We believe that children, educators, and parents should be included in the process of designing play spaces so that each play space can become a tailor-made experience that meets their own needs and learning objectives.
Hack Our Play (HOP) is Singapore’s first participatory, community-built play space. It is an initiative that lets children, educators, and parents co-create their very own play space, from start to finish. Together, they will be able to conceive, create and curate a safe and unique play experience while also fostering stronger bonds, greater community investment and a sense of pride and excitement through the process.
This new model of play space design demonstrates how play spaces can be created and transformed by everyone who uses it. The use of non-standard structures, recyclables, and everyday materials in its construction not only encourages non-linear thinking but also allows the HOP play space to be reconfigured and evolved over time.
This toolkit is the culmination of our own experiences and the lessons we learnt from the first HOP prototype, based on an extensive participatory design process that involved over 400 people, including play experts, designers, educators, parents, volunteers, students and children. In creating this toolkit, we hope to offer a starting point, source of inspiration and how-to guide, for those who are looking to co-create their very own community-built play space in preschools or at under-utilised public spaces.
The online version of the toolkit is free to download below.
The playkit is part of the Hack Our Play, participatory crafts project. It is aimed at encouraging families to co-create an interesting art project together by using materials commonly found in households.
We hope that through making these craft projects, there will be opportunities for parent and child to rediscover new ways to play, and that children can be collaborators, not just consumers.
The playkits is free for download below!
