A Study on the Experience of Children's Participatory Playground Design: Based on the Experiences of Architects Who Participated in the Protect the Playground Project by Save the Children
AUTHORS
Hyun-Sun Park,Dept. of Social Welfare, Sejong University, South Korea
Soongyu Kim,Dept. of Social Welfare, Jeonbuk National University, South Korea
ABSTRACT
This study examines the experiences of operating a children’s participation workshop by architects for Protect the Playground project, a play space creation project funded by Save the Children. This study discusses the development of the children's participation workshop as a tool for the realization of children's rights. To this end, four architects who participated in the design and creation of the play space project for Save the Children were selected and In-Depth Interviews (IDI) with them were conducted by the researchers. The consensus among the interviewees was that the children’s participation workshop allowed children to have a sense of ownership of their play space and also highlighted to the architects their responsibilities to the children involved. Although there were difficulties in conducting the workshop due to internal and external challenges associated with the children’s involvement, it was found that the participation of the children and their resulting opinions played an essential role in completing the play space design and led to changes in the perception of the adults involved in the projects. The researchers found that the children’s participation workshop provided opportunities for adults to recognize children's rights and that it had a meaningful impact on the architects, teachers, parents, local residents, and everyone involved in this project. From the results of this study the researchers believe it is necessary to place more emphasis on children's participation workshops in the creation of play space projects, and that the children’s participation workshop should be used as a model when implementing child-related policies in other areas in order to better represent children and safeguard their rights.
KEYWORDS
Save the children, Creating play space project, Children’s participation workshop, Child rights, Architect
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