Yalla Nelaab grew out of a simple idea: to reclaim the city through play. In neighborhoods where children often lack safe and welcoming spaces, the initiative worked with local communities to imagine what play could look like in the streets, alleyways, and leftover plots around them, and how it could be integrated into everyday spaces within the city.
From its onset, Yalla Nelaab’s approach is collaborative, and uses different participatory methods. Children, youth, and anyone in the neighbourhood took part in co-creating the spaces. Yella Nelaab focuses on the aspect of play throughout the process of creating spaces; through exploration, drawing, collaging, and different forms of expression, children and neighbours meet, collaborate, discover, and implement their space, which intrinsically creates a deep sense of ownership.
An alleyway in Alashrafiyeh became the first experimental project to be implemented, where children co-designed and painted their own vibrant play space alongside their community. Over time, Yalla Nelaab grew into a broader exploration of play in its many forms. Sometimes, this materialised in reviving an abandoned park; other times it meant building a new one with the community’s involvement. In Irbid, for example, the initiative worked on different parks, testing ideas around play in early childhood development, folk play, and collective care. In all cases, the process of working together is the essence of creating space; children learning responsibility by maintaining the spaces, families coming together to support, and neighbors finding renewed connection to their surroundings.
Today, Yalla Nelaab moves fluidly, and works across neighbourhoods and cities in Jordan. Their work is rooted in the belief that play is not just a pastime, but also a right. They operate with the belief that through play, communities can reclaim their spaces, neighbours can strengthen their connection to one another, and citizens can reimagine the possibilities in their cities.