Colour, Community and Co-Creation: Inside the Yinka Ilori Foundation

Colour and play have always been intrinsically intertwined. An act of swinging, a seesaw aloft, a slide glowing in sunlight can remind us of freedom, curiosity, and possibility. For designer‐artist-educator Yinka Ilori, those simple childhood moments became the foundation of a philosophy: that design, joy and community belong together.

That philosophy is now firmly embodied in his new venture: the Yinka Ilori Foundation. Through this initiative, Ilori is moving beyond individual commissions and installations, and into an ambitious territory of place-making, community collaboration, skills sharing and sustainability.

Vision & Mission: The Foundation’s vision

To create playful, inclusive, and sustainable community spaces that foster creativity, opportunity, and self-sufficiency, especially for children and youth, through locally embedded play objects, arts, workshops, and economic strategies.

Its mission echoes this with a compelling catch-phrase:

To challenge the traditional aid model by centering community agency, co-creation, and joy.

In short, this is less about handing down design and more about working side-by-side with communities; less about top-down aid and more about bottom-up empowerment.

As public space becomes increasingly privatised, and as children’s access to imaginative, free spaces is limited, our work becomes not just timely, but essential.

Launching in Nigeria, Ilori’s ancestral home, the Foundation intends to pilot what it describes as “permanent playscapes that spark creativity and economic opportunity through co-creation and long-term engagement.

What They Do: Design, Play & Community

At the heart of the Foundation’s activity sits the idea of play objects. As the website explains:
“At the heart of each site is a set of modular play structures: swings, seesaws, slides, or courts, designed not just for fun, but for imagination, storytelling, and gathering.”

How They Work: What sets the Foundation apart is its commitment to process as well as product. Their guiding principles:

Roots & Inspiration

The personal origin of the Foundation ties directly to Yinka Ilori’s own story. Growing up in North London but visiting his mother’s hometown in Nigeria taught him early lessons about hospitality, community, access and design.

Growing up … I found freedom, joy and hope in a simple act of play. … Much of this spirit comes from my mother, whose simple, generous acts taught me that true community care is about access and dignity for all.

That first-hand experience of community care, paired with Ilori’s vibrant design language and global profile, gives the Foundation a unique vantage point: bridging high-level creativity with grassroots participation.

What’s Next?

The Foundation has launched in Nigeria as its pilot site. Moving forward, its ambition is global: anchored in the idea that every community deserves spaces that spark imagination, and that design can play a critical role in shaping those spaces. “We’re starting in Nigeria. But this is just the beginning.”

For designers, cultural producers, print makers, surface artists and community-builders, that “just the beginning” might mean opportunities for collaboration, innovation and rethinking what design can do when it meets place, people and play.

The Yinka Ilori Foundation is a powerful illustration of how design, play and community agency can meet to do more than decorate. It builds. It empowers. It invites voices to shape their own spaces and futures. For an audience attuned to print, pattern, colour and cultural impact, it’s one of the most exciting culture-meets-community initiatives in recent memory.

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