Big City Small City is our first big project held in August 2015 which brought together artists, architects, sociologists, geographers, activists in work with children in public spaces in Kyiv, Ukraine. In series of lectures, workshops, city walks, game practices and art interventions, project participants tried to create an image of the city from children’s perspective, giving the knowledge and understanding of the city to children at the same time.

Moreover, the project was aimed to enhance a discussion of public spaces in Kyiv in relation to the children’s needs. The architects, urban researchers, artists, activists, municipal authority representatives, NGOs and children 8-14 years old and their parents were kindly invited to join the project.

The program consisted of three parts:

Children’s educational program. In the format of the daily urban camp where children participated in various workshops dedicated to arts, architecture and city planning, worked with practical cases and tasks, games and city walk tours. Children’s camp was held in National Art Museum of Ukraine.

The research program focused on a study of Kyiv public spaces in relation childhood and politics, the architecture for children and youth and discourses on it. The program gathered the students and researchers from a variety of discipline.

The series of open lectures for the wide audience interested in the subject: “Child-friendly city: practice of standards implementation in Ukraine”, “Children and modern urban architecture”, “Public spaces and travels in soviet children cinema”, “Urban feminism: Female adventures in the city”, “Practices of early architectural education”.

The project helped us to build the community of experts, activists, and most important – active and curious children who continue discovering the city with Children’s Geographies.

The project was realized with the support of Heinrich Böll Foundation’s Office in Ukraine

The Dream. Play. Act: Gamification for Action project was initiated and implemented together with Cultural di@logue and Urban curators in Kyiv and Kremenchuk cities with the support of Small Grants Contest by CANactions and WNISEF.

The idea of the project is to promote the participatory planning of schoolyards together with children using gamification tools, such as Minecraft. Students of two schools took part in the workshops in their schools to analyze their territories and develop some ideas for their renovation. Invited media educator from Germany Andreas Gottschalt, together with professional architects with the support of Microsoft Ukraine provided Minecraft workshops so children could virtually create their projects using a variety of Minecraft tools, which are widely used in participatory urban practices and education abroad but not yet appreciated here, in Ukraine. The project may be extended on request of other schools, NGOs and municipalities.

Educational program “Museum behind the walls” proposed participants to discover the meaning and history of architecture, urban rituals, symbols and habits. The program was designed for teenagers and adults to develop visual literacy, explore artistic strategies as a methods of rethinking reality.

The course was structured around several key topics:
– Archive in the post-Soviet cities
– Restoration of historical gaps
– Alienation from urban space due to misunderstanding, forgetting
– Reproduction of history through private stories and historical facts
– Artistic practices in urban space

Curators of the course: Valerie Karpan, Yulia Sobol, Galina Sukhomud, Lora Ishchenko.

The program was implemented in partnership with PinchukArtCentre.

Game of The Blocks – is an educational role board game which gathers adults and children aged 8+ and enables learn more about city planning, urban processes, and negotiations within the city between different groups of interest. The game is between two teams of 6 participants. Each team gets the tasks according to roles of Developer, Landscape planner, Urban planner, Major, Activist, and Entrepreneur. All together participants try to build the city comfortable for everyone. To check whether the tasks were successfully accomplishment, the game finishes with the group discussion and analysis based on 12 public space quality criteria by Gehl Architects.

The game is being tested on different workshops and community events and will be upgraded in 2017.

Barbara von Jagow, diplomated architect and consultant in cultural education presented activities of JAS Jugend Architektur Stadt e.V. (YOUTH ARCHITECTURE CITY) – the nonprofit association that promotes built-environment-education and participation of children and young people. The guest introduced different projects with the focus on a variety of interdisciplinarity methods categorized in four basic approaches: observation, exploration, design and presentation, integrating art, literature, and drama.

Afterward, the methodology was tested in a practical workshop “With six senses: to experience and design spaces”.

The event was organized within “Mobility Fund for Young Creatives” program by Goethe-Institut Ukraine and supported by the German Federal Foreign Office.

Our partners: Garage Gang Ґараж Ґенґ, Port Creative Huband Art Management.