I entered the exhibit Holiday Homework not knowing what to expect and what the conversations would be like. To my surprise, as I walked about in the gallery space, I found myself thinking about something much larger: the environments in which childhood unfolds.
Presented by LOAM at Method Delhi, the exhibition brings together contemporary artists, designers and school children to think about childhood beyond the usual language of toys and playground equipment. What stayed with me was the idea that we should think about the environments in which childhood takes place.
That shift feels important.
A child’s experience of play is shaped not only by what they own, but also by whether they have a safe street to walk through, a patch of open ground to explore, a school where they can run and a public space where they feel safe and secure.
Is play a right?
One of the questions raised during the talk was:
“Is play a right, the way clean air or public transport is a right, or is it still treated as a privilege that depends on your postal code?”
I kept returning to this question throughout the conversation.
In Delhi, the answer is difficult to ignore. Children’s access to open space depends on where they live, how much traffic surrounds them, whether their neighbourhood has a park, and whether adults consider it safe for them to be outside. Even when a play area exists, not every child can necessarily reach it or use it independently.
Can a child walk from point A to point E without an adult? Can they sit in a space and feel bored? Can they play in a sandpit unattended? These are not only questions about childhood but questions about the kind of city we are building.
The talk began by moving away from toys and more towards “environments of childhood”. I found this interesting because it expands the conversation from products to systems. It asks us to consider the streets, schools, neighbourhoods, parks and informal spaces that make childhood possible.
The city being playable
One of the most interesting ideas was that the future of play should not simply involve building more playgrounds. The city itself should become more playable.
Many of us may remember playing in places that were not officially designed for play: gullies, maidans, staircases, unfinished plots, terraces, neighbourhood corners or the space outside someone’s house. These places were not perfect and they were certainly not equally accessible to everyone. But they allowed children to invent their own rules.
A wall could become a goalpost, a step could become a stage, a piece of rope could become almost anything. Yet today, many play spaces are more controlled and standardised. They often look the same, regardless of whether they are located in Delhi, Goa or somewhere else entirely. We seem to have become very good at producing the image of childhood, but perhaps are less attentive to the conditions that allow children to create their own version of it.
What can an object leave open?
This question became especially clear through Ulta-Pulta, the installation by Bharat Raj Thukral and Roshni Gera.
The structure is made from simple materials such as metal and rope. It can be climbed, sat on, touched, watched or occupied in several different ways. It does not come with a fixed instruction manual.
The artists described their interest in “unprescribed” or open-ended play:
“How can we possibly look at a feature or an element that has no prescribed function to it?”
I found this idea unexpectedly relevant beyond playground design. As designers, we are often trained to clarify function. We are encouraged to make things intuitive, efficient and easy to understand. But children do not always need an object to tell them what it is for. They can play with water, a stool, a box, a stick or a piece of fabric because these objects leave room for interpretation.
Perhaps good design does not always need to communicate one correct use, sometimes it can provide a structure and allow the user to complete it.
Play allows people to meet
What I liked about Ulta-Pulta was that it was not only designed for children. Adults could occupy it too. A child might climb through it, while an adult might sit inside it. Someone else might touch the material or simply watch. Several people could be there at the same time without necessarily knowing each other yet interacting with each other.
That is one of the quieter powers of play. It creates small opportunities for strangers to negotiate space. Who goes first? Where can I sit? Can I pass through? Should I move aside?
These interactions may seem insignificant, but they create temporary relationships. They allow people of different ages and potentially different social backgrounds to occupy a shared space without needing a formal reason.
In a city where so many spaces are organised around consumption, this becomes important. Play, at its best, does not need an outcome or a transaction, it simply creates the possibility of being together.
The missing commons
The discussion then moved towards the idea of the commons. Indian cities have long had informal shared spaces: the chowk, the maidan, the gully and the neighbourhood edge. These places were not always formally planned as parks, but they were used by many kinds of people for many different activities.
As cities become more structured, these spaces are disappearing. Cars, parking, gated communities and controlled developments often take priority over places where people can gather freely. Even when new developments provide communal areas, they may be located inside private compounds. They are shared by residents, but they are not necessarily public.
