The Urban Playground – Mapping for Insiders

The city as a space for play – for the Situationist International this was a concept that countered commercialism, boredom and passivity . Today, the idea of the playground can be imagined together with the recurring tendency of people wanting to shape the city themselves rather than merely using the public space as a transit zone of place for consumerism.

In most cases, however, these alternative forms of space appropriation apply to adults. Children who are too old for the playground and young people who have no safe havens need opportunities to appropriate urban spaces to shape their living environment. The workshop supports the participants on several excursions in playfully discovering their city, in deliberately designing places according to their wishes and in capturing and locating their experiences in very special maps.

Jennifer Aksu studied theater studies, journalism and communication science in Berlin, then urban culture, society and space in Essen. She founded the Invisible Playground artist network and is part of the Playful Commons innovation platform for the future of public spaces. As an expert on cities with relationship problems, she explores and designs experiences, experiments and dialogues that change perspectives and develop potential. Jennifer lives with her family on an island in the middle of Berlin and works as an artistic urbanist around the world.