A school kit for inclusive basketball
Basic information
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Project Description
Baskit is a school kit for inclusive basketball (Baskin), a sport that focus on the abilities of people with all kind of bodies to play together.
Thanks to two nomadic and foldable hoops that can be added to a traditionnal court, a lightweight line that creates the specific zones around the hoops and jerseys with velcro's movable numbers, Baskit aims to give the tools and the equipment to teachers that want to diffuse the ways of building an inclusive society with their student.
Geographical Scope
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Urban or rural issues
Physical or other transformations
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Description of the project
Summary
Baskit is a school kit proposition for inclusive basketball (Baskin, invented in Italy in 2003). It is a sport that has 5 roles according to the abilities of people with all kind of bodies playing together.
This sport makes basket-ball inclusive thanks to two additional hoops protected with their own zones on the sides of a traditionnal court. It presents a 1.10 meters high rim and a 2.20 meters high rim, allowing people with reduced mobility or people with visual impairment to play with people without disabilities to play basketball.
Baskit has been developped with a school animator that drives Baskin session with all kind of schools and educational places in Vendée (France region) thanks to a Pick-up that she bought in order to transport all of her equipment. For example, the buckets that she uses can only split in two. We identify what would be the ideal composition of a school kit such as graphic document helping the teachers to make a baskin session, balls, whistles, etc and then I developped the most strategic objects during a the 4 months that I had for this product design school project.
The equipment is a re-design of existant objets that didn't fit with a nomadic, affordant and attractive use for teachers because they need to deploy their equipment in a the school playground or a gym 15 minutes-walk from the school.
There are three main objects that I designed :
- First, the most complex and the one I develop the most : an easy to transport Baskin Hoop on wheels. Easy to deploy, It is fully foldable thanks to telescopic and rotative mechanisms and it presents a sounding net thanks to small round bells in order to help people with visual impairment to shoot the ball.
- A lightweight zone in non-slip plastic that allows to rapidly create the hoops' zones' pattern.
- Reversible Jerseys with velcro's movable numbers that makes easy the team making after defining the role for each kid.
Key objectives for sustainability
This project is thought to be made with materials with great longevity such as aluminium or galvanised steel tubes and with a conception that is fully removable and repairable. Even if the extraction of materials such as steel and aluminium are very energy demanding, their longevity is the principal factor that makes them sustainable in the life product cycle.
With an object such as a basket-ball hoop, I preferred to use textile bags filled with sand as a movable ballast that can be fixed around the steel structure instead of the traditionnal plastic injected or rotomolding bases.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
Beyond functionality, the goal of the school kit is to promote an inclusive sport that is not very well known today.
It's visually designed to be attractive in order to create visibility and adesire around the sport but it is also the occasion to take create a new identity, a new imaginary around Baskin that actually suffer from the National French Association lack of means.
For now, I worked around the imaginary of the sun and the moon, visually represent by the yellow, the blue, the fade and the "demi-lune" (in English "half-moon") name given to the backboard hoop according to its shape.
This imaginary convoques the round and the semi-round shapes, a language that is everywhere in the visual forms of basketball, and that refers to the Maya narratives around sun and moon that was strongly present in the ancestor of basketball , Pok-taPok.
The use of colors is also helping the objet affordance by guiding the users how to deploy the hoop telescoping elements and is also helping children to identify easily their team thanks to the match between their jersey colora and their backboard hoop color.
Key objectives for inclusion
The main quality of this universal design project is the inclusive values it promotes.
The act of design is here solicited to enhance an existing inclusive practice that allows the maximum kind of bodies to be treated equal at school, a place that it such a key driver for the kids self-development.
Thanks to the game of basket-ball, it is an attractive way to create an inclusive activity that can draw the possibles of an inclusive society by giving the empowering tools to teachers in order to practice baskin.
Baskit takes place with schools because it is the best way to implement this inclusive culture in a sustainable and educational way for society. It allows classes of students mainly composed of non-disabled people to mix with with ULIS (classes mainly composed of people with various kind of bodies and disabilities) for exemple. This Baskin kit also allows to break gender stereotypes in school practice of basket-ball by creating a safe sportive environnement for all the kids.
With an attractive and affordant kit, teachers can easily embrace this new practice at school.
Physical or other transformations
Innovative character
Baskit first combine the inclusive and aesthetics attentions. It combine environnemental sustainability because it promotes a practice that could help human beings to live better together. From a more material approach, environnemental sustainability is transversal to the kit objects because it cannot thinks its own materiality without thinking its sustainability.
These 3 pillars make Baskit a coherent design project but it is true that the main purpose is inclusive and aesthetic. Baskit tries to show that inclusive project must be enhance by a strong and attractive visual imaginary in order to promote practices that uselly suffer from collective representations of social and associative initiatives.
By taking these 3 concepts very seriously, Baskit tries to draw the possibility of a sustainable, inclusive and attractive design in a design world where one of this 3 factors is often put aside.
