'Let’s try mocking up your playground first!’
This week we have moved the workshop in a different location. During the week one of the community leaders suggested that we do this as there was some conflict between the locals near the playground site. We are concerned about what this means, is this project causing tensions? What does this conflict mean for the future use of the site as a playground? Ploy assures me that it was the community leaders who chose this site to begin with.
Once the kids have arrived we set up outside but it is again too hot and we move into an adjacent house offered to us. There are not so many kids this week and none bring old packaging or plants clippings for model making materials as we suggested in the poster. This is most likely because we put up the posters later than on previous weeks.
Ploy tells the kids about the plan for this week, to make a model of the playground. We lay three big sheets of cardboard on the floor. Based on the drawings of the previous week we have divided the playground into 3 main areas, one part for sports fields, one part for playground equipment and one part for gardens and planting. The kids choose which area they want to design and move to that board.
Very soon everyone is getting very involved, discussing and making all the things they can imagine from plasticine, cardboard and wire. Some kids go out into the community to get plant stalks to use as trees.
By the end of the day the model looks amazing. Some of the ideas represented include: football field (complete with high fence and stadium seating), basketball court, volleyball court, see saws, slippery dips, swings, merry-go-rounds, a sandpit, fishponds, romantic seating, fountains, a bike path, kiosk, toilet, even a small theatre. Ploy later told me that one kids had also advised her that they will have a vegetable garden for all the community to use.
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