Get to know the details of this year's Lelenfant architectural activity carried out by the Foundation together with Protolab. The official opening of the installation, which is the symbol of this year edition of Lelenfant, will take place on August 15, 2023 at the Lelenfant Picnic in Castle at OPT Zamek in Wrocław's Leśnica. If there is a castle, there must also be a DRAGON.
“Building together piece by peace” is an interdisciplinary action, the effect of which is an installation created from children’s ideas and inspiration, and built by students and architecture enthusiasts from cellulose materials.
The construction is maximally environmentally friendly, made of paper or wood. We operate in cooperation as the Przyjaźń Sztuka Edukacja (FAE) Foundation with a team of architects from ProtoLab – design&build and a students of the Faculty of Architecture at the Wrocław University of Science and Technology, as well as a team of Lelenfant instructors experienced in the field of choreography and psychology.
We will present the installation to the public during the Lelenfant Picnic, whose main goal is to meet in one place, under the sky of Wrocław, all participants of Lelenfant 2023.
HOW WE WORKED ON IT IN 2023?
It all started with collecting ideas for installations that emerged during a meeting of the Lelenfant Youth Agency in June 2023. Young people, participants of the local edition of our project shared what should be the subject of the installation. There were such slogans as: a tent, a tree house, a house, a hut.
SUMMER WORKSHOPS OF CARDBOARDS
The next stage of the preperation was focused on exploring these topics by children that participated in the day camps organized by the Foundation in the first weeks of holidays at OPT Zamek in Leśnica. Under the supervision of students of architecture, structures made of paper cardboard were created, which were presented to the Protolab team as an inspiration for the architectural design. The final architecture project design was consulted with the children, and then in Czasoprzestrzeń hall, the students started construction work.
A team of architects and architects: Natalia Opołczynska, Zeynep Diker, Urszula Litwiniuk, Dominik Gromek, Abbas Al-Wadeai, Luisa Lisboa, Celia Castaño Marin.
Tutoring: Javier Sanchez Merina, dr Jerzy Łątka
Coordination: Iwona Frydryszak
Support of children input: Hanna Achremowicz, Joanna Bzdzion, Julita Lech, Magdalena Celniaszek-Nykiel, Ewa Sawka
The idea behind the LELENFANT DRAGON
From French Dragon of Lelenfant children would be said like this lelenfant enfants dragon. In 2023 we bring again a play of Lelenfant name with the spelling of French word child = l’enfant
“During the workshops, the children showed great interest in animal forms, hence the idea to connect the pavilion with something alive. At the same time, the number of castles and defensive forts built by children out of cardboards made us combine both of these ideas and find a form that combines castles and animals. Dragons come from this combination. We believe that such a mythical animal creates an opportunity to open children’s imagination. At the same time, the fact that there are a lot of interesting areas around the castle in Leśnica, we decided not to attach the “pavilion” to a specific location, but rather let it play on the largest possible area. We built an interactive toy that allows movement and requires from children to cooperate in order to play. At the same time, it has educational value in the form of showing the possibilities of wood and simple wooden mechanisms.”
The dragon is constructed in such a way that when pushed forward it plants seeds, and on the back it has holes for pots with seedlings of trees or shrubs. In this way, a toy – while move by children -gives the earth the beginning of a new life, and for Lelenfant project it is a symbol of new friendships, ideas and inspiration to play and create together.
The ceremonial handing over of the Dragon Instalation to children will take place during the traditional meeting of Lelenfant participants under the Wrocław sky, which in 2023 will take place on August 15 in Wrocław’s Leśnica entitled “Lelenfant Picnic in Castle”, which is organized in the historic Castle in Leśnica (OPT Zamek).
The event will be inaugurated with the Artistic Lelenfant Dragon Parade. Young artists will receive a winged mythical creature under their wings, which, being a massive interactive wooden toy.
In two program blocks at 15:00 – 16:00 and 18:00 – 19:00 on the outdoor stage of OPT Zamek in Leśnica neighborhood there will be theater, circus, acrobatic and dance short performances performed by children’s and youth artistic groups from around the world
The whole event will be complemented by animations and games conducted by the animators of the Przyjaźń Sztuka Edukacja Foundation, as well as with Lelenfant groups.
