Revamp: Design Jam

The time has come to have your say on the what you would like to see outside the youth space at 122 Lichfield Street! The three concepts were created by young people at the Revamp: Design Jam and are now ready for the public to vote on. To vote, head to the Christchurch Youth Council's Facebook page, vote in person at the youth space, or vote online here: https://www.chchyouthactionplan.co.nz/revamp.html 

To explain more about the Revamp: Design Jam and the process to come up with these ideas, Daniella Damm has written a guest blog post. 
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On Sunday 20th May, a bunch of young, interested people attended the Revamp: Design jam to collaborate and form concepts for the empty section of the Youth Space in town. We met at the Youth Space in the morning and got the low down on the youth initiative and our plan for the day. We did a few icebreaker games to get familiar with each other, one of which was a little competition in teams of building the highest tower with a handful of playing cards (very cool to see the different approaches).  As a collective, we looked over the ideas that had been left on the chalkboards outside and on facebook comments and grouped them into some main ideas and priorities. Once we had the basis of a few ideas, we formed rough groups according to who connected the most to each concept.
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We then took a quick stroll to the awesome Bizdojo (a few of us going there for the first time loved seeing the artwork covered walls of the courtyard), where we had more some more room to break out into smaller groups and focus on each idea. Equipped with pens paper, plans and of course sticky notes we began designing! Weaving through the groups were facilitators from the Christchurch Youth Council, Anne Galloway from Christchurch City Council and Simon and Boyd; our helpful experts. They helped the groups focus on the important criteria and gave us so many things to think about. I worked with a group on the green space idea and it was great fun to spend the time sketching and imagining a green sanctuary filled with the ideas popping into our heads. The more challenging part was thinking of solutions to the different problems these ideas would come with as well as thinking realistically about how to make it work well. It was an awesome experience though, to be working with both people I knew, and people I had never met before! 

After all this conceptualising we had most definitely built up our appetites, and we headed back to the Youth Space for some kai (bacon brothers, mmmm) and basketball. After lunch, we returned to Bizdojo to share our ideas with other groups and had some time for feedback and questions. Taking it all into account we went back into our groups to finalise our concepts then we presented each one together other groups a final time. We had three concepts; the green space with planter boxes and seating areas, the performance space with a free, easy to book stage, and the light room with a mosaic centrepiece and a cosy safe feel. Getting to meet new people and be involved in such a cool youth participation opportunity was so awesome and I’m so excited to see which concept people vote for and to get involved with making the concept a reality at the Youth Space!