The project will co-design play infrastructure with children with autism and their families, city officials and design autism experts
Play AUT the Box. Playable Cities for All project, a scale-up of the project ASD Publics. Activating Spaces with neuroDiverse Publics. Playable Cities for All, led by T-Factor partner Open University of Catalunya (UOC), has received funding from a New European Bauhaus call to go one step further in improving public play spaces for children with autism and their families. ASD Publics explored innovative design strategies that link inclusive play with nature and aesthetics with the objective of equipping urban practitioners with methods and tools for designing sustainable play areas for and with children with autism and their families. Thanks to a second round of funding from the EIT’s Enhance NEB call, the project consortium will develop Play AUT the Box (PAtB) a living lab for the co-creation of environmentally and autism-friendly play infrastructure with key stakeholders and end-users.
PAtB focuses on play infrastructure that is suitable for autistic children but that is not fit for outdoor life and must, hence, be managed as temporary public infrastructure. Families of children on the autism spectrum together with experts from different disciplines and city officials will co-design the Box AUT, an adaptation of the “play containers” installed in the city’s public space, and several Games AUT, the games and toys that the Box AUT contains. The latter will also be produced and tested through several iterations, including a testing session where autistic children will play with the Games AUT prototypes. Towards the end of the project, the Games AUT prototypes will be displayed during a public event in the «Play space 0-99» play container in Les Glories, Barcelona.
The ASD Publics: Activating Spaces for Neurodiversity project has created new tools and methods to design sustainable and inclusive play areas for and with children with ASD and their families. The aim of the project is to reimagine and transform playgrounds in cities in order to provide design guidelines to increase the potential for inclusive play and nature-based solutions in public space that can be implemented in other cities or countries.
Play AUT the Box partners
- Urban Transformation and Global Change Laboratory (TURBA) at the UOC’s Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3).
- Barcelona City Council, through its Ecology, Urban Planning, Infrastructures and Mobility Office, working with the Municipal Institute for People with Disabilities (IMPD), the Institute of Childhood and Adolescence and the Department of Education.
- Global Institute of Neurodevelopment Integrated Care (IGAIN), a leading Spanish centre in the diagnosis and treatment of neurodevelopmental disorders.
- Carpentry School at Sabadell Industrial School, one of the oldest professional training schools in the region.
- Aprenem Autisme, an association of families of autistic children focused on education and leisure.
Supported by
Play AUT the Box. Playable Cities for All is an EIT Community New European Bauhaus project supported by the European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union. The initiative was presented as part of the European Commission’s call entitled Enhance NEB Call of the EIT New European Bauhaus Community – a campaign that falls within the objectives of the European Green Deal approved in 2020.
