Lekkontoret

Lekkontoret, Swedish for Play Office, is a children’s design ‘office’ that aims to increase child influence in the city through participatory and inclusive design projects. The Lekkontoret team work on design briefs in public places and cultural institutions, hoping to give children sustained opportunities to participate in ways that makes them understood and acknowledged as competent and engaged citizens. 

Children should not only exist as test pilots and users but should instead be seen as valuable and capable researchers and designers. 

During the residency, Lekkontoret set up an office in the Rian Design Museum’s project space where they created an installation together with a group of children. The adult team consists of Catherine Paterson (b. 1993) and Luke de Jager (b. 1990). Catherine Paterson is an artist with a particular interest in design as a collective practice. She founded Lekkontoret as part of her degree project on the master’s program Child Culture Design at HDK-Valand. Luke de Jager works with spatial design, co-design and graphic design. In recent years, the play office has had assignments from, among others, Gothenburg Municipality and Halmstad Municipality.