WORKING WITH PLACEMAKERS IN THE COMMUNITY
THE PLAY REPUBLIC
Engage Green Hat Workshop in your community. Whether you need activities for a festival or stand-alone event; indoor or outdoor, we can work with you.
‘The Play Republic’ is a fully inclusive, white label, pop-up suite of play programs, staffed with trained professionals, including ongoing risk and benefit management and insurance, on-site participant feedback, contact list accumulation and more.
Including the full range of Green Hat Workshop resources and the opportunity to partner with Green Hat Workshop in program development which authentically connects with your community. The Play Republic is managed using a Playworker inspired methodology that promotes the freedom for un-inhibited and purposeless, self-directed play, with abundant, simple resources and the ability to come and go freely from the space without upfront admission payment or ticketing.
Often transported and run from Green Hat Workshop’s 20ft. shipping container or light truck, The Play Republic can be packed away at the end of each day or grow to inhabit a venue of any size for any length of time, or weekly schedule.
CASE STUDIES
STAND ALONE EVENT
ACTIVITY WITHIN A WIDER PROGRAM
FESTIVAL ACTIVITY
EVENT SPONSOR SUPPORT
WEEKLY EVENTS
ACTIVATIONS
LOOSE PARTS
A mix of ‘found’ and manufactured objects curated to give as many prompts for different types of unstructured play possible.
PLANKS
Block construction with 28,000+ identical rectangular wooden blocks. Make bridges, cities, towers, anything. Loads of fun for all ages.
BOX PLAY
Abundant massive cardboard boxes, tape, finger-friendly cutters, cloth and utilising our natural behaviour of sheltering and nesting.
THE MAKING TABLE
Make whatever you want at this craft table. Resourced with manufacturing offcuts, packaging surplus, wool, small cardboard boxes, household recycling, lids, material, tape, paper, staplers, textas & glue.
THE PILE
A dirt pile, sand pile or mud pile creates endless hours of digging, kitchen play or road play and a prepared surface means this activity can be located anywhere with minimal impact. Bring a change of clothes for the ride home.
LANTERN MAKING
Displayed as a parade or a night-time gallery of luminous hand-made shapes at its conclusion, this activity is a series of weekly lantern making workshops for all ages where participants use gaffer tape and rattan cane to create whatever shapes or objects they wish, then skin them using paper and cellophane.
ANYTHING
Painting easels, electronic circuits, writing anthologies, holiday programs, play events… Partner with Green Hat Workshop on a project that fits with our philosophy and fulfills your needs.
CONSULTANT / QUOTES / CONTACT
With more than 28 years working in Primary Education, emergent curriculums, science communication, public pop-up play provision and play-based learning, Green Hat Workshop’s founder and operations manager, Cam Lee works with teams to inspire creative engagement for all ages.
STAND ALONE PROGRAM
Playful Endeavour
Canberra City Renewal Authority
(PARTS, Making Table)
In late 2018 and again in early 2019 Canberra’s City Renewal Authority engaged Green Hat Workshop to provide a ‘Pop-up, Loose Parts, Play Space’ and to develop ‘The Making Table’ for a 14 day period…
The resources for this event are delivered and stored in Green Hat Workshop’s 20ft. shipping container. Staff for this event are employed and trained locally from Canberra’s Science communication, Teaching, Child-Care and Playworker communities.
Branded as ‘The Playful Endeavour’ the event is run in order to attract and engage families to Canberra’s City Center; particularly Civic Square – a space that is locally considered unwelcoming.
The Renewal Authority arranged promotion of the event through their Facebook groups, website and email lists as well as print media and several City Living Blogs, also positioning Green Hat Workshop’s Education Manager, Cam Lee, to appear on several drive-time radio “What’s on” segments to explain the event and Green Hat Workshop’s deeper philosophy of ‘loose parts’.
Green Hat Workshop and the Renewal Authority also co-moderated a Facebook Event prior and during each Playful Endeavour, enabling a community to be developed and photos/videos & announcements to be disseminated easily.
Following the great success of the first ‘Playful Endeavour‘ at Civic Square the 2nd event was staged in the first two weeks of April 2019 in Canberra’s beautiful Glebe Park. This event drew an estimated 1,000+ participants of all ages over the 14 days, including many families who attended Civic Square event.
