Many children and young people are unhappy and feel pressurised, stressed and involuntarily isolated. This is a complex challenge that requires us to rethink, co-think and co-create.

Rødovre Municipality has hired us, Kenneth Balfelt // Johan August, to break new ground by linking efforts to improve the well-being of the city's youngest citizens with current urban development - in continuation of our multi-year artistic development work to prevent stress and unhappiness.

Elsine's growth space is a method development project to increase well-being and strengthen children and young people's active participation in analogue communities via a new urban space with restorative grips, games, games and forms of interaction organised to create a new way into informal or existing communities. This is both for children and young people in socially vulnerable positions and as a preventive well-being initiative for children and young people in general.

Five defined focus areas based on three method platforms - deceleration, cohesion and relationship to the body:

• Courage for a new analogue reality (structural/cultural)
• Safe space to talk about what is difficult (relationships)
• Presence in relationships (relationships)
• Time and ability to contemplate (individual)
• Feel yourself (individual)


will be tested in three intertwined methodological tracks, which will ensure anchoring, content and framework via an organisational ecosystem, with a newly developed toolbox and a rethought urban space with a focus on recovery. 

Among other things, we will develop a new urban space in Gartnerbyen in the centre of Rødovre to better support the mental health of children and young people. Our vision is to give children and young people an arena to develop their lives at nature's pace.

Through innovative green urban space elements, an organisational ecosystem and creative and restorative activities that can be incorporated into daily life, we will develop new ways of using urban spaces with a well-being perspective. The urban spaces will be both a learning arena for restorative activities that can be taken back to school, club, association, workplace or home, as well as an active living space with restorative content.

The project seeks everyday and co-created solutions that give children and young people greater presence, more breaks and more recovery integrated into their everyday lives and better opportunities to be part of positive communities.

The AIR method

The project will utilise our AIR method, the Activity Integrated Recovery method: To counteract activities that lead to stress, we normally compensate with recovery such as mindfulness, breaks, meditation, nature or yoga. But often we don't have the time or space to do this when we're under pressure. The AIR method is therefore about integrating recovery into our activities so that we can do both at the same time.

The three components of the project

The project aims to build three intertwined components:

1. Behaviour: Grips, methods and instructions for recovery (following the AIR method) as well as training and dissemination of these.

2. Organisation: Sustainable organisational ecosystem that ensures local anchoring after project completion.

3. Spacious: Urban space with urban space elements for mental and relational development.

Re 1) Approaches

We want to develop new methods and tools for mental recovery at an individual and community level. Approaches that will create new behaviours that incorporate recovery into several aspects of our everyday lives. How can we use urban spaces to recover while carrying out everyday activities such as school, club activities, family and leisure life?

The approaches will be based on evidence-based stress prevention, recovery methods, mindfulness, meditation, nature therapy and relationship work, translated with the AIR method. For example, it could be a class taking a task with their teacher into the restorative environment of the growth room and using the tools integrated into the academic task. It could be a group standing in a circle with their backs to each other and providing input to the task one at a time. Here, hierarchies are minimised as we can't see the others' reactions and at the same time everyone participates and has something to say.

The grips can also be taken back to the rest of your daily life at school, at home, in your organisation or club. In other words, the grips can eventually be used and integrated into our entire way of life. This creates the potential for a new mentally sustainable behavioural culture, which is the long-term vision of the project.

Re 2) Organisation

To mobilise children and young people and other citizens to recover, together and separately, in informal and formal communities, we develop an organisational ecosystem. The strategy here is to engage schools, housing associations, institutions and associations in the development of the project and offer them tools, methods and urban spaces so that they can organise some of their activities to include recovery via the AIR method.

In our pre-analysis, we saw that all the organisations we talked to consider unhappiness as a condition that stands in the way of communities, relationships, learning and presence. The motivation for the organisations to participate is therefore that through the project they can create greater well-being, better cohesion, greater psychological safety and focus and presence for their core activities. These collaborations are ‘sown’ in the pre-project and must mature in this project.

Re 3) Urban space elements

We are developing specific urban space elements for the new urban space on Aage Knudsens Strøg in Gartnerbyen. Here we will make room for our soft inner life and the need for the slow sensing of the self, each other, city life and nature in the city. Here you can immerse yourself, calm down, practise mindfulness, socialise and play with others and solve tasks. Innovative teaching, activities, events and meetings can be organised that integrate rest and recovery. For example, we have spoken to Islev Taekwondo, which can organise open Qigong (physical/mental health exercises) events in the programmed green urban space and thereby introduce both new and existing users to it. The growth spaces will offer safety for those who are alone, small spaces for intimate conversations and larger circles for formal and informal communities.

