One-day in-person workshop led by Thor McIntyre-Burnie
- March 3, 2024, 1:30 PM – 5:30 PM
- Location: Room 166, VCUarts Qatar & Oxygen Park (TBC)
- Upon Registration Only
This is an off-site workshop. Transportation to the workshop location is via the Education City tram and is part of the experience.
Inspired by Qatar’s first inclusive playground in the region within *Al Legtaifiya Park, our workshop will use Education Cities ‘Oxygen Park’ as a site-specific base to ask: how we can build ‘deep listening’ into our design to ensure our parks and public spaces to become inclusive playgrounds for all?
Taking place over two days, participants will explore how site-specific art can inform ‘Universal Design’ with the Artist and creative director of ASWARM, Thor McIntyre-Burnie. Engaging with a range of users and applying techniques to sensorily map and see-through-sound, participants will interrogate what ‘Inclusion’ means, awakening new ways to approach spatial design in the parks and public spaces of the future.
The sessions will draw on Thor’s unique expertise – developed over 25 years- for transforming the way public spaces function and sharing collective voices, inviting us to discover new ways to utilise the park and enhance our sense of agency within it.
*Al Legtaifiya park is a community park in Doha, located in the residential district of Legtaifiya. The Parks Division of the Ministry of Municipality and Environment joined forces with Sasol in 2017 to launch the first Inclusive Playground in the region . Featuring modified playground equipment, including a slide, trampoline, and a swing for wheelchair users set between a wide range of activities for all abilities. The inclusive Playground opened a new frontier for accessibility in Qatar and invited children of all ages and abilities to play . . . together.
Our workshop, supported by Sasol’s Accessible Qatar initiative, aims to see how the learnings from this first step can inform the development of other parks in the region.
The workshop is repeated on March 4, 2024, 9:30 AM – 1:30 PM.
