Part 1: four weeks, five phases

The first part, developed in June and July of 2010 was divided into 5 phases, according to the development of the process in itself and our perception of the context and environment. These five phases are presented with texts, maps and pictures, in a way that we hope is understandable and able to comunicate not only our analisys but the activities and workshops done in situs as well as our reflections.

The Phase1-"people" was done during the first week and consisted in gather information of people from diferent areas in Khlong Toei. The questions approached age, ocupation, family constitution, the reason of their presence on the community, their dreams for the future and some stories about Khlong Toei.
Phase 2 -"Routes" was composed by several workshops in diferent areas in the community. These workshops approached both children and adults and the objective was to understand the daily routines of the residents from diferent ages and living in diferent locks, as well as to gather information about the favourite and worst places in Khlong Toei, where people spend most of their time and to ask for suggestions about public spaces to improve, where and how.
Phase 3 - "Spaces" came with the answers in the previous phase, "routes". Six spaces where mentioned within the workshops and interviews we made and therefore, in this phase we decided to present these spaces and to ask for people to chose three of them to improve, as well as suggestions on what and how to change them.
Phase 4 - "Designing and cleaning", once more, came in sequence with the previous phase. After getting to know the three places most people chose to improve and why, we decided to do something to intervenne with those places. Therefore, it we made some workshops in situs to get to know what people thought about the specific place, what was missing, what was okay, what could be improved. With the drawings from the residents we gather ideas to work on and since most of them mentioned the garbage as one of the main problems, we organised several "cleanning days" with the community, where everybody helped and with what we tried to instill the sense of responsability about the garbage in our living spaces.
Phase 5 - "Building it" was focused only in one of the three places chosen, due to the lack of time we had for this phase. With the ideas from the drawing workshops we collected some of the topics and applied to real, making a small intervention in collaboration with the residents, making things happening, making something real.

In the end, we tried to sum up most of the aspects we think are importante, besides the conclusions we worked on some reflections that can help for the readers to understand better the context and what was done in this first part of the project, as well as for a better intervention later on in Khlong Toei.

An Introduction in Delay

First of all, we have to say sorry for our messy blog!
Our stay in Bangkok was such an everyday rush that we neglected our blog in order to do as much as we could in Khlog Toei. So, the big lack of information that we are missing in the blog, we will try to update as fast as possible.It is important to give an introduction about the goals, how the process is going to develop in Bangkok and how we organized this first part that occurred in June/July 2010.

GOAL

The “We Khlong Toei” project is the result of a collaboration process between the community of Khlong Toei, architects, urban planners and other interested ones.The project aims to build up a long term cooperation channel that can develop into a gradual transformation of public spaces and the revitalization of the area.
Architecture and social activities with small interventions will be used as instruments of communication and interaction between the participants. This work is expected to become a “chain reactor”, inspiring people and leading to further positive changes in other areas. It is vital the project to be run by the people who live in the area, since it is to them it belongs to; we, the outsiders, are only the catalysts.

HOW

This project has been divided into 2 parts. Part 1 completed during June-July, 2010 and Part 2 to be developed in the beginning of 2011.
Right in the first part, it is important to get a group of people who are interested in collaborate with us, making changes to the area. This intervention is suppose to work as a starting point to show possibilities of changes which should lead to other future positive changes that the community can develop on their own.
The Part 1 process aims not only to collect information and knowledge but also learn more about Khlong Toei spaces, how people use them, people’s everyday lives and more importantly, how they understand and feel about their own private and public spaces in the community. From this, it will help us not only to understand the problems that are visible, but also the problems of minds that lay underneath their spaces which cause a chronic habit that has been affecting their own homes and environment so far.
It is very important for us to spend time with the community and use different activities as tools to learn and communicate with the people while at the same time observing what they try to communicate back. The activities will vary from just sitting, asking questions, drawing workshops, eating, drinking, playing sports, having movie nights, to some space transformation activities, etc. In this process is important for us to keep in mind that we are just the temporary outsiders working with the ones who have lived in the community for a long time. So it is very important for us to "not just throw in our ideas ", but rather listen to what the community say and find ways to engage the two sides, making possible to think about changes and to really do something.
The process is focused on public spaces as they are considered ‘not belonging to anybody’ and ‘belonging to everybody’ at the same time. Also, it is easier to start having some changes as the condition of land right is easier to negotiate.
We are hoping that the process of working, learning and exchanging with people in Part 1 will help engage people more to their spaces, making them seeing the possibility of better changes through activities and changes that we work on together. The future intervention that we make will not function only as spaces for the people to do things, but also the starting point to create future better changes to other areas and which will definitely lead to other improvements.

Designing and Cleaning three public spaces

When: 20. 07 - 23.07.10

Where:Rotary football Court, Football Court 2, Boxing Court

Based on the information collected from the previous workshops we were now able to judge from a better position the different meeting points and evaluate their qualities such as potential to gather people and for physical improvement.

