their budget. By our strong interdisciplinary approach, it is easier to get funding from different sources, public and private. In this way many schools can maximize their budgets for the transformation of their schoolyards. It is common that the financial concerns are elevated. In that sense, at Space for Play, we try to design spaces that fit lower budgets. Affordability of the project is achieved by introducing simple and natural elements, usually less expensive than catalogue play equipment. We try to reuse as much as possible: existing play equipment, reuse existing materials such as tiles and transform them in balancing- / seating walls, or to lock permeable areas. We help schools and communities to build their own play elements (for example mud kitchens) when they don’t have sufficient budget to buy one. Not only out of budget perspectives we encourage re-using and DIY elements, but it is our goal to teach children & communities in re-using materials. We explain children how we can minimise the use of raw materials, to decrease our footprint. Co constructing DIY materials together with the neighbours create more ownership as well.
Gender equity and inclusive design: Inclusivity and accessibility is also something that we integrate directly in our designs. In the co-design sessions, we focus on making use of different didactical approaches, enabling all children to give their input. We ensure we are designing enough pedagogically diverse play areas for both boys and girls. We also make sure we are designing enough areas accessible for children with disabilities.
By involving children, teachers, directors, parents, and the community from the neighborhood throughout the entire process -codesign, coconstruct, co maintain- we are in dialogue about their issues, their needs, their fears and dreams. They are the real experts! We designers are just passengers, listening to them, translating their needs into feasible designs. We know that by involving them in the whole process, they feel heard, they are empowered, and feel ownership. It becomes a true community space, rather than just another “public space”. They really understand what has been done and why it has been done, they even have helped making and creating it; they take care of the space, they are proud of what they have achieved.
We start our process with the main stakeholders: input from the local school and municipality. We understand what the municipality goals are, in terms of climate- accessibility - division of green - equity etc, often these are combined with national and European goals. Is for example the required 25% of added greenery on a schoolyard, as required by the municipality, enough? Or is there a national or international standard fitting better?
After the first urban physical analysis, we start with children, teachers and community in different lessons and moments. We give a fun lesson about the climate and about the theory of play, to both teachers and children. We teach children what is climate change, how it is directly impacting their surroundings, and most important: HOW we can change public space together into climate-adaptive play spaces. Children are now equipped to co-design. Each child in its own comfortable way: planting flags with ideas outside, drawing on huge transparent plastic sheets, talking, or drawing 3D and in plan Dialogue during the design is key to understanding underlying needs and fears.
Once we gathered their designs, ideas, and values, we translate their ideas into concrete designs.
We have several feedback sessions with all stakeholders, and we change the design according to their comments.
During the co-construction phase, we include teachers, children, and the community in several actions that help them understand the impact of tiles in their schoolyard (and in a city!). They take out tiles, paint tiles to be reused in their schoolyard as small walls, and plant trees and shrubs.
If the green surrounding is not integrated into their teaching program, children tend to ignore or even demolish the greenery. Therefore co-maintenance is essential to our approach. We created a Nature-heroes program: each week, different children take the hat as “Nature-Hero” where they observe/ search, share, protect and take care of the plants.
This approach links interdisciplinary professionals from fields such as policy-making, architecture, urban design, education, pedagogy, construction, environment, and gardening. Municipal policy makers, community members, teachers and green-specialists have dialogues together, this increases mutual understanding. In the co-design and co-construction phase we ensure everyone is abled to be included: children, teenagers and other community members are integrated within this whole process. By doing so everyone is being heard and their voices are being taken into account, but more importantly everyone is learning. Learning from experts throughout the fields, learning to understand reasons behind decisions. Together they learn how they can help to improve their own city into an equal, climate proof, inclusive greener wonderful city! Besides learning, this knowledge-sharing, co-designing/ co-constructing and co-maintaining, creates a broad and steady base. Bringing together interdisciplinary stakeholders, sharing, teaching, listening, involving are key to the success of transforming cities into climate adaptive social equal places. Unbearable experts within this whole process are the climate experts, the landscaping companies, and gardeners. By several meetings, they provide us designers with knowledge and experiences within urban practical climate solutions. within the field of indigenous climate-proof plants, smart storm water detention solutions. We interweave these solutions into designs meeting the educational, social and pedagogical needs. These practical experts are the ones who take the community and children by hand within the co-construction and co-maintenance phases.
We measure the success of our initiative by gaining input from all stakeholders.
