We are delighted to announce that the Playable City Award 2014 is open for applications. Artists, designers, architects, technologists and creative practitioners from around the world are invited to propose new ideas that will challenge the screen-based clichés of a smart city, and respond instead to cities as playable, open, and configurable spaces. The £30,000 award sits at the intersection of art, technology and culture, and we encourage applicants to submit ideas that will use technology in an integrated and interesting way, injecting a sense of intrigue and meaning to public spaces. The winning idea will be publicly installed in Bristol in the UK later this year, with the potential to be toured to other cities around the world.

Last year the inaugural award was won by Pan Studio, Tom Armitage and Gyorgyi Galik for their project Hello Lamp Post, which enabled thousands of people in Bristol to strike up conversations with physical objects around the city using simple text messages. The project received global attention and over 25,000 text messages were exchanged during the project’s run from July to September 2013. The winners have gone on to be nominated in the Design Museum’s prestigious Designs of the Year 2014 competition.

Applications for the second Playable City Award are open to individuals or teams from any field and from any country, as long as they can demonstrate creative use of technology and a history of delivering high quality, innovative practice. The call for applications will remain open until 17:00 BST on 11 April 2014 and a shortlist will be announced on 28 April 2014.

Clare Reddington, Executive Producer of the Playable City Award, says, “When we launched the Playable City Award last year, we had no idea how keenly it would capture people’s imagination or how quickly it would achieve global interest and awards. In 2014 we are again aiming to identify and reward ideas that respond to the context of the city, where openness and permission to play are key. We can’t wait to see what will be proposed this year and encourage all applicants to be as imaginative and daring as they can."

Playable City Award judge and Director of Google’s Creative Lab Tom Uglow adds, “Playable City marks a shift in our society's relationship to technology and culture. Playable City encourages us to engage and play with these new, invisible, magical possibilities which were previously only for computer geeks; the confidence and comfort to play with digital culture in urban spaces is indicative of our growing comfort with technology. Culture is a mirror to our society and it is great to see such positive and buoyant reflections from the Playable City commission.”

Ben Barker, co-creator of Playable City 2013’s winner Hello Lamp Post and co-founder of PAN Studio, says, “Taking part in the first Playable City was better than we ever expected, thanks to the quality of the brief and the energy and effort Watershed dedicated to developing and delivering the project with us. The award outlined an exciting territory which encouraged us to think of the city as a place to be reclaimed for a playful, human experience, and it was amazing to give people of all ages and backgrounds in Bristol a chance to interact with their city. The moment we met the Watershed team we could tell we were part of something ambitious and the global interest in the project is proof.”

If you'd like to apply or know someone who should, all the information that you need is attached and can be found at www.watershed.co.uk/playablecity

We're always up for a chat too so if you'd like to find out more, contact us on playablecity@watershed.co.uk or 0117 370 8870 or use @Playable City or #playablecity to talk to us on twitter.