Children's Natural Rights Park
"...you always have to explain to grown-ups everything that children immediately understand". (Antoine de Saint Exupéry, The Little Prince)
The Park of the Natural Rights of Girls and Boys was created to accompany the restoration of part of the coastal pine forest of Pinarella - Tagliata, damaged by a sea storm in 2015.
In the clearings formed by the falling trees, the Municipality of Cervia has created, to a design by architect Aida Morelli, a park inspired by the Manifesto of the Natural Rights of Girls and Boys by pedagogue Gianfranco Zavalloni.
Divided into six thematic areas, it is enriched by playful-relational installations inspired by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and Adolescent and Cervia - Children's Friendly City.
The park is designed for free or guided use in all seasons by citizens, tourists and families.
The route combines active citizenship (or "peasantry", to quote Zavalloni) with invention, free play and exploration.
The Parco Lento is a journey into the changing landscape and where it is possible to tune in to the rhythms of this transformation.
Using the games, designed for relational, free and inclusive use by all, in this place you can listen or, on the contrary, run, letting your senses run free.
You can embrace the sounds, take in the nuances of the changing vegetation, the salty smells combined with those of the pine forest, the sunlight and moonlight.
Right to dialogue. – You can always talk and be listened to
You can whisper and be understood in any case, even from long distances, because the two large parables made of staineless steel, one far from the other, collect the voice, even if it is very very low. Magically they allow the whisper to get from a reflector to the other with no need to amplify.
Right to wildlife - I climb if I want
Play and climb like on trees and look at the nature around you!
A tubular steel tree structure was designed to simulate tree climbing freedom. Its branches set at different hights allow to climb in a free, always different and safe way.
Right to diversity – Both equal and different, we are always beautiful
Look at yourself inside the magic mirrors! Fat or thin, tall or short, that’s always you! Strong or weak like a river reed. Put your face in the hole of the surface with a friend and you will be impressed! Both equal and different, it’s always you! Have fun with your reflected and distorted image!
Right to colours – Re-invent what surrounds you
You can reinvent the colors and the shapes of the Nature around you for fun, creating a different picture. The large rotating discs allow you to confuse shapes with new, different than usual geometries and shades. In this way you’ll discover the wonder of your surroundings like in a large kaleidoscope
Right to nature - Play and learn with the eco-system that surrounds you
Look into the big tube and associate the pictures of pinewood animals to the food they like most! Then in the other game break up the pictures of the animals. Create fantastic animals and then take them back to their original aspect. Discover how caterpillar becomes a butterfly or how a pine cone is born from a pine!
Get in to the nature laws!
Right to sounds: How can we listen to sounds in different ways?
The “big ears” mobile set up allows you to change usual height and orientation while catching the sounds of nature and of landscape from up above. So you can hear better the birds singing, the noise of wind, the seawaves and the things around you.
The installations-toys of the park have been designed with the idea that the urban quality for children is made from concrete experiences: places and times for the free movement and for the play, educational activities in a healthy environment, with cultural opportunities and possibilities of expression which are necessary for the education and for the involvement together with the connection with the "naturalness" of the relationship with the environment.
This designer installations create, in a free way, a dialogue with the pinewood of Pinarella and Tagliata and, at the same time, the become trigger devices for the natural Rights through the play, involving children in a magic, fantastc, empathetic and innovative way.
DIALOGUE: I speak here --> The sound bounces and we can talk remotely: I can hear you even if you whisper --> You can hear here even if I am far
DIVERSITY: Reflective steel plates + concave and convex surfaces --> Deforming Effect: Both equal and different, that’s always you!
WILDLIFE: It simulates trees' trunks --> Climb to look from up above what surrounds you --> Poles 2 meters high + Fixed stilts + Non-slip foot supports
NATURE: Revealed and invented animals: create and break up imagining new species --> You can create a fantastic species + customized metal rotating cylinders
COLOuRS: Kaleidoscope effect --> Reinvent colours and shapes of nature --> Ttube with mirrored walls + Stainless steel structure
SOUNDS: Like big mobile ears --> Listen to the sounds of the nature captured from up above: The sound goes in --> You can orientate it --> The sound goes out
"We have to start living again. From the beginning. We must rediscover the pleasure of letting others go first, of waiting for the last, of walking."
Gianfranco Zavalloni
The project was made by the architect Aida Morelli, with the contribution od ideas fom Confesercenti, Proloco Riviera dei Pini, Proloco Pinarella Terraeventi and the association La mia Pineta.
Official Tourist Information Site of Cervia