Playtime, everyone outside!

What space does the city reserve for children? Where do they play and with whom? And if we invited them to design their own spaces for play out on the streets, what would these look like? This project proposes to a group of children and young people from the Raval neighbourhood a workshop to try to respond to these questions. During three months, and in the company of architects from the Voltes cooperative, primary school children will go out to explore two squares in the neighbourhood, will reflect on the use made of them by residents, and will imagine two play elements to transform the squares into more entertaining and inhabitable spaces.

Now we can get to know their ideas in this exhibition that gathers the results of the work process from four itineraries that take the visitor to walk through these results from the curious and exploratory look of the game:

• The movement itinerary, in which you will be able to see the design proposals that include body movement games.
• The tranquility itinerary, in which you will observe that the game can also be played in calm, more comfortable spaces, where you can stimulate relaxation and reading through the game.
• The experimentation itinerary, in which you will observe proposals that invite you to interact with nature and with less defined game elements. 
• The artistic itinerary, in which play is manifested by stimulating the imagination, creation and artistic work with the body.

At a second stage, their designs will be made reality at the workshops of the Impulsem cooperative, which will coordinate their construction with a group of secondary school students. The games, once constructed, will be available for use by the neighbourhood’s children during the following summer within the framework of the community project “Raval Educational Summer”, driven by young people in training at Impulsem and with the  collaboration of the Joint Resources Bank.

“Playtime, everyone outside!” is a community project that is part of the Caixa d'eines cultural and educational programme of Barcelona City Council Neighborhood Plan, and a collaboration between Voltes Architectural Cooperative, Impulsem and the CCCB, and with the participation of primary and secondary schools in the Raval neighbourhood: Escola Collaso i Gil, Escola Milà i Fontanals, Escola Rubén Dario, Institut Escola Elisabets, Institut Miquel Tarradell and Institut Milà i Fontanals.