Project context

Making Play: adventures in creative play through contemporary art (2008-2011) 

Making Play has been an important part of the growth of the SLG’s education work in recent years, enabling the gallery to develop a long-term programme of involving local children and families in contemporary art. Funded by the Big Lottery’s Playful Ideas fund, Making Play is inspired by the possibilities of bringing together children’s play and contemporary art practice.

The project focuses on children from three key groups: those living on Sceaux Gardens estate behind the gallery; regulars at Charlie Chaplin Adventure Playground and children looked after by Southwark Social Services. It is delivered through their collaboration with artists, curators, gallery educators, social workers, play workers, parents and carers and revolves around six artists taking up residency in a former shop unit on Sceaux Gardens Estate over a three year period. Each artist in residence runs practical workshops for children every Saturday afternoon and runs a large-scale participatory event at the end of their residency. (source: South London Gallery)

Andrea Mason (1 April - 1 September 2008), Jess Thom (1 September 2008 - 1 April 2009), Janette Parris (1 April - 1 September 2009), Orly Orbach (1 September 2009 - 1 April 2010), Matthew Shaw (1 April 2010 - 1 September 2010),

Febrik (1 October 2010 - 30 April 2011) - The Shop of Possibilities

As the last of the South London’s Gallery’s six residencies to take place on Sceuax Gardens estate, Febrik’s project brief was to develop a proposal that could evaluate the past and also speculate on how the project might continue in the future. Re-interpretations of the idea of an interactive play space were at the forefront of the questions explored.

The project asked many questions: can a space for ‘making play’ continue outside the gallery’s formal programme? Can it be owned and continued by the children and their families without that support? What kind of play will take place in that space? Will these activities draw on the work from the six residencies?

As the last of the South London’s Gallery’s six residencies to take place on Sceuax Gardens estate, the project brief asked to develop a proposal that could evaluate the past and also speculate on how the project might continue in the future. Re-interpretations of the idea of an interactive play space were at the forefront of the questions explored.

The project asked many questions: can a space for ‘making play’ continue outside the gallery’s formal programme? Can it be owned and continued by the children and their families without that support? What kind of play will take place in that space? Will these activities draw on the work from the six residencies?

Project brief

The Shop of Possibilities: The Dynamic Play Library  

Date: 2010 - 11 
Location: Sceaux Gardens housing estate, Peckham, London
Collaborative team: Greg Sheng, Ramsey Yassa, Marwan Kaabour, Pippa Murrey, Lauren Willis, Elizabeth Graham 
Partners: South London Gallery
  

The Dynamic Play Library integrates a series of familiar programmes with the aim of generating a space for curious activities; the shop aims to be a compressed playground, exhibition space, library (or live archive), studio (invention laboratory) and a re-use centre (of everyday objects). Over the course of the residency, children’s formal and informal games (invented and inherited) as well new invented ones were discovered, documented, sited on the estate grounds and linked to the social context. The collection is seen as a accumulative social play archive, where every day familiar objects and their stories (documented within the children’s domestic environments) reveal narratives and practices about the estate as well as open up new possibilities for play and play material.

In this play context, the ‘re-use’ of loose parts has become part of the projects wider sustainability, both physically by re-cycling and re-using but also socially by exploring ideas from the  ‘Social Playground’ (Lefaivre; 2007) and extending play from the shop as a site to include the potential of the whole estate grounds and also to include their families (currently mothers) and the community (residents of the estate) in this process. 
 

Social play

The Shop of Possibilities looks at play from a social point of view, looking at how familiar social settings and domestic objects can become the sites for invention of play, as they are used in new and unexpected ways. researching these inventions reveals a hidden playground (the produce of the imagination and social interactions) and simultaneously set up a research into how these settings (site/culture/community) work and what is their specificity and practices.
 

As the familiar is reused or used differently it becomes curious, full of possibilities for re-interpretation and creativity. In Making Play project, we look further into this relationship between the familiar, the curious and the possible through:
 

The notion of curiosity and familiarity 
The notion of ownership and continuity 
The notion of collection and reuse (of material and space)
The notion of invention and possibilities: (the compressed playground)

visit the project blog

Wall of Curiosity: a dynamic archive

November 2010

January 2011

April 2011

Wall of Familiarity: Expanding network

December 2011

April 2011

Familiar Objects and Friends at Sceaux Gardens estate

Phase 1: Testing the Shop of Possibilities

The Proto-Type Dynamic Library was tested in the Shop of Possibilities during the Making Play Residency, the library’s different activities and corollary design elements were set up and tested with the children during this period.

Phase 2: The Shop of Possibilities as The Dynamic Play Library in a new double shop unit on the estate.

The first proto-type was adapted and developed so as to propose the Library as one large space able to transform into smaller pockets for different activities and at different intervals. At its core, it sets out 2 main spaces that are different in speed and nature; one for production and invention (dynamic/loud/fluid) and the other for exhibiting and archiving the produced artwork (slow/conversational/viewing). The flexibility aims at making possible a variety of spaces and activities, in response to the daily programme of the shop and in expectation of new artists that will come with new ideas and spatial requirements.

Space 1: Invention Studio (Curious)

• The corner of curiosity
• The Making Studio
• The Till of everything
• The Wish In Tree

Space 2: Archiving Studio (Familiar)

• The wall of familiarity
• The exhibition
• The Den

Dynamic elements that allow the transformation of the space include:

• The sliding screens:
• Naming and defining spaces
• Floor markings

The shop front identity is marked in 4 ways.

• The floor
• The columns opposite the shop front
• The shop front glass
• The shutters

Archive of Curious Objects (Games):

The Den

Archive of Curious Objects (Games):

Wish In Tree

Archive of Curious Object (Games):

Social Spoons
Fishing Guess

Archive of Curious Objects (Games):

Flour Boundaries
Kitchen Catch

Archive of Curious Objects (games):

Magic Bell
Pet Fridge
Leaf Salad
Telephone Surprise
Archeological Dig

Archive of Curious Object (Games):

Ring me!/Flour Catch