Before the intervention, we collect input on play behavior and local climate from children, teachers, and the community – by questionnaires, interviews, and in co-design sessions and on climate facts from the municipality’s/school’s resources: m2 of non-permeable & permeable surfaces, trees, average temperature, groundwater level, rain & inundation risks
We strive to turn 40% into permeable surfaces, add 25% more indigenous climate proof greenery - with leaves at ground level, mid-level, canopy level and vertical surfaces-. We strive to increase biodiversity with indigenous climate proof plants, we combine these with educational (interactive) elements such as DIY insect-hotels, birdhouses, butterfly feeding places, weatherproof educational signs, outdoor classrooms, edible gardening plots. We ensure the planting offers enough for insects and birds by giving flowers or fruits year round. We increase the diversity and differentiation of play which has positive impact on the play behavior : less sedentary behavior, less gender separated (boys dominated) play, less bullying, more concentration. By greening several schoolyards spread out over a whole city, the city ensures citizens from all different neighborhoods and social-economical backgrounds, have equal access to green areas (SDG 11)
5 years after the construction of the schoolyard, we interview children, teachers, and neighbors, to collect feedback and testimonies on behavioral impact, educational embedment, maintenance, and climate experiences. We keep in contact with schools and try to help them solve issues they encounter throughout the year and use of the space.
We have a maximum of about 15 schools yearly which we can support in this intensive process, in this way we can reach an average of 4500 children and their communities.
Greening schoolyards is nothing new. Our added value is the interdisciplinary educational, hands-on, community PROCESS throughout all phases of the project . It is not only the result which counts - the m2 of inclusive climate-proof space more equally distributed-, but it is our developed process which truly increases the social and future impact of the interventions.
We believe our project makes a difference because we are not just designers designing beautiful inclusive green schoolyards for children. We are linking the municipality’s goals, climate problems, climate action, the right to play, education, to the children’s future & to their community themselves! We invest in helping children and stakeholders to re-imagine, re-connect and take action in their own spaces. We care about teaching children & their chow they can have a positive impact on our planet. We care about involving children in ALL steps of the design-construct-maintain process.
Space for Play is all about the process we have been refining for more than 17 years in local and international projects. Our expertise started in Dutch schoolyards and public spaces. Throughout the years, we have expanded our knowledge and transformed or advised in transforming more than 100 schoolyards all around the world.
Because we believe in an interdisciplinary approach, we are not only architects and urban designers, but we have expertise in pedagogy and education. Therefor we have created a large and still growing toolbox of different participatory methods, to ensure we create high involvement within diverse contexts, adapted to social, physical, educational or cultural circumstances. We love sharing our approach with other architects, designers, policymakers, or teachers. We teach, train, inspire, learn, share methods and lessons learned. So that all together we can have a greater impact. We participate in many international conferences to inspire professionals in the field in improving their cities.
Our approach provides children and communities with tools to change their environment, it empowers them to take action for equal rights to play and for climate challenges through creative solutions. Children - and teachers, community members- do:
1. climate lessons: they learn about local climate challenges and how to tackle these by changing their environment into a climate-proof place. They learn about their right to play, about equal opportunities to play, they learn to define their own needs and dreams within the broad field of playing, moving, caring or meeting.
2. co-design with newly gained knowledge: all stakeholders now are equipped to design integrated solutions to meet their own needs and to improve their local climate challenges . They are being taken seriously, their voice and ideas are truly taken into account.
3. co-construct: children, teachers, and community members remove tiles, create masonry walls, dig wadi’s, paint, sow or plant. Construct circular play or nature elements.
4. co-maintain: children, teachers, and community members learn how they need to take care of our environment together . Surrounding neighbours, social community organisations, educational centres, parents or grandparents, can all help to co-maintain their place.
Within each step of the process different stakeholders are involved, depending on the local situation, think of policy makers, community organisations, landscaping companies, planting experts.
Global challenges ask for global knowledge sharing. Cities can tackle multiple challenges, by transforming the free space left – paved schoolyards- into green, playful spaces together with schools, children, and communities through an empowering process.
We believe our process can help other schoolyards in other countries and cities. This process can be done everywhere, adapting always to the context conditions.
We also would love to share our approach with cities, by teaching and inspiring their policymakers, urban designers, architects, and schools to make a positive change in their neighborhoods.
In this project, the global urban challenges on which we are focusing are:
1. Inequality regarding the access to green spaces, the access to safe inclusive, and diverse spaces to play.
2. Urban climate challenges: urban heat stress; rainwater detention problems; air quality; Decrease in biodiversity.
Grey goes Green in a Golden process helps cities, schools, designers, and communities to join forces in greenifying their cities together with their future generations. Our didactical process & 17 years of pedagogic design experience have resulted in the ‘Golden Process’: climate & play lessons, co-design, co-construct, and co-maintenance.
Through this process, the urban challenges mentioned above are being tackled with spatial interventions, while at the same time empowering children and their communities to co-create a positive inclusive equal climate-proof city, creating their future climate & play ambassadors!
