Stage 22.6DiscussionExperience
Principle 4: Use a Variety of Methods to Engage a Variety of Learners
Collaborate with Partners · Learn the Six Key Principles for Youth Engagement
Activity: City As Play
As we described in the video above, City As Play is one example of a creative way to engage young people. It is important when leading youth to try to experience the activities before you lead them. We have given you an opportunity below to experience City as Play before you lead it with youth in your community!
What is City As Play?
City as Play, also known as Place It, is an activity designed by urban planner James Rojas where you take everyday objects and build with them. When doing this activity with groups, a facilitator asks a guiding question and then participants answer the question by building with the objects. At the end of the activity, participants share their ideas out to the larger group, and the facilitator helps the group look for ideas in common.
Benefits:
With young people and families, this activity is beneficial because immediately everyone is engaged (thinking and doing) and it stimulates the participant’s creativity related to the topic. Growing Up Boulder staff love this activity because it’s grounded in equity. You don’t need to read, write, or speak a shared language to participate. When we use this activity, we ask questions and give prompts like: What would your ideal park look like? Create your ideal safe community. What kinds of things have you seen in other cities that you wish we had in our city? Create your ideal library.
Lead as Far as you Travel:
In later parts of this training, we will have you lead a City As Play activity with your community. However, we believe you can only lead as far as you have traveled, so today you are going to experience the City As Play activity yourself! Before you lead this with groups in your own community, we want you to get a chance to explore and see how this activity might inspire creativity and a new way of expressing your thoughts and ideas.
How it Works:
In this activity, you will gather everyday objects you have around your house, then use them to create a visual answer to the questions we have posed below. Once you answer each question, you will take a photo and upload all of your photos to this discussion board to share your responses with other participants in the course and to leave a record for yourself.
Materials
– Play materials–everyday objects that you have around the house (beads, pom pom, popsicle sticks, plastic straw or shapes, pipe cleaner, hair roller, cork, recycled materials, etc.)
– Construction paper—one 11x 17 sheet, or the equivalent size of recycled cardboard
– Camera or smart phone
Directions:
Use the materials you have gathered to build a visual response to the questions below. Then type out answers to the written questions as a reflection of this activity.
Visual Question #1 - Build What You Know
Take a moment and think about your childhood. Think about how you spent your time and what you loved to do. Use your materials to build a place that you loved to spend time in when you were a child–or would have loved to spend time in. It could be your favorite place or a place you wish existed when you were younger. Give yourself 10 minutes to complete this question.
Once you feel complete with your visual answer, take a photo!
Visual Question #2 - Build What You Want To See
Based on what you’ve learned so far about child-friendly cities, what’s important to you, your lived experience and values, design a child-friendly city. What would it look like? What kinds of things would it have in it? What would it feel like?
You can build any or all aspects of a child-friendly city–from housing, recreation, and transportation to education and leisure activities. Your child-friendly city should contain aspects that you have begun to learn about. For example, it can be sustainable and good for the environment AND it should be good for all children and youth–their families, grandparents and friends.
Give yourself 30 minutes to complete this question.
Post a photo of your Visual Question #2 design and then answer the following questions about your experience with City As Play. Type out the answers to this questions to include in your discussion posts with your photos.
- What, if anything, surprised you about this process?
- What, if anything did you learn about Child-Friendly Cities by doing this?
- Think about how you might lead this activity with young people. What would you need to feel prepared to lead this activity with a group of youth? A group of adults?