The billboards

Why it matters

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 to bring 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.

B WHO U R

William Patten Primary school, children aged 9-11 joined us to create a billboard that reflects their personality and messages to the world, full of fun and talent through creating their own avatars complete with speech bubbles in a rainbow artwork.

Creative together

Students aged 12-14 from Stoke Newington Secondary School came together to explore visual impact and messaging showcasing their individual personalities and talent in a comic inspired artwork full of colour and creativity!

Imagination is a key

Regular Shakespeare Walk Adventure Playground (SWAPA) visitors aged 6-14 created artwork that reflects their imagination and energy as a group in this stunning spray paint and photographic artwork.

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.

The creative ‘help’

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.

Browse this website to see all the work created by the children and young people as well as their own portfolio of personal work!