Story

Today the Oakland Team took some time during lunch to participate in a participatory exercise called Place It! Place It! is the brain child of urban planner James Rojas and is an interactive engagement activity that focuses on art and storytelling to explore the issues in design and planning.

The Oakland team was given 10 minutes to work through this question: “Build your favorite childhood space from memory”. The tools available were a collection of random objects. The outcome was a fun and informative workshop that helped us get to know each other better! Additionally, we were able to take away common themes from each person’s story that showed we all grew up appreciating similar things as kids.

Although the topic question used today was meant to be an ice-breaker for the group and not necessarily yield info towards a design question; this process allows for public participation to be a more fun an iterative process that allows everyone a safe, creative and fun space to voice their ideas and hopefully leave them empowered to further share their ideas.