A new playground is to be built in the Hammerstein district. Parents and children are to be involved in its planning as part of the JumP-!O participation project. To this end, an initial meeting has now been held in the Hammerstein youth center with interested parents and citizens from the district as well as representatives from the city youth welfare office and the civil engineering office.
The existing playground in Hammerstein presents a rather bleak picture with two outdated spring playground equipment, a seesaw and a bench for parents. Now a new playground is to be built in the village. In the youth welfare committee, member Eva Sturm-Milisenda suggested involving the children in the redesign of the playground. After all, play areas are important places for children to learn; they discover their environment through play and through their actions. Playgrounds are therefore valuable places for both younger and older children to meet, communicate and build relationships. Accordingly, as experts in their environment, they should have the opportunity to participate in the planning of play areas using age-appropriate methods. The City Youth Welfare Office therefore decided to tackle this participation as a JumP-!O project.
The first meeting initially focused on possible areas for the new playground. Due to its size and location, the existing area in the center of the village is more suitable as a play area for small children, whereas there is a larger and much nicer area in the extension of Birkenstrasse on the edge of the village that can be made available for this purpose by the town.
The participating parents agreed that the size and location would make it possible to create an interesting play area for all age groups. The parents were able to document their children's wishes in an initial brainstorming session: climbing, sliding, swinging and hanging were the most frequently formulated wishes. But there were also concerns, such as the safety of the new facility. Fencing off the area and strong social cohesion in the village were able to alleviate these concerns somewhat.
The second step is for the children themselves to express their ideas, wishes and visions at an ideas workshop on Saturday, March 18, 2023, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Kulturhaus Hammerstein. All interested children and their parents are cordially invited to attend. After a tour of the town, the workshop will also focus on teaching children's rights through play. In addition to Article 12 (respect for the will of the child) of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 31 (participation in leisure, cultural and artistic life) will play a central role.
During the workshop, playground models are then built using a wide variety of materials. These are designed freely according to the children's wishes, and there are no limits to their creativity. The models are then exhibited at various locations. Children and citizens can vote and evaluate which model with which play equipment will ultimately serve as a template for implementation and will be taken into account in the plans of the municipal civil engineering department. The models can also serve as models for future renovation measures for the city's playgrounds. However, the new playground in Hammerstein is not expected to be implemented until 2024 at the earliest. This is because the funds available this year will be used to renovate the "Barbararing" playground in the Idar district, "Kurzenbach" (Mittelbollenbach), "Buchengasse" (Georg-Weierbach) and "Am Spielplatz" (Nahbollenbach).