Create Playful Spaces in Your Community!
"Welcome to ACUPUNTURA URBANA (Urban Acupunture)! We want to tap into your imagination to find out what you and your neighbours dream for where you live! Imagine working with your friends, family and kids from the local area to co-create a new from old. Imagine building beautiful spaces where kids, young people and adults can play and hang out safely? You know exactly what your community needs and we're here to listen and then make it happen. " - Andrea Sender White
We work with communities for 5 weeks through a series of workshops, hands on co-creation days and the all important celebration event to officially open the play space. Before the project starts: important to consider 3-4 weeks to make arrangements with the Municipality (authorization to transform a public space) - if needed.During the project: 6 to 10 hours per week, during the 5 weeks of the project itself. There are 5 online workshops between the community and our team lasting 1.5 hours each. Besides that, the community will organize and develop 2 hands on events to transform the chosen space, according to the project co-created during the process.
Connect the teams
Once you have your community team ready connect with the Acupunctura Urbana team to start the co-creation process. Our team joins your team to get to know each other, find out the talents within the team and how to best work together. Having someone from the community with experience of working with or advocating for children specific projects is really valuable as he or she will know who we'll need to engage at each stage of the project and will help engage the young people. The more generations that take part the better so be sure to invite kids, their families, friends and elders of the community to take part.
Hear the dreams of the community children
Together we will understand the dreams the community children have to transform the defined space. Through playful activities, they will be able to imagine how the place of their dreams could be.
Imagine the space
Guided by a co-creation workshop, we will support your community to design a project that will transform a communal or public space into a valued play space. We'll talk through the design, the materials, the timeline - the opportunities and the challenges, always guided by the community's children. A dedicated Project Lead recruited from your company to the AU team will co-ordinate the workshops and ensure the project stays on track and on budget. We start with your imagination and build from there!
Get Building
The building workshops is very hands on - skillful builders and residents of all different ages come together to make it happen. People are invited to lend their tools and donate materials, which not only optimizes time and cost of construction, it's also a powerful way to build community spirit and create a bond between everyone that gets involved. The process is often led by children, which makes it very inclusive and colourful with a simplicity that reminds adults of how change can happen without too much effort, and how grownups usually over complicate things.
Celebrate!
At the end (which is also just the beginning of this new space) we celebrate the power of transformation that a united community has - a play party to thank all those that contributed but to hand the space over to the kids for whom it was built. Then we stand back - or maybe, just maybe, we join in!
