Vår festival 2022

Abstract

Vår festival focuses on community building from a participatory design perspective within a multi-ethnic small town in Sweden where 7 to 9 year old children are deprived of participating in their local community and influencing its culture. During this project, I used my position as a child culture designer to investigate the realities of child participation and aimed to expand children's agency and belonging in their neighbourhood. In this project, I am exploring the possibilities of curating a public festival with children. The goal is to democratically imagine, together with children, the shape and the form of this social event that would invite the local community to participate, triggering the self-driven exploration of new festivities and community culture. Over ten weeks, the festival was created by a design team of adult and child designers in Skillingaryd and was celebrated with the local community at a creative recycling centre- ReMida.