Children and design students practicing playful co-creation in a youth creativity lab

Abstract

Eva Liisa Kubinyi is a designer focusing on children’s roles within society, alternative educational systems, and the importance of free play. Her works include installations, workshops, services, products, and patterns. She holds a Master’s in Child Culture Design from HDK-Valand (SE). She is currently based in Tallinn where she works as a designer in a youth creativity lab called VIVISTOP Telliskivi. She also teaches elective courses on social design and design for play at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Vera Naydenova has a background in psychology and previous teaching experience at the primary level. She obtained a master’s degree in Social Design— Arts as Urban Innovation from the University of Applied Arts Vienna in 2016. She is currently employed at VIVISTOP Telliskivi and is responsible for creating content for workshops and guiding children’s activities. Kristi Kuusk is an Associate Professor and senior researcher in the Design Research Group at the Estonian Academy of Arts. She is also Head of the Textile Design department and co-head of the Art & Design doctoral school. Her interest is in finding alternative futures for clothing and textile design via the implementation of technology. She combines practice of collaborating as a selected laureate in EU projects such as STARTS Residencies, WORTH Partnership Project with presenting and publishing research in international venues. Abstract This paper reports on a university course focused on child-centred design and conducted in spring 2020 in a local creative lab for children in Estonia. In the project described in this paper, through playfulness, children and design students experienced a shared reality, overcame power differences, and built trusting, respectful relationships. Children’s participation was based on their own free choice and triggered experiences of wonder. Co-creation was further aided by transparent objectives, shared decisions, and collective reflection on outcomes. The co-imaged concepts developed in the course evidenced the value of involving children as design partners at the fuzzy front end of an open-ended design process.