Can you learn about recycling while riding a merry-go-round?

About the author

Inma Mora Sánchez

Journalist & communicator

Inma Mora Sánchez is a journalist and expert in interdisciplinary gender studies. Her career is connected to the social economy (the ‘third sector’) and socially impactful communications. She has taken part in projects on rural development, gender violence prevention and human rights promotion, and was a spokesperson for HelpAge Spain.

She currently works as a freelance journalist and communications and gender consultant, collaborating with organizations such as EthicLab, Viña del Mar University and APCGénero.

Meet the author

When a company asked Emiliano Matesanz to build five traditional toys with used materials, he had no idea where the project would take him. Born in Argentina and brought up in Majorca, he lived for a while in Asturias, where he had a small workshop. There he used metal and glass to make sculptures and jewelry that he sold in craft markets. The idea of making toys appealed to him and he decided to try it with old bicycles, pans, and screws and nuts, he collected from scrapyards around Avilés. “When I finished them, I displayed them in the eco-market in Gijon and they attracted lots of attention. Families lined up all weekend to play with them and, at that moment, I realized something new was born – there were many ways to experiment while playing, although I still didn’t realize how it would completely change my life,” he remembers.

“I love old things… wood that washes up on the beach, rusty forgotten metal, and everything that happens when we don’t have very much and need to invent”

This was the start of Lîla Juegos Reciclados, an artistic and educational company which, since 2014, has been transforming discarded materials into itinerant attractions and playgrounds. Here, games, toys, art and imagination mix, but also sustainability and circularity. Emiliano finds beauty in the used and imperfect. “I love old things, faded colors, hand-made curves, wood that washes up on the beach, rusty forgotten metal, and everything that happens when we don’t have very much and need to invent what we want,” he explains.

Art has the capacity to touch and inspire us, but also to generate doubt and make us think. For Emiliano, art and sustainability go hand in hand and transforming what’s been thrown away into new possibilities is a way of re-conceiving the world in which we live. “Resources are running out. Any viable future will have to be sustainable.”

                             “Resources are running out. Any viable future will have to be sustainable.”

Lîla has gradually become a living project and also a go-to space in Majorca, where it has its headquarters. At Sa Fàbrica Lîla del Reciclaje, “it’s where it all begins. Our home. From there, we visit schools and organize festivals, birthday parties and workshops. It is a unique place in a state of continuous transformation, where girls and boys can experiment,” explains Emiliano. The company has learned to identify a need to create activities that really motivate the children and, for Emiliano, there is no greater satisfaction than seeing girls and boys happy. “If I’m able to contribute something as an adult, apply some knowledge to create moments where they have a good experience, I feel useful.”

From dreaming up toys and games to social transformation

Now Lîla has taken its recycled toys to other countries, expanding the impact. “The welcome we get is always fantastic. Everywhere is different, but at the same time there are similarities. A child’s reaction is not so different in Majorca as it is in Australia or Africa.” Although toys and games have universal appeal, the conditions in which the girls and boys are growing up does vary enormously. As do their needs.

In Sierra Leone, Lîla quickly understood that it could also become a tool for offering opportunities to vulnerable youngsters. The company was invited by Marcos Portillo, of Escuelas de Wara Wara (Wara Wara Schools), who walked into Sa Fábrica one day and told them what they were doing in Majorca was also needed in Sierra Leone. “We went over there to start up an educational workshop for street kids and were looked after by an extraordinary missionary called Jorge Crisafulli, the brains behind Don Bosco Fambul and its director at the time. Once we had settled there, the project expanded and we took on new challenges. We did everything: swimming, English classes, math, circus, sports… traveling around the country visiting schools and villages with games we were making, until we managed to set up a place for homeless youngsters.”

        “We try to give them the tools so they can have and imagine a better future, so they feel the right to dream”

But the journey has not been all plain sailing and they’ve had to work with children in very complicated situations. In Don Bosco Fambul, for example, 180 youngsters came to live with them, rescued from the streets of Freetown, where they lived in extreme poverty, without access to even the most basic of necessities. “Each boy, each girl, had an astonishing story,” says Emiliano. As such, what began as a recycling project for toys and games became an initiative with a much bigger social impact. To channel this growth and support their actions in a non-profit-making way, Emiliano and his team created LlumArt, an association supporting the social projects of Lîla and facilitating its expansion to vulnerable communities.

The right to believe in a future

Play is a fundamental need for children, but in many parts of the world it continues to be a privilege. For Lîla, playing is not just entertainment, but a tool for change. “We try to give them the tools so they can have and imagine a better future, so they feel the right to dream, so that they feel important, that life is not just about getting up and thinking about how to get a plate a food today,” Emiliano points out.

He recognizes, however, that talking about the right to play is complex when the urgent thing is to survive: “You can’t talk about the right to play when there’s nothing to eat most of the time.” Even so, he maintains that play is a constant in childhood, whatever the circumstances. “It’s always possible. Girls and boys always play, even when they are working.”

                     “The best you can do in this life is to live and work at the service of people most in need”

With this vision, Lîla continues to expand its projects. If everything goes well, this year they will develop a program in Senegal aimed at deaf girls and boys. “It will be something similar to the project in Sierra Leone, a three-year educational workshop that also functions as a cultural center. We’ve just come back from Senegal and we already have a place, a local partner and just about all we need to begin the project,” Emiliano reveals. His commitment to children and education never ceases to grow. “I think the best you can do in this life is to live and work at the service of people most in need,” he summarizes.