All site offered enormous possibilities, but it was time to reduce this number and focus our attention and investigations in 3 of them. After revisiting each site, discussing among ourselves and reading the reviews by the residents we chose The rotary football court, the football court 2 and the boxing as the sites with higher potential for a physical intervention.

We based the decision on the spaces the residents use the most apart from their homes, the spaces they like playing, the spaces they think they don't go because of some reasons, the spaces they think should be improved and why, etc.) the our own studies regarding the potential they have to generate the biggest impact to the community as a whole.

The Rotary football court is the natural meeting point for the community everytime there is a big event. The lack of free open space within the locks has given the site the ´honor´ to become the hosting site for elections and thus known among most residents. It is also a popular meeting area for kids, teenagers and adults who play football daily.

The football 2 court is a forgotten site located at the ¨educational and cultural¨ cluster within locks 1-6. This empty space was once a popular gathering place for teenagers and adults. It has been abandoned and filled with trash. The filed is located in where most people call ' The buddha image side' area, surrounded by the back of the shophouse walls, one of the entrances to the community and right in front of the former library and opposite to a kindergarden and its playground. The site is still used by some children to play football, but it is also the meeting point for children addicted to sniffing glue giving it another character which lots of people complained about.

Lastly the boxing area on the opposite side of the site and under the elevated highways is the main gathering point for small kids of the area around it. This site is privately owned but its owner has opened it for everyone, so that the kids can play and train at a safe location. The site features a boxing ring, some boxing equipment and an open area for the kids to run around. At the same time, the owner opens a food shop and has areas for eating and a TV for adults to sit and watch TV while the kids are playing.

The workshop was mainly aimed to everyone, but most of the participants are kids. However, starting with kids is something easier to approach and fast since they have not many life condiions to think about, compared to the adults. We began by talking to them about the way they experience their site and how we ( the participants and us ) all could transform it so it could be even more attractive. After talking to them, we handed out sheets of paper so they could draw their ideas. This is a funnier and more inspiring way to do things than to just talk. After working on their own we asked them to present their drawing to the rest of us. The drawing varied according to the age, but many of them had really good ideas we would have never thought about.

This task was then reinforced by doing the same but in groups. We let them organize themselves and gave each group an A1 sheet of paper, so they all could try working together and start to hear about what the others in the group thought. This is a very important exercise that we gave them to try to work together, argue and finally come up with common ideas. Most children were under the age of 8, so there were usually fights for the paper, the pencils and the area, but we all managed to participate.

Along the process and many times based on Ploy´s previous experiences with children, we have tried to use different methods to interact with the kids. It is not always easy to work with 15 + children, and it is often necessary to keep most of them busy before they start running around.

After being done with the drawing part, we told them that we were going to collect their ideas and put them together so that we could plan how to start transforming their site. But before this, we gathered all the children and started asking them a question what can they start with before getting a new beautiful playground. Some of the answers are to collect the garbage so it was a good opportunity for us to tell them that we had to get the site ready, in other words, we had to start picking up the garbage ( like what they said!).

To our surprise this became a very popular activity and most children joined it. The first time we did it at the football court 2. Since there were lots of glasses and dangerous materials, we divided the group into 2 according to age. The little ones were in charge of picking up the garbager around the library and outside the court, while the older ones helped us take away a mass of garbage from the side of the court. To minimize the risk of injuries and accidents, everyone was requested to wear shoes (sandals) and we bought 2 different types of gloves. Leather ones for those working with glass, and cotton ones for the other ones.

Some of the little kids, after feeling that the area was clean already, they started to go home and pick up garbage from their homes. It was something that none of us had planned before. The end of the day we had a wrap up conversation with the people. We tried to make them say what they really thought about the activity and if they wanted to continue. The answer is positive.

Friday night is movie night!

On friday 18.06.10 we had our first movie night at the Rotary football court.

In the previous days to the event, we had gone around Klong Toey and talked to the resident letting them now about friday night. We had also hanged up some posters at the busiest gathering places and asked the community leader to announce the event through the speakers.
We have later realized that it is better to hang the posters up the same day of the event because they don’t last longer than one day!

Carla is spreading the word

For the event we had a computer and a projector, but were missing both a sound system, a movie and the availability of the place. For the sound system, we spoke with some of the people we know, but it wasn’t easy to find someone who could borrow us speakers with enough sound power for an open space. After walking back and forth we found someone who had an available stereo system but who was charging us for renting it. As we wanted to find other solutions, we didnt agree in a price or renting it at all, but when we came back from renting the movie, the sound system had already been set up at the court. We thought they wanted to help us by borrowing us the sound system, but by the end of the movie we were asked to pay for it 500Bth! After an hour of conversations and the involvement of many people, we ended up paying 300Bth. Regarding the space, we talked to the people who use the court to play football in the evenings and agreed with them to have the field free at 8pm, one hour before they normally finish.


