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LIST OF CONTENTS 01 02 03 04 05 06 07
Introduction What is Playable City? Advantages & Disadvantages Addressing issues Young People Ideas Bank Festival 3
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INTRO DUCTION
This is Volume 1 of the documentation series developed by AR’ City Live Project team. The group was asked by Zak, the founder of Aalfy, to develop a piece of work that would be used by potential clients and cooperators for the Playable City Festival in September 2019. In this document, you can find information on the events that took place in previous cities- ranging from Tokyo to Bristol. Each time, the festival attempts to address certain themes and challenges - the theme for Sheffield is Young People. Throughout this piece of work, you will find out about the colleges Aalfy and AR’ City team collaborated with and what kind of ideas college students developed during the workshops. We will conclude the document with the plans for the festival starting in September 2019.
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WHAT IS PLAYABLE CITY?
More than half of the world’s population now lives in cities, and how our cities grow, adapt and thrive is becoming a key issues of our age. Yet, the conversation on the future city is often more focused on policy and technology rather than people and culture. Playable City is a framework to think differently about the city. It is all about connection, community and empowering people to reconfigure city’s services, places and stories to animate the urban environment, to bring joy, to interact and to surprise; Based on the concept of using play as a way of connecting citizens, AR’ City aims to add memorable experiences in our every day moments on the high street. AR’ City: Sheffield launches in September 2019 as a two-week festival of creativity led by young people across the city, supported by local businesses and for all Sheffield folk.
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World
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AR’ City team
Locations of previous Playable Cities
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World
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AR’ City team
Themes of previous Playable Cities
Recife, Brazil
Tine Bech
Aquatic Pathways installation
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Tokyo, Japan
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Chomko & Rosier, for Playable City
‘Shadowing’ installation
The programme of Playable City delivers:
Playable City unlocks impact through:
- creative interventions that create unexpected, shared experiences in public spaces
- transforming city spaces and generating projects that inspire citizens to think differently about their cities and fellow citizens
- workshops and labs that break down barriers between the creative and technology sectors, creating new opportunities and ideas. - innovative projects which engage the widest number of citizens possible - skills development, knowledge exchange, global profile and collaboration opportunities for participants and cities.
- creating a playful way of triggering purposeful conversations around themes of technology, city planning, public space, surveillance, traffic, safety, rubbish, privacy and community
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Politics & Environment
This programme has grown out of four years of partnership between
Watershed delivering Playable City programmes in South East Asia, Brazil, Lagos and Japan.
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This innovative, international undertaking is a high profile project with global reach-but adapted in each city, from Recife to Austin, Singapore to Tokyo. In each city, the project aims to align with innovation in public spaces- focusing on the way citizens engage with the urban environment as well as with each other. Through building a network of Playable Cities, each partner city explores and develops a culture led approach in order to inspire change in future city development. By transforming urban landscapes through various means of connection and communication, a new set of involvement between person to person and person to city is established. Playable city will continue to build an expanded international network. It is looking for cities that want to experiment, networks that want to animate their city and brands that want to be part of a culture led, citizen focused conversation on future cities.
British Council Creative Economy
Economics
Transport infrastructure and efficiency is a key investment area of the smart city. Each year, the theme is broad and open to interpretation: meaning that a winning idea might address waiting, navigation, location or transit - contributing to the economy of a city. Through innovative approach to the Playable City project, companies may gain additional exposure as well. In 2016, the winner of the International Playable City Award was London-based design and technology consultancy Hirsch & Mann, who pitched to transform everyday pedestrian crossings into playful multi-sensory experiences. Playable City can build future capacity. It cultivates legacy by encouraging self-motivated, sustainable practice, good business skills, confidence and independence. Where possible, it supports continued knowledge sharing between producers, entrepreneurs and industry practitioners- creating a peer community of local and global playable city practitioners.
