Seminar SoSe 2025
Saba Barani, Dr. Juliana Canedo

Playful Inclusion II
From the Shelter to the City 
Co-Learning for Claiming Spaces with Women and Children

There is an urgent need to facilitate the agency of different marginalized groups to negotiate their demands and claim their spaces within the hegemonic architectural and urban development systems in the city. In our co-learning research group Playful Inclusion we create environments to address these needs. Our approach is grounded in a critical feminist perspective, using playful, collaborative methods to help women* and children exercise their agency.

In Playful Inclusion I, through games, we facilitated a co-investigation of spaces within a refugee camp in Berlin-Marzahn with refugee children, women*, and stakeholders. In Playful Inclusion II, we will expand this facilitation and co-learning process to include not only refugee women* and children from  the camp but also women* and children from the broader Marzahn neighborhood. Students act as co-researchers, and the semester will begin with critical readings and discussions to collaboratively shape the theoretical and practical framework for our research. This will be followed by observations, mappings, and interviews, through co-designing and conducting critical picnics and temporary urban interventions in collaboration with various groups of women* and children from the neighborhood, as well as collectives and stakeholders.

The research will conclude with data analysis, and we will collectively decide how to present the results - whether through a booklet, poster, audiovisual mediums, or other formats. The project is interdisciplinary and open to motivated bachelor’s and master’s students with a background or interest in architecture, urban planning, social and political sciences, or related fields, who are keen to engage in this co-learning, socio-spatial research project using collaborative, playful methods. We strongly encourage students from diverse backgrounds, languages, and ethnicities to participate in this course.

The course is an X-Student Research Group funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the State of Berlin as part of the Excellence Strategy of the Federal and State Governments by the Berlin University Alliance.

Photo: © Saba Barani

Download poster here.