The Adventure Playground: Present/Play with Gabriela Burkhalter
This event examines how children can be part of the city through the lens of 5 film clips from 1948 and 1972 produced in the UK, US, France, Italy, Sweden, and Denmark. They show how children negotiate, appropriate and master their environment, and how, through struggles, perseverance and collaboration, they are able to build personal resilience and autonomy.
The film clips are contextualised historically and used as an opportunity to trace the development of Gabriela's long term project, The Playground Project, which explores exemplary initiatives, pioneering acts and adventures in designing modern childhood. Gabriela talks about how it started as a historical project to become a tool to question the role of children in the city and society.
The Adventure Playground: Architectures of Contemporary Play is a series of exploratory talks and propositions that investigates processes of play and imagination and their role in built environments and the designed spaces of playgrounds in Britain. It brings forward the architectural and political history of playgrounds as dedicated spaces for children across contemporary cities and centres on the idea of ‘creating worlds’.