New Ideas CityHello Museum

The Play Forum

Cover Image:

Re-Thinking Trash: Collaborative Collage Workshop, 2012.

“Play is older than culture, it is a significant function, has a profoundly aesthetic quality and is never a task. In acknowledging play, you acknowledge mind—for whatever else play is, it is not matter.” —Johan Huizinga

How can we more prominently integrate play into our everyday environments, cultural production, and social structure? What are current examples of play within urban space? Where does this activity occur? What are some strategies for incorporating play into our cities from the top-down and from the bottom-up? How is play an integral element in the development of more sustainable communities, neighborhoods, and cities?

GREENSPACENYC will host street-side forums, workshops, and walking tours around the Bowery, encouraging pedestrians to explore the idea of “play” in the city. Guest artists, researchers, planners, and advocates will lead talks, hands on workshops,
and impromptu public art interventions as a means of addressing play as an important “untapped capital” in today’s urban environments.