Creative designs with children for urban diversity

We set up bright and early, displaying the artworks and preparing everything.  It was great when the kids arrived - they were excited to see their work, and interested to see others' work as well.  We set up the map of the river with the children's work, and others could add to it, which seemed to go down well.  There were speeches and then everyone got to look around.  The best bits for me were hearing from the teachers and community leaders about how much the children had enjoyed it, including those who might not necessarily get involved or have that much confidence. I heard about how one boy was so proud to talk about his drawing of a mulberry, how ripe it was, and who would eat it; his group leader said that they saw him grow in confidence. That was so lovely!  And a couple of girls did a dance for me to show how much they had enjoyed the sessions.  I got interviewed for TV!!  And then it all got packed up into a little truck..   Here are...

 So, together we (Think Playgrounds and me!) have been collecting together the children's ideas and artwork and developing ways in which to display it. Kiu has come up with a brilliant plan where the models from Saturday's workshop will be displayed on empty cardboard boxes, and the drawings and models from the last two workshops will be displayed on a map of the Red River, printed out pretty big!  The cardboard boxes arrived ! There are quite a few but we have about 22 models to display..  And we started laying out the pictures on the map, but first of all we needed to mark on the ecotrail which we did using some dried reed/grass from Think Playground's courtyard garden  And here's the first pass of laying out the children's drawings. We are thinking that there will be a QR code where people coming to the event can access the words that children wrote to accompany their drawinsg (in both Vietnamese and English)    And there are certificates for each of the...

 We decided to explore what children can want to find out about when on the eco trail and also different ways that they might access information.  I showed them some of examples  And they came back with lots of imaginative ideas 

Reflecting on what the children had made and said in the workshops on Saturday, it seemed like they really appreciated the peace and the nature from the visit to the Red River.  This is a bit of what one group had written:  Sounds from the birds Sounds from the river Trees whose names I've not heard of before No longer surrounded by the suffocating air of the city There's only the fresh air of nature  The birds flying around Standing by the riverside looking for food The scenery was so peaceful, that I can find shelter  It's a place with many beautiful landscapes  There are green trees and sounds from the birds Overhead is the bridge where everything is busy with traffic crossing over the bridge  It's wonderful that there is still a place like this in Hanoi  So the focus of the workshop for today in the school, was about spaces to relax (to sit and take time), ways to encourage people to use their senses and playful ways to get people to interact with ...