OASIS takes off! - Final Journal

One of the main OASIS objectives was transforming the schoolyards to truly resonate with the children’s aspirations and needs. Therefore, time and resources were invested in developing the appropriate participatory tools for achieving a meaningful engagement of the core participants, the children. From the project’s logo and illustrations to the language and methods (collage, models, drawings) used during the workshops, the messages, instructions and outcomes were tailored to the level of understanding and the needs of the children. The OASIS team has documented every process step, from the co-design stage to the final technical plans. In doing so, it is evident that the children’s ideas were truly transferred from the initial conceptual stage to the final construction, making them the real designers and owners of their everyday space with the guidance of adult experts.

In parallel, a method that worked for broader community engagement was the real-time sketching of the shared ideas by the participants. More specifically, in the second community meeting round, the discussion topic was activities that could be coordinated by the residents in the schoolyard. Illustrators were invited to join each discussion table and sketch the ideas shared by the residents. These illustrations were then used to re-engage the local communities after the pandemic. At that moment, the residents showed increased engagement when they realized that the ideas for their neighbourhood’s school were shared by their community (bottom-up) and not imposed by the project coordinator (top-down).

The main construction works for the schoolyards’ transformation took place in the summertime when the schools were closed. However, certain structures were left “incomplete” on purpose, providing the opportunity for the school community to contribute to the final finishings. A number of “co-making” workshops were coordinated per school during weekends, where parents and children were invited to participate in the construction of elements such as planting beds, benches, tipee tents, play equipment structures and many more. These activities aimed to build a sense of ownership and responsibility of their communal space by sharing a common experience and creating a bond between them and the schoolyard.

The OASIS approach aims to design schoolyards that reflect every child's needs and personality. The OASIS Schoolyards are polyvalent and gender-neutral spaces that prioritize imaginative play, social interaction, and nature-based learning over the typical focus on sports-dominated areas. While acknowledging the importance of sports for physical education, the OASIS Schoolyard doesn't exclude sports but rather integrates them with quiet zones for relaxation and areas designed for experiential learning. The goal is to create a balanced environment where children can engage in active play, find moments of calm, and explore nature, fostering a deeper connection with the natural world. This approach ensures that the schoolyard offers diverse opportunities for children to learn and thrive.

Additionally, OASIS considered involving the broader local community to transform schoolyards into neighbourhood parks after school hours. However, achieving inclusivity has proven challenging, despite selecting 10 pilot schools from diverse districts with varying demographics. Simply choosing schools from different areas doesn't guarantee inclusiveness; additional efforts are necessary to expand the project's reach. School directors played a pivotal role in engaging school families.

One of the most challenging tasks was connecting with the wider public. Limited time availability among local residents, coupled with their diverse characteristics such as age, education level, priorities, and needs, complicated the engagement process. To address this, the OASIS project collaborated with local NGOs, organizations, and stakeholders, leveraging their networks. Just like the school directors, the success of participatory processes heavily relied on the commitment of these local NGOs. Identifying shared priorities and a common vision between the project and these stakeholders emerged as a crucial step in achieving a satisfactory level of inclusiveness. This alignment helped bridge gaps and fostered a sense of community involvement in the project.

The OASIS project is a project that proposes an innovative way of designing, using and maintaining the schoolyards relying on a common understanding of the project’s benefits and the active participation of multiple actors. Achieving this innovation required a mindset shift of all the involved stakeholders, from the Municipal departments’ staff to the school directors, teachers and parents. A key moment that admittedly defined the success of the OASIS project, has been the study trip to similar projects in Belgium. A team of 50 stakeholders from Paris visited examples of natural schoolyards in Brussels and Antwerp and had the opportunity to experience the project themselves while also to discuss their concerns with their counterparts. This shared experience has been a reassuring moment for the feasibility and the advantages of developing the OASIS project in Paris. Moreover, it laid the foundation for building an alliance of different stakeholders that advocated for the project’s benefits to the community, helping the project move forward.

One of the OASIS ambitions was the development of an innovative governance scheme based on the principles of participatory democracy. The formation of “OASIS Collectives,” community stewardship committees envisioned as an important mechanism for operating and managing the schoolyards after school hours. However, this goal is yet to be achieved due to the aforementioned challenges posed by the pandemic and a lack of meaningful engagement and trust.

The complexity of public engagement processes derives from the difficulty of bringing everyone to the table and the lack of the citizens’ understanding and readiness for collaborative procedures. Communicating with the local residents has been challenging not only to disseminate the invitation for the meetings but also to describe the purpose of those meetings effectively;  “what is being asked from the citizens to contribute in”. The drawback of this engagement process has been the synchronization with the co-design activities with the pupils. Bounded on the project’s time schedule, the coordinator of the local residents’ engagement process had to proceed with the community meetings before the finalization of the transformation plans. Therefore, the participants were confused about the topic of discussion. Furthermore, the idea to bring  in performers to lead the discussion of the first community meetings was considered “too artistic” for this process stage. These two factors eventually led to low turnout in the meetings with local residents and an overall weak engagement of the broader community in the project. Ultimately, the project partners realized the need for (1) rescheduling the community meetings as a subsequent activity of the co-design workshops and (2) communicating a simple message to the participants with clear and short-term steps for building the sense of the community’s co-ownership of the space.

The co-management of the schoolyards has been achieved within the level of the school community. Today, the openings of the schoolyards to the broader public are currently organized only on Saturdays in a certain number of schools, coordinated by the Municipality (Department of Education), which is responsible for the security and cleaning of the space.