Camera on the swing

“Camera na gugalnica” is a series of workshops that offer children the experience of a planning process, through which children, as future users, together with their mentors devise a plan for arranging a children’s playground, while at the same time practicing expression with words and a camera. Under the guidance of the director, the children make a short documentary film throughout the entire process, and at the end, together with the architect and landscape architects, they create a plan. Interested children are introduced to the planning process by talking about the spaces they already use and observe. Thus, in the first part of the workshop program, they deal with the area of ​​the existing school children’s playground and the immediate surroundings of the school. Children find out how they feel on the playground, what they like to do there and why they prefer certain areas over others. The thoughts and ideas of the users – children, are translated by the planners into a spatial language, and in the end they are expressed in a film and a plan.

The workshop is aimed at encouraging school communities to be outdoors, as an important factor in improving the health, well-being and socialization of children. In the course of the project, the children become familiar with the video medium, with the planning and arrangement of space, and discuss their common and personal relationship to space and different spatial arrangements.