Children’s Meeting Place
Helsingborg Sweden 2022

Beech Riversii – Fagus sylvatica Riversii

Helsingborg’s Children’s Meeting Place – The place for dreams, conversations…
– In 2018, a group of young people who live in one of Africa’s poorest places, a garbage dump outside Nairobi in Kenya, came to Helsingborg and presented a both moving and hopeful performance about children and young people’s thoughts about the future. The enthusiasm and commitment of these young people was the starting point for us in Helsingborg, says Pia Bastholm, one of the city’s children’s rights strategists. Shortly afterwards, we formed a working group with representatives from several administrations. The landscape architect Pamela and I went to Nairobi and took a deeper look at how the places around the Mothertree at the UN headquarters in Nairobi could be created and get inspiration for Helsingborg’s place and what content the place needs to have to become a living place.
Inauguration of the Children’s Meeting Place in Helsingborg (Swedish) – YouTube

When we returned home, we involved children and young people from different parts of the city to explore together how the children in Helsingborg wanted the place to look and what it should be filled with. In one of the pictures you see an idea workshop where the children draw the tree and create the content and meaning of the place. The City Planning Administration had the main responsibility for the site’s physical design and the environmental administration, the cultural administration and the school and leisure administration for the content. During the journey, we have had several test dialogues with children and young people. The opening in June 2022 consisted of three parts. A ceremonial part, musical entertainment and climate dialogues. The ceremonial part was held, the founder of the Globträdet, Kajsa i and children from different parts of the city brought water and stones and important decision makers in the city were guests of honor. Two climate dialogues then took place. One with power holders from Helsingborg and one with international power holders from, among others, the UN and the Sweden Resciliens centre.

To set up the climate dialogues, we involved young people from Fridays for Future Helsingborg. From December to May, we had a weekly meeting with the young people and they had as far as possible control the content, layout, who they want to come and so on. We adults functioned as support and helped with practicalities, communication and getting in touch with those in power and more. We worked for the young people and were their enablers. During both test dialogues and inauguration, we have had different types of cultural elements such as music, poems and dance. And remember – make sure there is something simple with good coffee for everyone who comes – it is so appreciated.
The strength of Helsingborg’s work is precisely the collaboration across administrative boundaries and the fact that we really involve children in both creation, planning and implementation.
Contact person in Helsingborg is primarily pia.bastholm@helsingborg.se