Buy One Get One Free is a real project piloting in Custom House, which reflecting the consuming culture in our society.

On average each child bought 39 toys in 2018, which is around 300£ per year. During lockdown the sales of toy increased 22%. Custom House have 2,467 children in 2011, money spend on toys is £740,100 per year and in Newham this number is £21,531,300. The project began with trying to create a service in Custom House to exchange toys.

The piloting started in February 2021 in Unit 3 Freemasons Road with Scarlett. The first intervention was gathering a brunch of toys on Facebook, cleaning the window, and display the toys on the trolley in the unit. The opportunity to test this idea on site help me to understand the ability of object to shift the program of a space - we transferred unit 3 from a space only for adult to a more child friendly place, and the weekly event help children to meet new friend.

My propose is to use play as the bond for community, by using everyday object to create the toy library both for children and adult, shifting the culture of owning things to sharing together.

Student

Zhuo Chen

Year

2020-21