Pame Kaimakli Festival is an annual community event that aims to explore ideas of publicness, co-creation and community engagement through creative interventions with the collaboration of residents and artists. In 2022 the festival took place in Kaimakli, Nicosia between the 4th and the 13th of July 2022 and preparatory workshops throughout the month of June 2022.
This year’s thematic ‘Urban Playground’ was a celebration of play, discovery and human interactions in public spaces. Urban Playground explores the idea of play in public spaces as a tool for social and spatial interactions, sociability, co-creation and coexistence with the natural environment. As the current global pandemic persists to transform the way we live, this years’ event highlighted the importance of play in public spaces, not only as a tool to enable human connections but also to create correlations between humans, city and nature. The event aimed to design playful explorations of the neighborhood while stressing values of empathy, camaraderie and connection with the local community. It invited residents and visitors to explore their urban environment through playful tools and interventions and to embrace a new reading of their urban open spaces as our common meeting ground. The festival entailed 33 activities where community collaboration was essential for their realisation. 2 artistic residencies focused on projects with communities (of both sides of the divided capital). Additionally 2 theatre plays and a kite exhibition-flying event were realised through community workshops. The festival also welcomed the results and exhibitions of two Creative Europe projects, ECRN and A-place.
