Throughout 2009 Ilan transformed the ArtPlay courtyard into a permaculture food garden, and developed a program of multimodal creative workshops for children and families inspired by the seasonal changes in the garden. Artplay is the city of Melbourne's Centre for Children's Art. The workshop program continues throughout 2010. Check the Artplay website for details.The garden is on wheels so that it can be rolled in and out of the sun, or to other locations when needed.

We celebrated the launch at the 2009 Sustainable Living Festival with music, physical theatre and planting (click on image to expand).

The workshops (click on image to expand)

The garden (click on image to expand)

• To encourage creative and cultural practices linked to urban food growing with children and their parents.
• To introduce families to ways of engaging creatively in the garden; to show them how the garden is a world of possibility for creative enjoyment.
• To rekindle the ancient link between theatre/ritual/movement and food production in a contemporary urban context. Examples of this link in a contemporary context include songs and dances for doing different gardening activities; The seed song, the harvest dance etc.
• To awaken the senses and develop the creative imagination for sustainable living. The program included many sensory exercises, for example being blindfolded and feeling leaves, the wind, and the sun, and activities which enable creative responses to these sensory experiences. There was also opportunity to design and building small gardens.
• To have a demonstration urban permaculture garden for families to engage with casually through out the year.  The majority of visitors to Artplay are currently from inner city areas, many with small garden spaces, so a demonstration garden of this scale is directly relevant to them.