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Society
‘To bring all those people togetherI think that’s the best thing about the whole initiative. It’s great to have creative people from different fields and cultures working together to come up with something new.’ Leo Falcao, participant of Recife Playable City
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As cities seek to become more seamless and efficient by integrating technology into the environment through innovations such as datacollecting bins and parking sensors, the “playable city” thinks about the city on a more human level. Contrary to the big-money projects and “smart city” buzzwords, playability strives to make places more inclusive and habitable – to create cities for people. Playable City puts people and play at the heart of the future city, re-using city infrastructure and re-appropriating smart city technologies to create connections – person to person, person to city.
Technology
Through and creative installations it
a social dialogue, bringing the citizens into a city development conversation – one which will vary in each location. Playable City is active across five continents in cities as diverse as
in each place it has created a connected innovative community of interest exploring their own city’s issues and opportunities. Across the globe, Playable City is building a networked knowledge bank of local insight, experience and impact, generating a world view of smarter city development conversations and a series of innovative creative / technology driven projects.
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ADDRESSING ISSUES
Sheffield is an incredible city with a rich history; the Steel City. A creative city with a vibrant social and community sector. Sheffield’s strength lies in its people and their ability to help out and stand up for each other as demonstrated by The State of Sheffield 2018 publication which provides an overview of the current environment and trends in Sheffield. Furthermore, the Grant Thornton’s vibrant economy index (VE) findings suggest that Sheffield’s economy is in the top 20% of authorities area nationally in producing wealth and job creation however this report also ranks “inclusion and equality” - a measure that looks at the gap between rich and poor and how much everyone benefits from ecomic growth at the bottom 20% nationally. Additionally, there was a similar ranking and possible corrolation with “health, wellbeing and happiness”.
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A publication by Sheffield Fairness Commission highlighted the inpact of these two points, “Fairness on the 83” follows the route of the 83 bus in the city and has found that “ A baby girl born and who lives her life in one part of the city can expect to live, on average, almost 10 years longer than a similar baby girl born and living her life about four miles away, by virtue of nothing more than the socio-economic circumstances and area she was born into”
Ar ’ City aims to address some of these societal issues with the people most impacted particularly young people. By implementing playful moments in the urban fabric of Sheffield, young people could engage with the city and provide unique and novel solutions whilst creating an inclusive environment. We believe there’s power in the notion of play that could become a catalyst for social change benefiting not only the youth but also all citizens of Sheffield.
Sheffield, England
AR’ City & Aalfy
Workshop with college students
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YOUNG PEOPLE
‘Giving young people a voice’. This very sentence from Zak was the main drive behind the whole project. By empowering the young generation, a collection of great ideas could be developed and realised. In this chapter, we will introduce two colleges that participated in the initial ideas workshops. This would help you understand the potential demographics that could benefit from such brainstorming sessions. Additionally, Sheffield Learn is interested in cooperating with Zak - meaning that a much wider spread could be achieved, leading to establishing an endless source of inspiration for the Playable City festival.
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Sheffield, England
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AR’ City & Aalfy
The Sheffield College Infographics
Working with students from the Sheffield College
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Sheffield, England
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Asian British
AR’ City & Aalfy
Longley Park Sixth Form College Infographics
Working with students from the Longley Park Sixth Form College
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Sheffield, England
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AR’ City & Aalfy
Results of students’ brainstorming
Results of students’ brainstorming
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IDEAS BANK
During the project, AR’ City team conducted two workshop sessions with students from two different colleges - The Sheffield College and the Longley Park Sixth From. From these facilitation gatherings, we managed to establish 13 ideas that kept play in mind, whilst addressing a variety of issues that face Sheffield. These playful interventions were illustrated in a form of diagrams in order to capture concept behind them. As for now, they contribute to the Ideas Bank- an online database available to anyone with internet access. Thanks to being based online, it has the potential to grow exponentially in the upcoming months. In this chapter, all the concepts are listed and explained in detail.
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Sheffield, England
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AR’ City & Aalfy
Sheffield Cinema takes over Live Works turning the space into an opportunity to showcase movies voted on by the people of Sheffield.
