From go-karts to potato cannons, tools to incite playfulness has always been central to the practice of London based artist Cristina Lina. This new work in collaboration with a group of school students and local residents will take ‘playfulness’ to manipulate what is at hand towards new assemblies reworking environment and its own rules.

Children perform this labour intuitively all the time but often conventional playgrounds tend to reject this logic and instead present static structures that predetermine and limit the possibilities of play. This new project will ask the questions; how can we destabilise the playground, the convention of the playground? How can we set in motion invitations for play across the whole of the child’s environment, that open possibilities out rather than close them down?

Starting February 2017 Lina will form a ‘research action group’ with young people. Lina intends that the group will work to mutually extend the different capacities of its members: conducting research into young children’s practices and ideas around play to then be taken forward as a form of action.

Cristina Lina is an artist with a firm interest in public space. From large scale murals to go-kart races, her practice explores ways to re-appropriate spaces from the bottom up and create strong shared experiences between people. Her interest in play connects the dots between art, education, and politics and she is keen to develop her understand of this field alongside young people whose perspective and voice Lina feels is invaluable for this task. Lina is also part of the Schooling & Culture working group.