Re-Imagine ECD workshop
“A transformative learning journey for Pioneers and Societal Leaders”
As (im)migration processes continue to expand and urbanization curves are rapidly rising the population density around the globe, re-thinking the public space from a human-centered perspective has become essential for the well-being of societies. Furthermore, considering that by 2050 nearly 70% of children in the world will live in urban settings, to take a Child-Friendly approach in urban design became (since 1996) a key initiative to make cities more livable for everyone. By considering children and their network as a unit, this approach ensures the efficient coverage of the needs of a broader group of the population and aims to create positive short and long term impacts as it promotes the development of future generations while creating healthy cities today.
THE WORKSHOP
In this line, ImagiNation Afrika has focused on expanding paradigms around learning, play, and what African child-centered spaces look and feel like, to organise the event called “Re-Imagine ECD: A transformative learning journey for Pioneers and Societal Leaders”. The conference took place on February 24th and 25th, 2020 in Dakar, Senegal. It gathered 80 leaders and influencers from key private sectors like telecommunications, transportation, technology, and investment funds as well as UN representatives (UNICEF), local authorities, urban planners and housing representatives. All committed to engage and sustainably shift current models and understandings of early childhood development and its importance in the public space. As experts and facilitators, Huasipichanga’s team participated in the event developing an interactive presentation in the form of a workshop and an installation to showcase how participatory methodologies and placemaking interventions, that follow Child-Friendly approaches, can motivate new models for urban design in Senegal.
Worldwide families are increasingly moving to urban settings, allowing children to interact exclusively with the urban context since their birth. This phenomenon has made urgent to advocate for a broader comprehension of children’s needs and their interaction with the built environment; which also entails their active involvement in processes of decision-making related to urban planning, hence, the importance of child-responsive approaches in urban design (Krishnamurthy et. al, 2018:05). In Senegal, 50% of the population is below 18 years old and the country is experiencing a rapid growth in its urban density which makes cities like Dakar develop in unsustainable and unplanned ways. However, there is still time to turn this phenomenon around and address city planning from a child-responsive perspective to make cities more accessible and healthier for everyone.
Despite contextual challenges related to intersectional issues of gender, age and class in stratification processes in Senegal, the international urban development agenda is supporting strategies and programs to raise awareness, promote and implement models that can actively include the voices of children and caregivers in the design and planning of the public space. Moreover, although “respect for age is a distinguishing attribute among individuals in Senegalese society” (Bass, Loreta 2000:88), local organisations are also enforcing initiatives to encourage both the public and the private sectors to use child-friendly lenses in the design and planification of cities. In that regard, ReImagine ECD was a highly experiential gathering aimed to create sustainable advocacy and strategic commitments from a diversity of leaders through exposure to engagement with and reflection on data, innovative models/projects and human centered design approaches. Facilitated by expert transformative leadership trainers, participants engaged in teams through hands on exercises, innovative discussions and mini workshops all aimed at problem solving and co-creating tangible, implementable solutions and actions.
As experts invited to participate in the event, Huasipichanga team conducted a workshop; gave a lecture at t the Middle School University Architecture De Dakar and; designed and built an installation at the venue of the event to showcase how a child-responsive intervention in the public space can look like and its benefits for urban populations. Our work and expertise in the field as well as our experience working in both developing and developed countries helped participants to relate to different contexts and see the potential for replicability of many methodologies to design cities with child-responsive approaches. Huasipichanga’s contribution also gave the participants an immersive experience, taking leaders to look at new possibilities for innovative and participatory models to intervene in public spaces. Thanks to these interactive and hands-on activities, a high engagement and strong connection among the participants and the speakers emerged, raising the interest for analysing possibilities of working together in the near future.
METHODOLOGY
SCREENING
Objectives
Share knowledge about co-creation tools for child-friendly design in the public space
Motivate strategic commitment to boost co-creation of child-friendly public space in Senegal
Learn from participatory methodologies placemaking, tactical urbanism
Gather experiences to promote child responsive practices in the public realm of Senegal
Build long-lasting relationships to advocate for the implementation of more child inclusive cities in Senegal
PICTURING
STRUCTURE
1. Introduction - Who we are and what do we do?
We started the workshop showing a 5 minutes video where the participants could get insights about our work [video link]. We shared our core values and methodologies and how both merge when we implement projects in different contexts.
To break the ice and get to know each other, participants introduced themselves playing “Pictionary”. While some of them were asked to draw their favorite game from childhood, others had to guess. Whoever guessed the drawing and the person who drew it had to introduce themselves to the audience. The aim of this game was to relate the realities when they were kids to the ones children face nowadays. It was interesting to see how, as they did during their childhood, children now continue to play their favorite games on the street using the public space as a playground, however in less safe conditions. This helped the participants to relate to current contexts on a personal level before starting to analyse the impact and significance of designing cities with a human-centered perspective.
ZOOMING IN
2. Huasipichanga Methodology - How do you approach a problem? Steps.
Huasipichanga seeks to encourage citizen ownership of urban spaces and motivate a progressive development of inclusive societies. Our aim is to contribute to the consolidation of sustainable and inclusive urban practices and policies by supporting people in identifying their local identity and strengths, which we discovered feasible by actively involving the community in each phase of a co-creation project. As a matter of fact, the core of our values is reflected in our methodology. Therefore, we explained the Huasipichanga Methodology step by step by showing examples of our projects and specifically highlighting the role of children and caregivers on every intervention. Here we also shared our methodology as an open source manual. [manual link]
CAPTURING
3. Walkshop
We invited the participants to have a blindfolded walk through the sidewalks outside the venue. After being split into pairs, the participants were asked to perform the character of a child and a caregiver respectively.. The aim was to experience urban challenges both as a child and caregiver by having an immersive experience, testing themselves through different perspectives and exploring different senses. This activity concluded with a discussion where the participants shared their experiences during the walkshop and reflected on the importance of having a child-responsive approach and how its implementation goes beyond to make cities more inclusive places for everyone.
REVEALING
4. How child-friendly is Dakar?
This activity was an exercise that brought participants to work in transdisciplinary groups where they reflected on the activities done during the day. They had the opportunity to share knowledge, experiences and expertise with people from both public and private sectors and also at multi governance levels. Using examples from The Netherlands, we gave an overview of mapping scales at a city level (micro, meso and macro) and asked participants to choose a place in Dakar to analyse it at a micro scale. The purpose was to determine how child-friendly that public space was. The outcomes were insightful. Although every group had a different approach to do the analysis, all of these groups identified safety as the main challenge for children and caregivers when interacting with the built environment. They also agreed on the need of engaging public and private stakeholders to tackle this challenge, however, in many cases the voices of children and caregivers were still relegated to a second place, being considered only to inform already taken decisions. This created a long discussion about the access of children and caregivers to decision making processes. After that we had a wrap up session and invited the participants to visit our installation outdoors. This installation was the prototype of a placemaking intervention in a sidewalk in Dakar with convenient materials and simple tools that can help city makers to work collaboratively with communities. Finally, we asked the participants to leave written on bricks a personal action they are willing to take to foster child-friendly approaches for urban design.
ZOOMING OUT