A summer full of initiatives that seek to change the rules

Edited on 24/02/2023

children rainbow

Summer 2022, covid-19 permitting, saw a lot of initiatives to start sharing the common spaces of cities again with a new inclusive spirit and eager to change the rules.

The summer months, with good weather, gave the partners the opportunity to organize various playful initiatives to bring citizens back to occupying the common spaces of the cities, such as parks, gardens and green areas, but also streets and squares with special events. The partners tried an experimentation for a collective design. There's a desire and a need to redesign our cities to make them more inclusive, more livable, more person-friendly and to do so Playful Paradigm has organized several events to gather adults, teenagers and children around the theme of play and share new possibilities of stay together. Each partner enjoyed organizing events even where they had never been done before such as Udine in Italy which made its urban gardens known to children or brought basking (a type of inclusive basketball) to one of its green areas or reopened to play a ancient precious garden in the city center planning to expand it by removing cars to make room for children. Or Grosuplje in Slovenia which every Wednesday organized game afternoons for families and friends at its toylibrary or outdoor games for the elderly taking advantage of the beautiful forests of its surroundings or rollerblade courses and competitions letting everyone run together. Lousã in Portugal took advantage of the beautiful nature that surrounds it to organize days of games into the wild, then planned a calendar of events for the summer holidays of kids and teenagers, leading them to learn about new games to play together. The day of the Traditional Game of Lousã, Portugal, has also become an event to talk about how to improve new areas into the city dedicated at play. In Spain, in the municipality of Igualada, there were several days where everyone could get together to play in an organized or free way and to show that the game is a very important moment in the community's life. Rights were also discussed, with the organization of a conference on the rights of children to live in a healthy environment. Lastly, Jelgave in Latvia was able to experiment with its own game app that involves young and elders to dance together and also experimented with the organization of events involving the municipality and local stakeholders.

 

Summer Mix

Submitted by Altrementi on 24/02/2023