Yalla Nelaab began with a simple idea: to reclaim the city through play. In neighbourhoods where children often lack safe, welcoming spaces, the initiative worked with communities to imagine play in streets, alleyways, and leftover plots, integrating it into everyday city spaces.
From its onset, Yalla Nelaab’s used collaborative, participatory methods. Children, youth, and neighbours co-created spaces through exploration, drawing, collaging, and different forms of expression. Children and neighbours met, collaborated, discovered, and implemented their space, which intrinsically created a deep sense of ownership. An alleyway in Alashrafiyeh became the first experimental project, where children residents co-designed and painted a vibrant play space. In Irbid, the initiative revived abandoned parks through testing ideas around early childhood play, folk traditions, and collective care with the communities.
Today, Yalla Nelaab works across neighbourhoods and cities in Jordan, rooted in the belief that play is a right. Through play, communities reclaim their spaces, neighbours strengthen their connections, and citizens reimagine the possibilities in their cities.
