Portable Pixel Playground

Portable Pixel Playground was an amazing play space for all ages created by artists working with digital technology. ‘A bit like an adventure playground, a bit like a work of art, and a bit like a computer game’, the playground had been designed to allow young people (and inquisitive adults!) to use everyday technologies in fun and creative ways, providing them with new, interactive and hands-on experiences of art and technology.

Portable Pixel Playground was established to delight and encourage young families and young people to engage creatively with technology. It explored novel ways to inspire the wider public to develop an interest in art and to stimulate creative thinking through the means of play. The playground acted as a public test bed for an interdisciplinary collaboration between folly, artists, technologists, curators, young people and young families.

folly has been commissioning, presenting, developing and testing new work which examines the value of play in creative thinking and ideas development. The Portable Pixel Playground was user centred and a safe and welcoming environment that tested the potential physicality of technology addressing concerns of negative computer use such as sedentary and repetitive behaviour by young people.

Since August 2008, events had been held once per month across Lancashire and Cumbria. We worked with five key partner venues, in order to build a successful public programme and grow and develop audiences: Tullie House, Carlisle; Solaris Centre, Blackpool; Carnforth Station; Lanternhouse, Ulverston and St Nicholas Arcades, Lancaster.

Visitor comments include:

“An enjoyable hour for adults and children alike. Something different. Imaginative use of computers.”
“Very visual, intriguing even for someone with little technological knowledge”
“The variety of resources – tactile, visual, stimulating. Excellent – very impressed.”

The playground has also been toured to other cities, towns and festivals including the Oldham Children's Festival, the Family Friendly Film Festival in Manchester and the Liberate Empty Terrain (LET) Programme in Pennine Lancashire.