Painted Playland: Designing ‘with’ the Community, ‘for’ the Community

Shrivardhankar, Jaii and Subash, Sanjushrree (2024) Painted Playland: Designing ‘with’ the Community, ‘for’ the Community. In: P/References of Design. Cumulus conference proceedings series, 1 . Cumulus Association, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest, Budapest, pp. 2149-2164. ISBN 978-952-7549-02-5

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Abstract

This project was part of the ten-week course 'Design for Social Change.' The design inquiry began with questions about access to public spaces in the city. How can public spaces be transformed into equitable and fair spaces? How do different communities perceive the city and its spaces? We investigated how factors of religion and class affect the usage of public spaces in the western city of Ahmedabad, India. Our study focused on how religious communalism has led to the segregation of Ahmedabad's neighbourhoods into ghettos. The area of focused study was the neighborhood of Juhapura, an urban ghetto that has predominantly residents of the Muslim faith (a minority community in India), and developing an understanding of how communalism affects their lived reality (Rajagopal,2011). The insights from our study indicated an overall need for better access to public spaces (Bobbio,2022), and we felt that directing our action toward children was essential since their play spaces are neglected. The demographics include women who have been discouraged from working and are asked to stay home. Still, they show resilience and work out of their homes with jobs like tailoring and catering (Wahid,2019). The central question we addressed became: Why is there a lack of access to public spaces for people belonging to a specific community? The project aimed to create space for all stakeholders involved in a neighbourhood by converting an open ground used by multiple stakeholders into a shared, equitable, and inclusive space. Inclusive public spaces are essential for marginalised and underserved neighbourhoods, as they often do not have equal access to other paid services and commodified spaces in the city. This is true for Juhapura, where the community does not have access to public spaces such as parks that function as play areas. (Mahadevia, 2007, pp 27-30)

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