#1504: Playful Learning in the Community: An interactive tour of community based early learning installations

Playful Learning Landscapes (PLL) transforms everyday community spaces like parks, bus-stops, and grocery stores into conduits for caregiver-child interactions and early learning. During this workshop, attendees will visit a series of PLL installations in Santa Ana, CA, which were co-designed by researchers from UC Irvine and Temple University, and families from the Santa Ana Early Learning Initiative, a local grassroots non-profit community organization. Attendees will engage with the PLL installations and learn about the design process and impact of the installations on community members and caregiver child interactions at PLL sites. The session will also demonstrate how this project was conducted in partnership with the City of Santa Ana’s Parks and Recreation and Public Works departments who own and maintain the installations and have begun to replicate them using public funds in other community spaces. Challenges, lessons learned, plans for sustainability, and practical and theoretical insights will be discussed.