Exploring Informal Children‘s Play Space through Phenomenography Study

— Research on children play space commonly took place in a formal environment. However, play is an innate activity to children and they can construct play space anywhere with any means. This paper tests the phenomenography approach and memory sketch method on a different context to see the way children from informal environment (indigenous settlement/kampung) construct their play space. Memory sketch is a tool adopted from Sun Young Rieh's research of children and adult's lived memory. This method is particularly convenient to gain participating children's personal memory of place to play in a short time span and movement restrictions during the global pandemic. A rail-side settlement in Surabaya is selected as the study case area of informal environment for its thriving neighborhood despite the observable multilayered problem. The result from 2 cases of selected participant aged 12 and 13, shows that memory sketch method can draws diverse, personal comprehension to the same given prompt. However, it signifies a subjectivity that has to be complemented with other methods to enrich children's narration of their play. Therefore, memory sketch needs supplementary methods such as in-depth interview or qualitative conversation and site visit in order to gain a comprehensive result