This distinction stayed with me:
A space can be communal without being common.
When we talk about designing play spaces, we should therefore ask more than where they are located. We should also ask:
Who owns the space? Who is allowed to enter? Who feels comfortable there? Who is being watched? Who might be asked to leave? Who can use it independently? These questions are particularly important in design research because access is never only physical.
Inclusion is more than accessibility
The speakers expanded the meaning of inclusion beyond conventional accessibility.
Of course, physical access matters. But people can also experience social and psychological barriers. Someone may be able to enter a space but still feel unwelcome. They may worry about how they will be perceived, whether they are occupying the space “correctly”, or whether they have the social permission to remain there.
This made me think about how often public-space design assumes a confident and unrestricted user. But children’s access to play is now shaped by gender, class, age, ability and family expectations. A space may be technically available to everyone but practically used only by some.
The memory shared during the talk about boys being able to swim freely in a canal, while girls could not access the same space in the same way, made this particularly clear. Informal spaces are not automatically inclusive. Freedom and unsupervised mobility are experienced differently by different children. Providing a space is only the beginning. We also need to ask who actually feels able to use it.
Childhood should not look the same everywhere
Another idea I found compelling was the critique of the “mass production of childhood”.
Many contemporary play areas look almost identical. They use the same bright colours, plastic equipment and rubber flooring, regardless of their location. This creates a universal image of what childhood should look like. Childhood is not universal in that way.
A child growing up in Delhi does not inhabit the same climate, landscape or cultural context as a child growing up in Goa, Kashmir, Kolkata or Kerala. Local materials, weather, routines, stories and forms of social life all shape the possibilities of play.
Instead of importing a universal playground model, perhaps we should begin by observing how play already happens in a place.
Materials, repair and care
Ulta-Pulta uses metal and rope rather than a heavily engineered plastic system. The materials are simple, visible and relatively easy to maintain. If the rope wears out, it can be retied. If the metal needs attention, it can be repainted. Parts can potentially be repaired locally.
This made me think about sustainability in a more practical way. We often ask whether a material is sustainable. But perhaps we should also ask:
Who can repair it?
A material’s sustainability depends partly on the systems around it: local skills, availability, maintenance practices and the ability to replace individual components rather than discard the entire object.
The speakers connected this approach to older forms of domestic making and repair. A parent could retie or repaint something instead of sending it away to a specialised service provider. This is local, ordinary and participatory and perhaps that is precisely its strength.
Children are not just users
The student exhibition at Method was another important part of the conversation. The children’s artworks were treated as forms of communication. They revealed how children understood memory, achievement, relationships and objects. Their work was not simply decorative or illustrative; it offered access to their ways of seeing.
This reminded me that children can be research participants, not just users or beneficiaries. Drawing, making, storytelling and play are all research methods. Children may express something through an object or action that they might not articulate in an interview. If we are designing with children, we need to take these forms of communication seriously.
Safety and autonomy
The talk also brought up a tension that is difficult to resolve: how can play spaces be safe without becoming over-controlled?
Adults often want environments to be predictable and easy to supervise. But children learn through trying, adjusting, failing and trying again. They develop their own strategies, assess risks and negotiate with one another.
If every activity is prescribed, some of the value of play disappears. The challenge is not to remove all risk but to create environments where children can encounter manageable risk while still being cared for.
This might mean designing spaces with different levels of challenge, allowing adults to remain nearby without directing every movement and creating materials that can withstand experimentation.
The designer does not need to determine every action. The designer can create the conditions in which actions become possible.
My main takeaway
This talk for me brought new questions to think about.
Who has the right to play?
Where can children move independently?
Who feels safe enough to occupy public space?
What happens when a function is left open?
How can local materials and repair practices shape play?
How can play bring strangers together?
What would it mean to make a city playable?
For me, Holiday Homework was ultimately not about adding more objects to children’s lives. It was about making space for imagination, autonomy, social connection and care. It reminded me that play does not need to be treated as an extra feature of a city or school and is part of the infrastructure of growing up.
Perhaps the real design challenge is not to make more things for children, but to create more places where they can decide what to do.