About the Playbook

The go-to resource for creating kid-friendly communities for EVERY kid through playful design

The KABOOM! Play Everywhere Playbook documents how Play Everywhere moved from theory to practice by leveraging the many tools, successes, best practices and lessons learned from our growing body of Play Everywhere work. In addition to providing a toolkit to enable the creation and replication of Play Everywhere projects, we want the Playbook to catalyze local collaboration, and drive commitments and policies for creating playable cities for all kids, no matter where they live.

We must recognize the hundreds of communities that completed projects across the country through KABOOM! Play Everywhere Challenges. This includes the groundbreaking work of the 50 winners of the National Play Everywhere Challenge. The National Challenge was led by KABOOM! in collaboration with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Target, Playworld, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

This $1 million national design challenge called on cities, community leaders, designers and child-serving organizations to conceive and implement creative PLAYces for kids.

From over 1,000 entries, KABOOM! and a blue ribbon panel (representing leaders from the business, nonprofit, urban planning, and arts sectors) selected and funded these 50 winners from across the country to bring their creations to life.

In advance of the National Challenge, KABOOM! convened over 40 city and community leaders, child-serving non-profit professionals, urban planners and designers to create a document articulating goals and principles for Play Everywhere. That document became the first version of the Play Everywhere Playbook and served as a guiding framework for the Challenge.

Contributing authors

Eric Feldman (Rhodeside & Harwell)
Gehl

For KABOOM!
Aisha Alexander
Caroline Finnell
Ari Hock
Amy Levner
James Siegal
Sianna Simmons