Ten years ago, Watershed launched the Playable City Award from their home in Bristol, inviting artists from across the globe to create playful, creative technology installations that put people and play at the heart of the future city. Over the last decade Playable City has worked with over 74 partners and 50 creatives from Lagos to Recife, Tokyo to Melbourne, Singapore to Austin, reaching over one million people globally. 

Today, Watershed is delighted to unveil six new Playable City commissions who are awarded £45K each to build an urban prototype which will be showcased in Bristol in July 2023. The projects place play at the heart of the city, sparking imagination and conversation about inclusion, sustainability, surveillance and the future of cities. 

The commissions will become part of Playable City Sandbox, a shared development programme produced by Watershed as part of MyWorld which is funded by UK Research and Innovation’s Strength in Places Fund, to help support and grow the creative technology ecosystem of the West of England. 

The six teams and prototypes are: 

Squeeze Me 

Squeeze Me uses inflatable soft robotic technology to create a compelling and charming tactile and visual experience. Up to ten huge, inflatable and illuminated creatures, wrapped around trees, lamp posts or other street furniture, invite passers-by to hug, squeeze, lean on or poke them. Creatures will respond with shape-change, light and sound and will influence other creatures nearby. 

Creators: Emma Powell, Robert Nixdorf and Richard Sewell, Air Giants 

The House of Weaving Songs 

Inspired by the Somali-style nomadic structure called the Aqal, this interactive installation will be co-created with Somali communities in Bristol and beyond, integrating Somali weaving songs and woven tapestries in an experiment to connect the city to cultural practices that can inspire us in our fight to tackle climate change.   

Creators: Fozia Ismail and Ayan Cimli, Dhaqan Collective  

How (not) to be hit by a self-driving car 

A game that challenges people to avoid being detected as human in the eye of an AI. With surveillance cameras becoming smarter and the cities we live in starting to see us back, it poses the question; how do they see us? Anyone can join the game, but can they get from start to finish without being detected? 

Creators: Tomo Kihara & Saki Coppen and Dan Coppen, Studio Playfool 

Zoomscape Zoetrope 

A zoetropic light experience, designed to be viewed from moving train windows upon arrival and departure from Bristol Temple Meads station. The content changes with each passing train, creating a new experience for passengers on daily commutes. 

Creator: Jack Wates & Thomas Blackburn  

Fireflies, a Glitch by Screaming Color and Arcane 

A transformative immersive experience using virtual content to turn the streets and landmarks of Bristol into a colourful, sci-fi-infused digital jungle, awash with mesmerising visuals and local music - no app required. 

Creator: Mike Salmon and Ossian Whiley, Glitch AR, Screaming Color & Arcane    

Street Pixel 

Street Pixel is hardware graffiti; designed to reinvigorate the relationship between people and their cities by transforming the street below into opportunities for connection and play using creative technology, game design and a sustainable approach to materials and electronic hardware. 

Creators: Tom deMajo and Malath Abbas, Biome Collective & Sarah Selby  

Furaha Asani, Watershed’s Research Lead, says:

“We are thrilled to announce six new Playable City prototypes, funded via MyWorld. After spending the last few years reflecting and gaining feedback on a number of themes including the democratisation of play, who has the right to play and feels safe playing in Bristol city spaces, and what accessibility and inclusion in play mean, we've selected these six prototype teams who we believe fulfil the brief and will create free, fun, engaging experiences that we hope you all will enjoy this summer.” 

Oscar De Mello, MyWorld Operations Director, says:

“The Playable City Sandbox that Watershed have created is now a globally recognised format for supporting creative talent and enabling collaborative creative experimentation, and as a region we are so proud of what they have achieved. The selected projects showcase the diversity of thought and influences in our region and demonstrate perfectly how creative technology can be an enabler to connect communities and places in new ways. It’s so exciting to have this opportunity available for West of England businesses and researchers as part of MyWorld, and I can't wait to try out the resulting prototypes!” 

Over the course of four years, the Playable City Award has provided an inclusive playground for many cities across the globe. Stop, Smile, Stroll, injected fun into ordinary pedestrian crossings; an interactive pack of origami-like light-projected Urbanimals revealed themselves in unexpected city spaces; Shadowing inspired people to come together beneath ‘enchanted’ lamp posts that recorded their movements and echoed them back as shadows, whilst Hello Lamp Post encouraged text- based conversations between people and everyday city objects like post boxes and lamp posts. 

Following the last award in 2016, the model was adapted and developed to forge long term partnerships with like-minded producers from different cities around the world culminating in the Creative Producers International programme.    

Playable City Sandbox will conclude with a public week-long showcase in Bristol in July 2023. To follow the prototypes’ progress and find out more go to the Playable City website.  

• Link to Playable City Sandbox website HERE 
• Images |Playable City Sandbox 2023 HERE 
• Images |Playable City Archive HERE 

About Playable City Sandbox 2023 

Watershed’s Sandbox methodology provides a facilitated space where participants have the chance to transform an experimental idea to a working prototype over three months of rapid research and development. 

 About MyWorld programme 

Funded by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Strength in Places Fund, MyWorld is the flagship for the UK’s creative sector and is part of a UK-wide exploration into devolved research and development funding.  Led by the University of Bristol, the £30 million programme is made up of 13 partners from the West of England region’s creative technologies sector and world-leading academic institutions to create a unique cross-sector consortium. Launched in April 2021, MyWorld will run for 5 years and has a mission to catalyse the region’s creative economy, creating new jobs, driving inward investment and supporting sustainable and inclusive business growth.  To achieve this, the programme will enable the research and development of new products, processes and services that advance regional capabilities in creative digital production, network distribution and audience evaluation research. With its unique set of creative partners and research collaborators, MyWorld will also deliver ground-breaking experimental productions, invest in innovative research and production facilities, create new skills programmes and develop the region’s creative business ecosystem. Visit www.myworld-creates.com for more information. 

> Design Themes   

• Definitions: How can the definition of play be expanded and owned by everyone and especially those who are marginalised and underrepresented?  

• Permissions: How can we better understand the different social and cultural pressures different people feel about how they can ‘play’ in public. What and who might consciously or unconsciously reinforce these pressures? 

• Safety & comfort: Who feels safe and comfortable within a space to play in their own style? How is safety and comfort given or taken away?  

• Perspectives: How can we embrace the many different ways in which people perceive cities, spaces and play? 

• Details: What details truly build a sense of space for people? How do these change from person to person and how do they shift over time? 

• Accessibility: What biases are present in the very materials with which we create or ask others to be creative. How can this create barriers and inaccessibility, and how do we dismantle these? 

About the Playable City Sandbox Timeline 

Sandbox production period: March - May 2023  

Sandbox public showcase: July 2023 

About what the Playable City prototype teams each receive 

• A grant of up to £45,000 to fund the development of the idea into a prototype. 
• Three Sandbox workshops to inspire, challenge and upskill around the theme of Playable City. 
• Advice from a Watershed Producer, Business Mentor and Creative Technologist. 
• A panel of leading Industry Advisers to help develop ideas and potential routes to market. 
• Desk space and access to facilities in the Pervasive Media Studio at Watershed in Bristol, connecting each team with a vibrant community of artists and creative technologists. 
• Support with developing inclusive practices. 
• PR support, showcasing opportunities and feedback events offering the opportunity for discussion/collaboration with both peers and public. 
• Support with play testing the ideas. 
• Access support. 
• A short promo film documenting their prototype. 

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