Young people's right to the public space
ABOUT THE BOOK: "HELLO, DET ER OGSÅ VORES BY"
Originally, the project was a neon-coloured playground for young people to be tested at this year’s Roskilde Festival.
The Innovation Foundation and the Roskilde Foundation had agreed to see if frameworks for play can remedy loneliness among young people, as OP & NED had pitched at a session in Roskilde Festival’s head office
BACKGROUND
Young people are the age group in Denmark that feel the most lonely. 1 in 4 young people often feel lonely and left out.
Through other projects, conversations and research among young people, (both very social young people and very lonely young people,) conversations with volunteers at Ventilen and a lot of research on youth life, as well as experience from, among other things, #ungesparkodense, we had become aware that young people often demand in an outdoor area is not so fundamentally different from what children demand: The area must be able to be used to move the body, they want to sit up high, it must be playful and fun.
Trampolines, tarzan courses, hang-out places, places with their own character and places where you can make noise were mentioned many times
THE PROJECT
So here we were in the spring of 2020, all ready to produce the wildest neon acrylic playground, with a sandbox of static sand with neon lights underneath, a friendship swing that can only swing when you sit 5 on it, music to be produced by that two turned handles at the same time and a lot of other measures.
AND THEN CORONA CAME….
Like everyone else, we had to saddle up. Together with talented #Urbanistas and #Kintsu Design, we decided to write the book that everyone else can look through and navigate by when they have to create public spaces for young people (and there are several who had to do that).
Developed for
Roskilde Festival
Innovationsfonden
Undervisnings- og Forskningsministeriet
In cooperation with:
Anne Nielsen, Urbanistas
Vanessa Carpenter, Kintsu Design
Location
Buy at Saxo.com
A common feature for young people is that they like to sit on the ground...
Another common feature is that they like to "play" together.
WHEN WE DEVELOP CITIES FOR CHILDREN
The book is naturally co-created with young people and we have had young photographers on the streets when Denmark opened for the first time after the lockdown, to document what the young people do when they “play”.
In the book, we have collected a lot of pictures and given them a theme that we identify as characteristic of young people, and the variety of activities is great:
From immersing yourself alone, to fun moments with a single good friend, to sitting on the ground in groups (many young people do this a lot☺).
They play and camouflage it as beer games, training and sports, but to the trained eye all the criteria for good play are there. It is when a group teases each other, when three young people drive around with a fourth in a shopping cart or when a couple gets dressed looking like the 1880s and picnicking by the lake in their stiffest plaster.
The young people are good at playing, even if they didn’t always admit it themselves.
The second half of the book focuses on what the young people themselves think and is a qualitative and quantitative survey of the young people’s mental state.
The last part of the book is design proposals for solutions that could meet the young people’s need to be around the city even more. Here there are pre-sales for orangeries, sound boxes, tipi camps and many other sketches.
BUY THE BOOK AT SAXO
‘Hallo, det er også vores by!’
– About young people’s use of the city and how we design public spaces for them.
If you are working on developing public spaces for young people, please do not hesitate to contact us for a non-binding conversation, we are happy to advise and also come up with proposed solutions for your particular area.
Contact us here
The press wrote...
Where should young people go in the city if they just want to be with their friends?
New analysis looks at how to create good public spaces for young people.
Read the article in Magasinet Kbh here.