Children are important stakeholders of a city. In the next 20-30 years, they will be the ones taking over and making decisions for the city. However, they are often neglected, or not taken into account, by public facilities and infrastructures that are built in Bandung. The streets – and even sidewalks – are too dangerous for them to walk or ride bicycles alone, city parks are neither closed nor unkempt, playgrounds are almost non-existent, and so on. It is due time that they should say their desires for the city and to be listened to. This is the main reason why Riung Gunung is on!

Riung Gunung is a workshop organized by Sahabat Kota, a community/organization in Bandung that has been active in holding programs and events for children and youth who want to learn about the City of Bandung and urban life. As a part of the pre-event series approaching DesignAction.bdg, Riung Gunung is coming up really soon as the next one. This workshop is held for 60-90 children between the ages of 9 to 12, whose main task is to make a scenario of Bandung 2035. In this 6-days workshop, they will go through the phases of exploration, city adventure, envisioning, co-design workshop, and realization. As a result, they will make a model or a physical miniature of the city according to their design, and will act it out, according to the systems they create. These results will be performed and exhibited on July 7, 2013, at Selasar Sunaryo Art Space, a gallery at the North of Bandung, and also during DesignAction.bdg event on October 1-3, 2013.

The 30 instructors who will accompany these children during this workshop have been having their own workshops in order to be prepared with appropriate knowledge, with the following subjects: design thinking, sustainable development, child psychology, education for sustainable development, city planning, performance, games, child handling and creativity.

We are really looking forward to having this workshop. Hope for a lot of fun and incredible results!

More about Sahabat Kota: http://kisahsahabatkota.wordpress.com/

Sahabat Kota at Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sahabat.kota

Sahabat Kota at Twitter: https://twitter.com/sahabatkota

Sahabat Kota videos at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/komunitassahabatkota