ACTIVITY WITHIN A WIDER PROGRAM
Get Moovin’
Shepparton City Council
(PARTS, PLANKS)
Shepparton City Council’s Activities in the Park, Get Moovin’ Program, is made up of a vast range of free classes, workshops and outdoor events in leisure spaces around Shepparton…
It has proven so popular that in 2020 the program expanded to fill 12 months. Since 2016 Green Hat Workshop PLANKS and PARTS Workshops have attracted crowds to the SPC Playground and Maude St Mall running twice a year each year.
The City Council advertise through their social media channels and printed program flyers and provide staff on the day to promote the program and to sign in and out participants.
The PLANKS programs only include a single workshop facilitator from Green Hat Workshop and resources are transported in our van.
FESTIVAL ACTIVITY
FUN4KIDS Festival
Warrnambool City Council
(PLANKS)
One of Australia’s first indoor, winter, family festivals, FUN4KIDS, drew families from around Victoria to Warrnambool for a week every July for stage shows, animal petting, fencing, PLANKS and more…
From 2011 for several years Green Hat Workshop ran a purpose built PLANKS block play room that became a highlight for many festival patrons. The Green Hat Workshop PLANKS room with its 28,000 PLANKS and dedication to open ended, self-directed construction-play was always busy and fit perfectly with the festival’s multi-ability, multi-age / family ethos, lending itself to the activation of space to which other activities were unsuited.
Warrnambool City Council set up and decorated the purpose built marquee and floored space, transported our resources to the event and supplied accommodation.
Green Hat Workshop supplied a trained facilitator for the event to maintain the building space, create remarkable instillations and interact with participating families.
“PLANKS are one of our most popular and much loved activities at Fun4Kids. A real winner with everyone. Families just kept coming back again and again.”
Rebecca Elmes, previous of Warnambool, Fun4Kids Festival
SPONSOR SUPPORT
Appleby Real Estate, Knox Festival
City of Knox, Melbourne
(PLANKS)
As a major sponsor of The Knox Festival, Appleby Estate Agents were using the event to establish relationships with local residents by offering free home appraisals. The problem was… that the brief moment between agent and passer-by, when handing out their branded show bags, was insufficient to strike up a meaningful conversation, anything more felt like hard sell and the value of the show bags was diminished, as they were simply being distributed and not, as they were intended, to be given as gifts. Often it wasn’t even the key decision maker who collected the bag and the agents could see any interaction may be counter productive to creating positive relationships.
Having had a great success partnering Mirvac Builders with Green Hat Workshop at several previous Festivals, Malcolm Russell, Knox City Council’s Events & Cultural Development Officer in 2011 (now at Yarra Ranges City Council), had the idea of linking a Green Hat Workshop PLANKS building event and PLANKS giveaway, to the Appleby stand, increasing the length and quality of engagement.
As a result of this partnership Knox Council maintained Appleby as a major festival sponsor and the Appleby Stand became a place known for authentic creative fun, a stand that Festival Patrons actively sort out, photographed, distributed on social media and spent lengths of time visiting. The Appleby PLANKS giveaway was promoted via festival announcements every hour of the festival and many appraisals were set up with parents ‘looking on’ as their children played and created with PLANKS blocks.
WEEKLY EVENT
Play Dairy Road, Molongolo Developers
Dairy Road, Fyshwick, Canberra
(PLANKS and Loose Parts)
In collaboration with Dionese Placemakers, and with the blessing of “Play Kings X“, Green Hat Workshop has been commissioned by Molongolo Developers to run a weekly pop-up Loose PARTS play event, Play Dairy Road, at 1 Dairy Road Fyshwick, Canberra.
The event has been inspired by a similar provision in London’s Kings Cross district and Green Hat Workshop continues to pursue our best version of a playworker inspired approach within the restrictions of an already superbly engaging play-garden, to do our best to live up to any comparisons; this is ongoing work.
Space and existing play fixtures have prompted Green Hat Workshop to undertake an increasingly deliberate curation of parts and activities within the space and the ongoing success and gradual increase in popularity of the event is largely due to this good planning and management, reducing the hazards presented by the PARTS within this specific setting.
We are very pleased with the result and increasingly believe that we can develop and manage a play provision anywhere.