A group of kids and their parents sat around Kidung Larasati, voice artist and co-founder of WM community, in the creative hall of MBloc Space, South Jakarta, during the Jatuh Cinta (Lagi) Dengan Bumi (Fall in Love Again With Earth) festival on Apr. 28. With pens, glues and scissors, the children made binoculars, octopuses and puppets from discarded cartons, toilet paper rolls and mineral water bottles. 

After they finished working, Kidung shone a flashlight on some of their creations and the shadows appeared as if they were jumping and dancing. 

The kids laughed and clapped their hands. 

“We’re having fun while learning and upcycling at the same time,” Kidung said. 

STEAM games 

Waktunya Main, which means time to play, is a community established in Jakarta by Alvina “Vina” Mantik, Elisabeth Tita, Kidung and her brother Rikat Parikesit. 

“It all started in 2016 when I noticed that my seven-year-old son was spending a lot of time on his gadgets,” Tita said. “It’s just so dismal. I wanted him to go outside more and play with his friends.” 

Tita’s close friend and fellow alumnus of the architecture faculty of the University of Indonesia, Vina, also noticed a similar behavior in her children. 

“They’re practically glued to their gadgets after school,” Vina said. 

Tita and Vina then began searching the internet to find ways to amuse and connect with their children without any digital devices. 

“There are a lot of interesting science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics (STEAM) experiments on the internet,” Vina said. “So, we started scheduling a couple of hours on weekends with our kids to create some of these experiments together.” 

Some of the early experiments that they did were very simple, such as making colorful water xylophones and creating rocket balloons. 

“Our kids loved it,” Tita said. “And they also learned something new each time.” 

Creativity: Kidung Larasati and her octopus made from plastic bottles. (JP/Sylviana Hamdani) (JP/Sylviana Hamdani)

TIta uploaded these sessions on Instagram and got a lot of direct messages from her followers. 

“Many said that they also wanted their kids to play like ours but didn’t know how to start,” Tita said.

Playdates

Urged by these requests, Tita and Vina started hosting playdates for kids between six and 12 years old. Their first session took place in Tita’s house in Cinere, Depok. Approximately a dozen kids showed up in the first session. 

“We played pretend as if we were penjelajah dimensi [dimensional explorers] that traversed many different planets to achieve a mission,” Tita said. 

Their “mission” involved participating in games that combined singing, dancing and simple science experiments. 

“At the end of the session, these little explorers had so much fun that they didn’t want to come back to earth [and return to their real life],” the mother of two said, with a laugh. 

When Kidung and her brother Rikat, who have a strong background in music and theater, joined the community in 2018, WM re-directed their playdates to fun theatrical workshops. 

“I’ve always loved theater and wanted to join it,” Tita said. “But I never made it as there were a lot more talented kids that beat me during auditions.” 

“I’m pretty sure that there are a lot of kids that experience the same thing out there,” the architect and event organizer [Tita] added. “I wanted them to have the pleasure of playing in a theater without any pressure.” 

During a school holiday in 2018, WM held a five-day theatrical workshop in Sekolah Kembang in Kemang, South Jakarta.  Approximately 30 kids joined this program and learned to sing, dance and act while preparing to perform a play at the end of the program. 

“They chose their own roles and wrote their own scripts too,” Tita said. 

Their first musical Negeri Uranus (Uranus Country) was a success.  Both the audience and the performers enjoyed the play. 

Seeing a whale in the sky

In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic put a halt on all offline community activities. Their playdates and workshops shifted to online platforms, such as Zoom, Instagram and YouTube. 

In the following year, the community participated in Pesta Boneka (Puppet Party), an international biennial puppet festival that was also held online due to the pandemic. In the festival, WM presented a play, titled Aku Melihat Paus di Langit (I See a Whale in the Sky).

For the festival, WM made a three-meter-long whale from bamboo and a 50-centimeter-tall cotton puppet, named Aku.

For the children: Elisabeth Tita showing a makeshift children's tent that they made for the festival in MBloc Space, on Apr 28. (JP/Sylviana Hamdani) (JP/Sylviana Hamdani)

The 20-minute play tells the story of Aku, who often dreams of a singing whale in the sky as a child. With a strong passion in music, the boy grows up to become a successful composer. But then, work pressure stresses him and makes him detest his dream job. The whale, which visits his dreams as a child, returns to haunt him in his sleep. During his nightmares, the whale’s body is covered with sores and blisters. 

“Aku represents each of us who is experiencing a burnout in life,” Tita said. 

WM received a lot of direct messages (DMs) from the audience after the performance, praising their play and its beautiful message.  

“These DMs made us realize that adults need to play too,” Tita said. 

Reawakening the inner child

After the pandemic, WM refocuses their community to include both children and adults with a desire to reawaken their inner child. 

In September 2022, the community presented an installation, which combined gamification and digital art, named Ruang Main (Playroom) during the Bintaro Design District (BDD) festival in Gading Serpong, Tangerang.  During the 11-day festival, visitors were free to touch and play with all the objects in the installation. 

“The children immediately ran around, tossing and turning everything in their way, while the adults were just standing there, careful not to touch or move anything,” Tita said, with a chuckle. 

“[This scene] reminded me of how daring and confident children are,” Tita said. “Children rarely have any fear in facing anything, while we, as adults, tend to overthink about a lot of things and freeze up.”

Reviving our inner child, according to Tita, would help us view the world with a refreshed sense of wonder, become more happy and fulfilled in life, as well as enable us to find creative solutions to life’s problems. 

“[When your inner child is reawakened], there’ll be no more feeling stuck in the rut,” Tita reiterated.

The community wishes to have a permanent Ruang Main for adults and children in Jakarta one day. 

But in the meantime, each of us can learn to reawaken our inner child ourselves. 

“Take time to play with your kids,” Tita said. “And you can also introduce them to fun games that you used to play as a child.”