Rødovre's background for the project

The project is an extension of the Wellbeing Summit 2023 in Rødovre, where more than 100 professionals participated in ‘Courage to thrive’. The conclusion of the summit was that they need to think across disciplines and take new paths to turn the curve. The well-being of children and young people is a top priority and the year 2024 has been designated as a special ‘year of well-being’.

At the same time, Rødovre is a rapidly developing city with a large influx of families with children. There is therefore currently a need and a unique opportunity in the suburb to include urban development in a long-term effort for the well-being of children and young people.

The artists' background for the project

Since 2017, Kenneth Balfelt // Johan August have been working on the prevention of stress in society. In 2021, they contributed to the exhibition ‘Work it out’ at Kunsten in Aalborg about the future of working life. With our work, a reimagined meeting room and a meeting guide, we explored the possibilities of creating a meeting culture that reduces stress while creating more meaning and creativity. In 2022, we created the art development project ‘Sowing the Seeds of Love’ at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, which reimagined interventions to address performance pressure and stress among young students. Since then, they have developed how interventions for children and young people and urban spaces can help increase well-being.

The project will utilise our AIR method, the Activity Integrated Recovery method: To counteract activities that lead to stress, we normally compensate with recovery such as mindfulness, breaks, meditation, nature or yoga. But often we don't have the time or space to do this when we're under pressure. The AIR method is therefore about integrating recovery into our activities so that we can do both at the same time.

The three components of the project

The project aims to build three intertwined components:

Behaviour: Grips, methods and instructions for recovery (following the AIR method) as well as training and dissemination of these.

Organisation: Sustainable organisational ecosystem that ensures local anchoring after project completion.

Spacious: Urban space with urban space elements for mental and relational development.

Re 1) Approaches

We want to develop new methods and tools for mental recovery at an individual and community level. Approaches that will create new behaviours that incorporate recovery into several aspects of our everyday lives. How can we use urban spaces to recover while carrying out everyday activities such as school, club activities, family and leisure life?

The approaches will be based on evidence-based stress prevention, recovery methods, mindfulness, meditation, nature therapy and relationship work, translated with the AIR method. For example, it could be a class taking a task with their teacher into the restorative environment of the growth room and using the tools integrated into the academic task. It could be a group standing in a circle with their backs to each other and providing input to the task one at a time. Here, hierarchies are minimised as we can't see the others' reactions and at the same time everyone participates and has something to say.

The grips can also be taken back to the rest of your daily life at school, at home, in your organisation or club. In other words, the grips can eventually be used and integrated into our entire way of life. This creates the potential for a new mentally sustainable behavioural culture, which is the long-term vision of the project.

Re 2) Organisation

To mobilise children and young people and other citizens to recover, together and separately, in informal and formal communities, we develop an organisational ecosystem. The strategy here is to engage schools, housing associations, institutions and associations in the development of the project and offer them tools, methods and urban spaces so that they can organise some of their activities to include recovery via the AIR method.

In our pre-analysis, we saw that all the organisations we talked to consider unhappiness as a condition that stands in the way of communities, relationships, learning and presence. The motivation for the organisations to participate is therefore that through the project they can create greater well-being, better cohesion, greater psychological safety and focus and presence for their core activities. These collaborations are ‘sown’ in the pre-project and must mature in this project.

Re 3) Urban space elements

We are developing specific urban space elements for the new urban space on Aage Knudsens Strøg in Gartnerbyen. Here we will make room for our soft inner life and the need for the slow sensing of the self, each other, city life and nature in the city. Here you can immerse yourself, calm down, practise mindfulness, socialise and play with others and solve tasks. Innovative teaching, activities, events and meetings can be organised that integrate rest and recovery. For example, we have spoken to Islev Taekwondo, which can organise open Qigong (physical/mental health exercises) events in the programmed green urban space and thereby introduce both new and existing users to it. The growth spaces will offer safety for those who are alone, small spaces for intimate conversations and larger circles for formal and informal communities.

Rødovre's background for the project

The project is an extension of the Wellbeing Summit 2023 in Rødovre, where more than 100 professionals participated in ‘Courage to thrive’. The conclusion of the summit was that they need to think across disciplines and take new paths to turn the curve. The well-being of children and young people is a top priority and the year 2024 has been designated as a special ‘year of well-being’.

At the same time, Rødovre is a rapidly developing city with a large influx of families with children. There is therefore currently a need and a unique opportunity in the suburb to include urban development in a long-term effort for the well-being of children and young people.

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