"The illustration represents our collaboration around design, play, and children - and our shared interest in educating and designing for play for children around the world," Solangy Trejos Sánchez explains. She recently visited Kolding School of Design and painted the mural on one of the school walls.
Playing across continents
At the centre of it is an illustration created by Solangy Trejos Sánchez, designer and lecturer at Universidad de los Andes (Uniandes), symbolising the partnership between the two institutions and their shared passion for play, design, and children. The artwork captures how play can connect people across continents and how design can nurture children’s right to creative expression.
- The illustration represents our collaboration around design, play, and children - and our shared interest in educating and designing for play for children around the world, Solangy Trejos Sánchez explains. She recently visited Kolding School of Design and painted the mural on one of the school walls.
Designing for children’s right to play
The collaboration began when a group of design students from Kolding School of Design traveled to Colombia’s coffee region to work with local students and teachers from Uniandes. Together, they designed for children’s right to play - discovering that play itself could become a universal language when words were not enough.
This experience has grown into a new shared course focusing on playful communication with children. In March 2025, Solangy Trejos Sánchez and a group of Colombian students will therefore be coming to Denmark to join Kolding’s Play Design students from the 1st year Master’s programme and children from the International School of Billund. Together, they will explore how children can teach adults new, creative, and joyful ways to communicate beyond the spoken or written language.
"The artwork beautifully captures what we aim to teach - that play can connect children and adults across borders, inspiring curiosity, creativity," says Karen Feder, Head of the Design for Play MA Programme at Kolding School of Design.
Learning from each other
Reflecting on what has made the biggest impression on her regarding Kolding School of Design and its approach to working with play design, Solangy Trejos Sánchez says:
- The value placed on children's creation and the role of the designer who observes, learns, interprets, and delivers the minimal and profoundly complex elements that trigger the creative agency of children.
She also highlights how the Danish and Colombian approaches to design differ and enrich one another:
- At Uniandes, we encourage students to bring their ideas to life from the beginning of the design process. At Kolding, I have observed so far that the process begins with free play, allowing the children to propose the dynamics and shape the objects; the students' explorations and proposals follow later. I think this is a difference that nourishes the processes of each school.
Creating value across cultures
For Solangy Trejos Sánchez, the collaboration expands horizons for both students and societies:
- I think it's always valuable when we're encouraged to decentralise our perspective and learn from experiences that are distant or different from our own. These collaborations allow us to broaden our perspective on play and childhood, appreciate differences within the design process, and diversify proposals toward inclusion. I think with this collaboration, we're seeing how play doesn't exclude, it includes.
She describes the spirit of the collaboration in one poetic line:
- Playing from north to south and from south to north to spread curious, responsible, and caring play throughout the world.
It took Solangy Trejos Sánchez a full day’s work to paint the artwork on the school’s wall.
A shared vision for playful design
Since the launch of the international Master’s programme Design for Play in 2017, Kolding School of Design has welcomed passionate Colombian students who share the belief that play and design can make the world a better place.
Karen Feder, head of the MA Design for Play programme at Kolding, highlights the importance of international collaboration:
- Collaboration across continents gives our students the chance to see play from new perspectives. Working with peers and children from Colombia shows how playful design can be both culturally specific and universally resonant.
She adds that the illustration by Solangy Trejos Sánchez reinforces the programme’s vision:
- The artwork beautifully captures what we aim to teach - that play can connect children and adults across borders, inspiring curiosity, creativity.
Design for Play was developed in collaboration with the LEGO Foundation and the LEGO Group and is the world’s first two-year Master’s program in design and play.
In March 2025, Solangy Trejos Sánchez and a group of Colombian students will therefore be coming to Denmark to join Kolding’s Play Design students from the 1st year Master’s programme and children from the International School of Billund.