Ploy introducing Min Buri project

We started the event by presenting ourselves an talking about what we are doing. we then move on to show some pictures of the Min Buri Library project by TYIN tegnstue, as an inspiring start to captivate people´s attention. Adults and children got very interested by the project and how TYIN had cooperated with the community to built something that worked and looked so well. We ended the presentation with two pictures from the area of Rotary court. One showing today's situation, while the other one, a rendering, showing how it could be by implementing some small changes.

Today

Tomorrow?


The presentation went very well and it was positively taken by the residents who could saw that is possible to make things happen if we all work together.
Some members of the community committee joined the session and showed interest int the project, but at the same time some apprehension because of previous experiences. The activity was in many ways successful. People had begun to recognize us and children keep asking about the next activities.

Designing and Cleaning football court2.Day 1-2

Day 1 : Cleaning the playground

Day 2 : Dreaming and Cleaning the playground

On day 1 we continued cleaning up the playground. It was an attempt to get more attention from people in the area and show them that it is possible to transform places if we all work together. Luckily that day some teenagers we had met before passed by the site and wanted to join us cleaning the area. We became a big group of all ages: little kids, older kids, teenagers and 3 adults.

Other members of the community also contributed to the work by providing us with neccessary tools such as spades, brums, water, garbage collectors and carts to carry out the garbage. We on the other hand took with us working gloves and plastic bags for the garbage. It was a messy day but we all ended up doing a lot of work and could start noticing some small but meaningful changes in the site.

Before going home we had a group discussion where we all talked about our impressions and thoughts for the day, as well as planning for the next day. As we wanted the adults and the teenagers to take more responsibility for the work and the kids, we agreed with P Kao to meet ealier next morning so we could plan together the workshop and afterwards meet up with the kids to design the playground and afterwards continue with the cleaning.

We started the day with meeting up P Kao and told her about the plan and tried to get her involved with the planning. We asked if she could be the person who explained what we were going to do to the others as we thought we were too new to the place and there should be someone from there to start making something. She seemed to understand and agreed to join us.

We started the first workshop at the school at the corner near the playground as it was too hot outside.

We got a room for about 2 hours from the cleaning lady in the school.

The first workshop was to ask the kids to draw the their own 'Dream Playground' and present it to everyone. There were only 3 teenagers involved this time, the rest were little kids.

It was again a mess, but better than the day before. The kids were talking and talking and never stopped. We tried to make them calm down a bit by making them clap their hands and sing the A-Z song.

At 12:00 and after everyone had presented their drawings, we ended the workshop. Most kids were aready hungry and some of them started to run around and wanted to go home. Some had actually runned home to pick up their lunch and bring it to the workshop.

At 14:00 we started with the second workshop. We divided the group into 5 smaller entities and asked them to draw their 'Dream playground together'. At this time we had no available space, since the school was already closed, but we managed to do it in front of the old library under the only shaded space we found!

Some kids presented their ideas, while others were to shy to do in front of the others. We got some really interesting proposal for the transformation of the area, among the most creative there was one to bring professional football players from England and France. We are working on that one!

The idea of the workshop this time is not just a workshop to gather ideas from them about how they wanted it to be, but to try to make them to come and try to work together, so that they know who would be involved in using the space - not just the big boys but the little kids too.

At around 4 pm we started the cleaning, after the group presentation and some discussion about how we were going to make it into something they already dreamed. We divided ourselves into 2 zones - inside and outside. The big boys took care of the inside garbage dump while the little ones took care of the area around the playground.

We created a Garbage Collecting competition to inspire them to compete each other. We put up a score board on the wall and counted the number of the bags they could make.

The really cool thing is that the little kids they went back to their houses and collected the garbage from their houses, which means the garbage was not only taken from the playground but from their houses!

We did quite a lot today altogether. Ended it with having a discussion of how they thought about it again. We think some of them started to get a bit connected to the area. Some of them asked when we would do it again.

And Carla and Mario were in invited to have dinner at P Kao's house.....

In Times of World Cup

This years Football World Cup is also taking place at Klong Toey.





Due to heavy rain the football field became a swimming pool...

... but some hours later it was ready for the match!

Empire state of Klong Toey

1.The pond next to the rotary field


After many technical difficulties, and long hours of research, we managed to start blogging. We hope to keep you all updated on our Klong Toey mission.





2. Klong Toey Satellite Location


About Klong Toey

Klong Toey Neighborhood is located next to the Klong Toey Port in the city of Bangkok, Thailand and compromises an area of 44 hectares. It is home to about 130.000 people, the majority of who are rural migrants who came to Bangkok from the Northeast of Thailand in search for jobs during summer time but who ended up settling.
Klong Toey is centrally located close to hospitals, markets, parks, business and institutional areas. It is also well connected to the rest of the city through highways and public transport. These conditions have made the neighborhood a desirable and popular place for low income families living wanting to live within the city boundaries.