It’s commonly accepted that play is crucial to children’s emotional, physical and mental development. Yet beyond early years, the place of play, playful exploration and leading your own learning in schools slowly disappears in favour of more ‘serious’ academic subjects. Yet, the skills we gain by allowing time to explore our imagination freely is far from lost. Employers are very clear on what they want in their workforce the world over: the ability to communicate, collaborate, problem-solve, innovate. And art and creativity deliver these in spades.
But between the ages of 8-16, young people are expected to make crucial choices that will affect their future life, yet it’s the time where they have the least freedom to explore options on their own terms.
PlaySpace aims tobring back some creative freedom to the classroom and allow children and young people to express and develop themselves. We are glad to say that our Hackney Young Voices certainly disappoint. In fact, they proved our hunch right by creating truly stunning work that will grace the walls of Hackney this summer, maybe teaching us a thing or two about what we have to learn from trusting them a lot more in leading their own learning experience.
The workshops
Play/Space ran three series of six sessions at William Patten Primary School, Stoke Newington School and Shakespeare Walk Adventure Playground (also known as SWAPA!) where young people and professional creatives came together to explore what creativity means in traditional and non traditional ways. We invited our young participants to express themselves freely, with the help of a few biscuits along the way, to unleash their creative ideas, personality and build on their natural skills through drawing, ideation, and design thinking.
Each group developed the concept, artwork and creative direction for three stunning billboards that will be shown across Hackney in August 2022.
Hackney Young Voices involves artists, designers, illustrators and other creative practitioners to showcase their own work and widen the understanding of what it means to be creative, and explore how ‘playfulness’ is essential to exploring ideas, with no fear of right or wrong. These artists often connected deeply from their own personal experience growing up and not fitting in. From Marvel and DC Comic artists Mike Perkins and Mike Collins, illustrators Jessica Martin and Sion Ap Tomos to Dan Snaith of Caribou writers Emily Devane and Anna Kemp, the children got to meet people who matter to them. We even achieved the seemingly impossible when one other that THE Wes Anderson accepted to do a video Q&A exchange with our young creators.
All of this and more on our Hackney Young Voices website.
