Playable City Exhibition
Clients: British Council, Watershed, Arts Council England, UWE Bristol, City of Clearwater
Service: Research, Design, Fabrication, Installation, and Programming
Date Installed: 09/2019 - 12/2019
‘Let’s Create a Playable City’ is an immersive exhibition exploring the idea of a “Playable City” as an ecosystem of playable opportunities intertwined within the existing urban infrastructure and the impact it begins to have on our cities and communities. The interactive exhibition is a part of extensive research on the qualitative and quantitative data of the value of implementing play within everyday spaces. We assembled this research into “The Guide for Creating a Playable City” which is focused on sparking a conversation around the importance of play in the discussion of urban development and city change.
The exhibition was created as a traveling piece designed around the ideology of the guide to start a conversation with city leaders, municipalities, urban planners, residents, and more about the value of implementing more play within their cities and communities. The piece is a hands-on exhibition that includes touch sensor information walls and projections, a place to build with our Kit of Imagination, and a place to share ideas and think about what a playable city looks like in your city. When one enters the space they start by engaging with the interactive information wall that is triggered by touch sensors. As one touches the wall, information and sounds are revealed, giving the user the understanding of unique ways play can be translated into the built environment. As you continue to move through the space, you can begin to create ideas on how your city can become playable and then leave your concept behind. At the end of the exhibition, we host a workshop with local municipalities and city stakeholders and develop a realistic Playable Agenda that looks at ways of making their city more playable. This exhibition and research are not about telling people how to do something, but instead showing the value of play and ways of implementing it as a part of the urban development.