Creepy Cracks & Secret Agent Lasers inhabit Live Works creating an exciting adventure within the space and playful street facing window elevation. Gamifying the room, visitors are challenged to make their way across the space dodging laser beams!
Sample ideas from students
Cinema
Laser agent + Creepy cracks
Sample ideas from students
Interactive holograms and light 3D holograms + Interactive displays create an interactive river + Musical chairs + gaming and engaging way to gamify the corner space.
Find your way out of the maze and be rewarded with a feast! This installation gamifies the space while bringing people together through sharing in food.
Maze + buffet
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108 the Moor & Longley Park Sixth Form
AR’ City & Aalfy
Ideas Bank
Laset Agent
Lasers in the narrower corridor and use smoke to detect the lasers and try to make your way through the room. If a player hits a laser then an alarm is sounded and they lose their turn.
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Musical Chairs
Make the space more playable. The benches play funny sounds when people are sitting on them. We can record some simple conversations and play it when people are sitting on the chairs, like good morning, good afternoon, etc.
Ideas Bank
Guardians
We want to use the holograms to project some animals to move on the ground, and then match the sound to try to scare the pigeons. At the same time, by capturing people’s movements, these animals can interact with people.
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Hungry Bins
Who wouldn’t use the street bins if they responded to receiving rubbish? It can remind people to collect garbage and make a sound of chewing when people put in garbage.
Ideas Bank
Sports & Dance
Walking through the streets, you will notice many dilapidated walls which are underused. These spaces are totally different from the lively storefront. Young people hope that through the intervention of interactive games, these negative street spaces will become vivid and safe.
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Jazz Tiles
Unsuspecting pedestrians can become composers, making a piece of music through the pavement tiles that play musical notes.
Ideas Bank
Sheffield People’s Cinema
Similar to the Music App, people (exclusively in Sheffield) can vote on which films to be projected. Wouldn’t going to the cinema be better if you could vote on what film you actually want to watch.
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Starlight
Projection above the street is like a starry sky, attracting people to look up- creating a safer night time environment.
Ideas Bank
Teleportation Booths
Somewhere in the city, people in the city can experience another part of the city through the VR device.People can not only see, but also smell, hear, and even touch.
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Rolling Movie
People used hand-cranked power to illuminate the underpass, and people engaged in the interaction while illuminating the dark corners of the city.
Ideas Bank
Sheffield People’s Diary
Draw,sketch or write messages about Sheffield that can be projected around the city.
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Creepy Cracks
Cracked glass windows - tread lightly, as nearby windows respond to pedestrian traffic by gradually cracking until they reach a breaking point.
Ideas Bank
Lava Lamps
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By placing the temporary lava lamp in the Live Works, the public tends to enjoy the process of ‘manufacturing steel product’. It creates a young, playful and interactive atmosphere among the community.
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FESTIVAL
In September 2019, Sheffield will join one of the global initiatives, Playable City, addressing the theme of Young People. During the festival, a multitude of events and installations will take place throughout the city, creating an engaging and playful environment for all citizens. It aims to engage over 10,000 people across the city- with 200 young people taking part in the design and delivery of unique playable experiences, everyone will find something to enjoy! Thanks to help of 10-15 host businesses in the city centre, the AR’ City Sheffield will have the power to make a lasting impact.
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Sheffield, England
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AR’ City & Aalfy
Interactive installation at work
The festival will introduce digital skills to young people through a hands on, creative programme. Young people will be supported to explore the future world of work by exploring digital technologies and their capacities to shape our lives. They will also be engaged in creating a playable city- putting people and play at the heart of the city through unique and memorable events and experiences across the city centre. Young people will also take part in creating a discussion and dialogue on the future of our city based on their own perspective. AR’ City Sheffield also aims to become a platform for the young citizens to meet, experience and contribute to the creative industries.
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Sheffield, England
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AR’ City team
AR’ City Festival looking into the future
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