Schoolyards Policy: Ligue de l’enseignement
In order to let all of them fully enjoy their leisure areas, partners of the UIA Oasis Schoolyard project worked hand in hand with schools’ teams and students to elaborate specific policies. Throughout a unique methodology, several sessions and collaboration with the art world, a set of signs was specially designed and adapted to each school by la Ligue de l’enseignement and its partners.
Focus on Keller Elementary School:
Keller schoolyard provides a full range of new playground structures. At first, the pedagogical team was quite skeptical on the uses and was wondering on how to watch the kids and ensure their security while letting them make their own experiences and enjoy these new facilities.
Teachers and ambassador students first went through a detailed diagnosis observation of the different areas of the yard, questioning the connected behaviors and determining the matching procedures. After a first period of interviews with adults and students, the ambassador students came with a first draft of the chart of uses. A workshop on positive writing was led to reformulate all the rules. The aim for the chart of uses is not to forbid behavior but to suggest which one is adapted. Positive syntax was also important to conform to an efficient educational language.
Artist Nora Duprat then accompanied them through a session of typographic research. Nora and the ambassador students asked themselves how the typography or the layout of a panel can help the reading of a message. The students were invited to find symbols and styles that best matched the spaces and the rules previously chosen.
A second session was dedicated to coded language. Students were introduced to the system and created boards combining drawings and encrypted messages to suggest a playful approach to the schoolyard policy.
Production of the leaflet with Nora Duprat © Marion Pouliquen / Ligue de l’enseignement
Production of the leaflet with Nora Duprat © Marion Pouliquen / Ligue de l’enseignement
Production of the leaflet with Nora Duprat © Marion Pouliquen / Ligue de l’enseignement
To make these reflections real, the students were initiated to linocut, which consists in carving a design on a linoleum surface. They were able to create little signs dedicated to specific zones with drawings and coded sentences revealing the procedure to follow. At the end, each student received a little leaflet to decode the encrypted message of the schoolyard signs and then assimilate the new rules of the courtyard.
A series of various activities that had the students think and create and let them realize a unique guideline that is like them and their schoolyard, both in terms of content and aesthetic.
La zone de saut
Le pont de singe
Focus on Emeriau Kindergarten:
After the first phase of diagnosis and observations of the schoolyard, the educative community of Emeriau determined a few set of procedures. Since reading is not part of the learnings in kindergarten, artist Paul Chevalier had to think of simple drawings to illustrate these rules and make them easy to understand for children from 3 to 5.
Once school team and children approved the designs, two students from Léonard De Vinci high school specialized in woodworking joined the project and suggested different templates, based on pyrography techniques. Wooden signs, both lasting and sustainable, perfectly match the facilities of oasis schoolyards.
Another unique guideline, adapted to young students abilities and their new environment.
Production of the wood panel by the Lycée professionnel des métiers du bois Léonard de Vinci © Ligue de l’enseignement
Production of the wood panel by the Lycée professionnel des métiers du bois Léonard de Vinci © Ligue de l’enseignement
Production of the wood panel by the Lycée professionnel des métiers du bois Léonard de Vinci © Ligue de l’enseignement
Climate adaptation
