Conference Program

From early childhood, education for democratic citizenship can be understood not only as a value to be transmitted but as a lived and shared experience. From this perspective, the paper presents the experience of Officina Koinè, a Children and Families Center created as a participatory laboratory of democratic education based on unstructured play. The pedagogical approach adopted by Officina Koinè is grounded in the idea that play - when it is free, non-directive, and intergenerational - constitutes an inclusive language that foster and generate participation, relationship and shared meaning-making, thus becoming a concrete practice of citizenship for both children and adults (Biffi, 2023).

This experience fits within a theoretical framework that considers learning and democratic education as social and cooperative experiences (Dewey, 1916; Elia, 2021). At Officina Koinè, educators, children, parents, and “adulti di casa” share play spaces built through the use of unstructured and open-ended materials, devoid of any specific prescribed function. This methodological choice fosters universal accessibility and the absence of hierarchies and predetermined uses, allowing each participant to contribute to the construction of the experience according to their own possibilities, languages, and cultures (Antonacci, 2023). Play thus becomes a democratic device that enables the renegotiation of roles, knowledge, and positions, opening up more horizontal and inclusive relationships. In addition to outlining the pedagogical approach adopted by the service, the paper aims to present and analyze the evidence emerging from observations conducted during play experiences, from focus groups with parents and educators, and from co-reflection sessions activated within the working group (Dalberg et al., 2024). From these moments of participation, several recurring dimensions emerge: play as a space to fostering relation; open-ended materials as facilitators of cooperation, negotiation, and divergent thinking; adult participation as an opportunity for mutual learning; and the construction of a sense of community belonging even among culturally and socially diverse families (Moss, 2012). The extension of the project into the city’s public spaces- through the experience of Officina Urbana, which brings unstructured play into squares and parks- also shows how play can reconfigure the everyday places of citizens into inclusive and accessible environments (Granata, 2021; Nuti, 2024). This experience engage families distant from formal educational services and foster a sense of participation and belonging. From this perspective, unstructured and open-ended play emerges as a cultural and political practice to counter educational models centered on performance and measurability, opening spaces for imagination and co-learning and foster the possibility for children and adults to recognize themselves as active members of a community, rather than merely as users or consumers of services (Biesta & Montà, 2023). The paper therefore seeks to offer a reflection on the role of open-ended play as a democratic experience in early childhood, proposing Officina Koinè as an example of how education can become a generative practice for new inclusive worlds, in which childhood is not only the recipient of rights but a living space for building new democratic possibilities.