folly celebrates the success of Portable Pixel Playground

folly celebrates the success of Portable Pixel Playground

"My grandchildren talked about it so much last year and couldn't wait to come again."
"Very engaging and compulsive."
"Great fun and very clever ideas."
"I think the playground is fantastic in taking the idea of child's fun and taking everything out apart from the excitement and imagination."

As the public programme for Portable Pixel Playground comes to an end, folly looks back at its achievements and celebrates its phenomenal success. 

Public interest in and enthusiasm for Portable Pixel Playground has exceeded folly's expectations and feedback revealed that people had never experienced anything like it before. 

Portable Pixel Playground was a playground for the future, imagined by artists and brought to life with technology. A space for digital natives and novices alike, folly's goal was to enable audiences to have access to creative technology in a fun, innovative and interactive format.

Portable Pixel Playground featured cutting-edge commissions from Giles Askham and Luke Hastilow, Squidsoup, Andy Best and Merja Puustinen and was presented in public settings such as shopping centres, forests, parks, galleries and railway stations. From inflatable soundscapes to virtual interactive bugs, the playground presented a variety of accessible and unique projects that challenged the way we think about technology. 

Thanks to two years of funding from the Big Lottery Fund’s ‘Playful Ideas’ scheme and a raft of other investors, folly developed and presented a unique public programme that reached more than 8000 people in over 30 one day events in 15 towns and cities across the North West. 

The Playground acted as a public test bed for collaboration between folly, artists, technologists, curators and the public. It offered a space to explore new ideas and encouraged children and young families to get active, think differently, collaborate and take risks through being exposed to new concepts and challenges created by artists.

For a flavour of the playground watch this footage:

folly plans to build on the success and learning from Portable Pixel Playground by reinventing the project on an international scale.

To find out more and/or register your interest please contact folly's Creative Director Kathryn Lambert on 

[email protected] or phone folly on 01524 388 550. 

www.folly.co.uk

www.portablepixelplayground.org.uk

Credits:

Video footage produced by Cup Cake Media Ltd

Image Source: Glowing Pathfinder Bugs by Squidsoup; Photography by Dave Nelson

Funded by the Big Lottery Fund.