The Urban Conga
Private company
The Urban Conga is an international multidisciplinary design studio focused on exploring the idea of a Playable City as an ecosystem of multiscale playable opportunities intertwined within our existing urban infrastructure. Their work investigates how these often once overlooked, or underutilized situations can turn into stimulating inclusive creative outlets to bridge divides and begin to break inequities within our cities and communities through evoking moments of open-ended play within our everyday spaces.
Behind The Scenes
Short description:
The Urban Conga consists of a diverse group of creatives focused on sparking community activity and social interaction through open-ended play. We achieve this by working with communities through various participatory design methodologies to create inclusive, engaging, and site-specific work sparking creativity, exploration, and free-choice learning for all demographics within the built environment. Our work encourages people to think about these often once-overlooked spaces that could become PLAYces: like public park benches, bus stops, street lights, or just the everyday spaces in-between. Showcasing how these opportunities can become more than just a monument in time; and become an ever-changing, open-ended platform that showcases how play impacts the identity, health, social, and economic value of our cities and communities. We see our work as a catalyst for a larger conversation around the importance of implementing more inclusive, open-ended play within our everyday lives.
View from your window:
People moving amongst and against the chaotic infrastructure of the city.
What's your contribution?
The open-ended playable opportunities we create are just one component of the work we do, but the connections, conversations, relationships, knowledge, value, and more that we have been able to spark through these objects, spaces, and process goes far beyond the physical work itself.
What brings you here?
Play is our natural driver as humans to discover, explore, and empathize with others. It is universal and can be applied as a powerful tool to bridge divides and spark more equitable spaces within our built environment. And yet, the term play is consistently absent from significant discussions surrounding urban infrastructure development, public space design, and city change. Causing play to become isolated for specific people within specific spaces. We are here to begin to shift the narrative around play and investigate new ways in how it can begin to be utilized within the development of the fabric of our cities and communities.
What's the most important?
Creating more equitable spaces that connect people rather than divide. Sparking opportunities for different demographics to listen, learn, and grow from one another.