Creating the crafted playground through co-design : providing an action space for creating collaborative capabilities

This paper describes two comparative case studies; one co-crafted playground workshop conducted in central Gothenburg, Sweden and one in Dunga Beach, Kisumu, Kenya. The idea behind the workshops was a hands-on, co-crafting playground that explored the intersection between crafts, design, play, and space innovatively. Local designers, architects, students, craftsmen and citizens collaborated in activating dormant public places through building a temporary playground with co-creation in focus. It also explored how play might become more than just a child’s activity. The workshop in Gothenburg was held for five days in Vasaparken, a central park in Gothenburg, Sweden while the workshops in Kisumu were held for a total of three days. The workshop investigated how a ‘Do It Yourself’ craft activity could become a catalyst for: collaboration and knowledge sharing between stakeholders in neighborhoods; activating dormant or derelict public spaces and/or local livelihoods; opening up opportunities in predefined, functionally determined urban environments; new arenas for design & craft production; encountering the unexpected and spurring social imagination. The research question was: How can the concept of the co-crafted playground provide an action space that supports building collaborative capabilities, with the goal of contributing to more sustainable cities and communities? Contributions of these workshops include: reflections around what values and challenges collaborative work in public spaces between various stakeholders gives to a design-process aimed for positive social change. The paper also contributes to a discussion about how designers and craftsmen can benefit from each other by finding arenas for collaborative work, and finally: a discussion of what we can learn by comparing different cases in Scandinavia and East-Africa. The method used was action research and reflexive comparative case studies. Data was collected from both children and adults through environmental autobiographies. The process was documented through photography, sketching and note taking. Observations and interviews were conducted throughout the process.