Il Giardino dei Bambini Non Accompagnati / The Garden of Unaccompanied Children, 23 Mai – 16 September 2018, Serra dei Giardini, Viale Garibaldi 1254, Venezia, curated by Alice Sartori and Paolo Rosso.
As part of the summer season MICROCLIMA, Kunsthalle Zürich, and The Playground Project/ architekturfuerkinder.ch present Il Giardino dei Bambini Non Accompagnati / The Garden of Unaccompanied Children in the gardens of the Serra dei Giardini in Venice, a greenhouse built in 1894 for the Biennale to preserve the exotic plants that decorated the first International Exhibitions of Art.
With the collaboration of the collective Gli Impresari and the naturalist guide Roberto Sartor, The Garden of Unaccompanied Children will install ‘a place to play’ for kids of any age, using the do-it-yourself technique and the use of simple and easily found material. More specifically, the project will focus on the garden behind the Serra and the green public area next to it. Not being accessible to citizens for a long time, this green area has been neglected and forgotten by many. The aim is to reflect upon the potential of this open space and boost a new way of living the entire area of Viale Garibaldi. Since playing is a democratic action, possible for everyone in every context and condition, connected to free thought and its infinite possibilities of declination, it allows us to overcome the institutional gates imagining what lies beyond this artificial separation. Going beyond imagination itself, The Garden of Unaccompanied Children will reopen this abandoned green space in the occasion of the didactic activities of the project, allowing people to explore this area once again.
The project is divided into two sections complementary to each other. On one hand an exhibition, where the do-it-yourself playground is presented through two historical examples: the
architect and designer Riccardo Dalisi and the German KEKS Group. In 1970, the German KEKS Group was invited to the 35th Venice Biennale where they set up performance-based activities
with children. One year later, the architect Riccardo Dalisi took his students to Rione Traiano in Naples to start working with the children of the neighborhood. For three years Dalisi provided underprivileged children with a creative space beyond the restrictions of institutions. On the other hand, following these models of do-it-yourself playgrounds, The Garden of Unaccompanied Children also seeks to offer a series of free workshops and encounters where everyone can learn about how to imagine, build and create their own way of playing and having fun.
Despite having a programmed calendar, the project aims to be a place of free, unexpected possibilities, an open-air theatre of creative actions proposed by collective participation, stimulating a dialogue on the importance on shifting everyday perception, the right of leisure, and of finding sustainable ways of having fun in the public green spaces of our city.
With the collaboration of Fondaco and the support of Gruppo Vacanze & Natura (Cavallino, VE), The Garden of Unaccompanied Children is restoring the broken fence that surrounds the garden situated next to the Serra dei Giardini and Viale Garibaldi. The title, The Garden of Unaccompanied Children, is inspired by an amendment made by the mayor of Venice in 1892. This document, found in the Archivio Municipale of the City of Venice, mentions the fact that in the first section (primo reparto) of the public gardens of Venice, children, even the unaccompanied ones, should have free access. By turning it into a free space to play for everyone again, we hope that “the unaccompanied child” will be everyone, across all ages. The game is therefore a suitable tool to activate a social interaction within the neighborhood of Castello and to open a reflection on the management of public spaces.
