Play Everywhere
Turning Everyday Places into Playspaces
KABOOM! created the Play Everywhere concept to inspire kids to play every day and to incorporate it into their normal routines. These innovations and installations bring play to unexpected, but everyday spaces, making play easy and available for kids and families.
While a playground can provide a joyful oasis for play, play must be available in other places to include play opportunities where kids, and their caregivers, are already spending their limited time. Play Everywhere encourages people to think about spaces that could become PLAYces — a laundromat, grocery store, sidewalk, bus stop — any unexciting situation can turn into a stimulating, creative outlet for play.
Meet the 19 New Play Everywhere Playspaces Coming to Southeast Michigan and Western New York
Through the Built to Play initiative, supported by the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation, KABOOM! is proud to announce 19 new Play Everywhere playspaces coming to Southeast Michigan and Western New York.
The rules for the 2020 Play Everywhere Design Challenge added a new objective for communities: they needed to partner with professional landscape designers or architects to think differently about how a Play Everywhere installation could inspire their community’s kids and families to play.
The winners' bold designs include everything from mammoths to serpents, rockets and prisms, "opportunity", "tranquility" and much more.
How KABOOM! Drives Play Everywhere
Play Everywhere Playbook
The Play Everywhere Playbook details our Play Everywhere design principals, and provide steps and examples for putting them into practice.
Grants
KABOOM! has activated our partners to launch programs and challenges to find, inspire and make Play Everywhere concepts a reality.
Gallery of Projects
Our gallery is just a sample of the ideas happening across the U.S. Browse our gallery to gain inspiration for your own PLAYces-- here are a few examples to get you started.
Urban Thinkscape
An empty lot is now a place for puzzles, games, mathematics and reading.
iPlay MIAMI Streets
Dead-end streets in Miami’s disinvested communities are transformed for fun.
Brightmoor Runway
Transforming a section of a broken sidewalk into an illuminated running, play, and exercise track.
Loopholes
A playable sculpture with five open, climbable cylinders with peek-a-boo holes throughout.
Using Play Everywhere to Create Playable Cities
Research developed from KABOOM! and behavioral economics research firm ideas42 shows that cities must become more playable to ensure that all kids across every socio-economic background are getting the balanced and active play they need to thrive.
Together, KABOOM! and ideas42 published the white paper Using Behavioral Economics to Create Playable Cities. It identifies the behavioral bottlenecks that prevent kids from getting play and demonstrates the solutions cities can take to holistically address them.
