This summer, London is full of playful opportunities for all to enjoy – from Carsten Holler’s giant slides featured in the highly playful exhibition ‘Decision’ at the Southbank Centre, to ‘The Brutalist Playground’ – a commission by Turner Prize nominees Assemble and artist Simon Terrill- taking over the Architecture Gallery at RIBA, to ‘The School of Losing Time’ project, among the winners of the ‘Designing the Urban Commons’ competition, artists are encouraging us to rediscover a freedom of playing whilst stimulating a reflection on how playful our urban environments are. In Bristol, the annual Playable City Award has showcased the imaginative work of artists exploring their ideas of urban play, and through this is generating an important conversation about how we can question the encroachment of ‘smart city’ technologies through actively collaborating in behaviours that, by virtue of their playfulness, value ‘inefficiency’ .
Playing is one of the six sections of our exhibition’Growing the Future City’, co-curated with Grimshaw Architects, currently at the Gallery at Foyles. Many of the public’s ideas on how to keep our cities playful can be found on the exhibition’s interactive wall, including:
“An edible playground!”
“There should be more allocated ‘green-running’ spaces in the city”
“Remind adults that they used to be young once, and provide ‘playground moments’ of fun again”
“How about tax incentives for companies which encourage their workforce to play team sports or take part in arts pursuits?”
Do you agree that our urban experience could benefit from the bigger dose of release and euphoria that play can bring? Tell us your stories and favourite projects that “break the rules” to engage urbanites with play and mischief. Tweet @futurecityblog using the hashtags #growingmycity and #playing, and we’ll include you in our end-of-show round up.
photo credit: Park Street water slide (CC) shellac