Week 9: Blue Elephant workshop, part 1

The first visit to the Blauwe Olifant (Blue Elephant) had an enormous impact. The Blauwe Olifant is an organization that developed activities in the realm of education and enterprise. They where based in a building on the site of the future park. This meeting immediately produced many valuable ideas. By way of introduction Face Your World also asked this group to draw up a wish list for the park. The list included a number of new ideas, like a climbing wall and a bowling lane and the Staalman (Steel Man).

It evolved into a huge list of functions and was given the title Almost Paradise. Yet far more significant was that this group demonstrated that they were capable of thinking about their own involvement with the park. They did not merely come up with ideas like a youth centre, but also for a workshop, a centre for local business people and young people to meet, and a tea- or coffee-house combined with a shopping service for the elderly. In the process, they opened up the opportunity not only to involve young people in the design of the park, but also to show that it was conceivable to involve this group (and local residents in general) in the realization and the management of the park.