With the aim of building an inclusive play centre that would support a wide range of children and young people, we worked iteratively with the client and the users to develop spaces that opened up possible ways of being in the space for a wide variety of children and young people: exploration, play, rest and retreat, fast and slow spaces, sensory spaces.

I recognised the potential for an innovative collaborative design process, which would produce spaces that offer inclusive support for a wide range of children and young people using the Yard

I implemented a series of iterative creative workshops, with the children and young people who use the yard, that allowed us to develop designs which were responsive to a wide range of their needs and desires. Through this process, the users had agency and ownership in how the spaces developed. In my role, I designed creative workshops that would allow their thinking about space to be expressed, and then I observed, listened and communicated in order to better understand their intent. By documenting this process, we were able to spatialise these into a design which gave space to many different ways of using them. This is the embodiment of flexible design, which is my aim in all projects I am involved in, to create truly inclusive places.