Design The Good Life presents: Park(ing) Day 2025 & POP! Into the Good Life

This September, Design The Good Life turns Singapore into a playground of pop-ups and parklets, starting with Park(ing) Day 2025 (13 Sep, Jurong East) where over 30 creators transform carparks into free mini-festivals – think pedal-powered smoothie bikes, mystery herbal foot soaks, and weighted blanket nap corners, alongside playful stress-busters like Nya’s Shark Café, where you get “purr-scriptions” from a wellness shark, and ping-pong with frying pans at KamPong Spirit. Don’t miss quirky craft-your-own trophies, aura readings, kopi nostalgia games, and TikTok-ready family challenges with prizes and keepsakes to take home.

Parking Day Singapore 2025

The fun continues with POP! Into the Good Life (19-21 & 26-28 Sep) – where you can earn free laundry tokens by pinning your thoughts on a giant clothesline, chill under a Bedok tree with board games and books, try a free mindfulness workshop complete with nonya kueh, or hop between activations like an AI photo booth in Tiong Bahru, memory nooks to better understand dementia at the National Gallery, and gold-mending pottery workshops. The best part? Most of it is free – just bring your curiosity and sign up here.

Parking Day SG Image credit: Design The Good Life

This month-long movement of free community experiences blends lifestyle activation with social design – turning everyday neighbourhood spaces such as parking lots, laundromats and cafes into playful popups for movement, mindfulness, and community connection. Curated by community development studio Bold at Work, the Design The Good Life initiative comes under the nationwide Movements For Health programme, a social movement led by the Ministry of Health’s Office for Healthcare Transformation.

Here’s the full list of activities to look forward to:

1. Park(ing) Day 2025 – 13th September 2025

📍 322A Jurong East Street 31 Singapore 601322 (Carpark)
📅 Saturday, 13 Sep 2025
🕙 4pm – 8pm (This is an outdoor, rain-or-shine event.)
🏷 Free (RSVPs encouraged here)
Guest of Honour: MP Xie Yao Quan (Jurong Central SMC)

Parking Day Singapore Image credit: Design The Good Life

Highlights

Established in Singapore since 2013 as part of the international Park(ing) Day activation where people across the world repurpose parking spaces into different public engagements, this homecoming edition of Park(ing) Day highlights 30 over community creators or “parklets”, each chosen to embody intentionality, growth, and holistic wellness. Some of the parklets include:

• Smoothies for Life: Pedal bikes to blend smoothies, earning rewards through effort – turning exercise into a joyful habit-builder that empowers daily redesigns for active, balanced living.

• Screw it! Just Leaf…: Smash, tear and reshape natural materials like dried leaves in a raw sensory space with cathartic sessions on processing burnout and releasing stress – embracing challenges as growth opportunities, fostering resilience and mental wellness.

• Nya’s Shark Café: Get absurd “stress diagnoses” with purr-scriptions and wiggles from Dr. Fin-tastic the shark in a playful stress-reset lounge where absurdity meets calm – using humour to advocate self-care, sparking connectedness and bold emotional steps in everyday routines.

• KamPong Spirit: Play ping-pong with frying pans and slippers for intergenerational laughs – promoting meaningful bonds and growth mindsets, reimagining “kampung” spirit as a tool for joyful, community-designed lives.

• Sole-cially (TimeOff Field Trip): Choose a mystery herbal soak, dip your feet and skip the small talk – rest recast as a communal, city-street ritual.

• Move It! – Squat, walk or stretch to earn points to raise and care for a virtual pet that grows with you. Move It! is a gamified fitness app that makes staying active exciting and rewarding – because getting healthier should be as playful as raising a pet!

• Counting Sheep – Play games like Sleep Tarot and design-your-room challenges to explore better sleep hygiene, patterns and preferences, or try out wind down planners and weighted blankets for a better snooze.

• Come Drink Teh! – Join Singapore Tea Friends for stories of tea culture and community conversations over freshly brewed Nanyang Teh served at camping tables. Learn more about the origin of teh and how it arrived in Singapore, and other fun facts like how trade routes influenced the names of tea.

• From Me to Me – Craft your own trophy or badge with everyday craft materials like clay, pipe cleaners, and ice cream sticks to celebrate your personal wins and reclaim self-recognition amidst hustle culture.

• Calibrated Cup, Calibrated Life – Join in the brewing process of filtered coffee with a sidecar café and reflect on balance, mindfulness, and pen down what a “calibrated life” means to you on a paper cup.

• PLAY! by GROUNDBREAKERS Collective – Explore your inner strengths through playful DAISUGI games, inspired by a 14th-century Japanese forestry technique where trees are pruned to grow stronger, such as values-finding and self-discovery games like KOMPES and BREAKTHROUGH! to explore inner strengths.

• Aura Farm – Discover the colors of your aura and receive a divine message meant for this season of your life. Step into our cozy corner, sink into a beanbag, and let the city fade away as you reconnect with yourself.

• KopiConnect – Play nostalgic games like Five Stones and Goli, take memory quizzes, and spark cross-generation conversations over kopi-themed treats.

• Bond&BEYOND – Take part in “Family Olympics”, guide each other through the blindfold maze with trust and teamwork, then wrap it up at our TikTok photo station with silly poses and sweet memories that bring laughter, trust, and bonding for all ages.

• ZenZone – Bask in a digital sanctuary with breathing exercises, contribute to our reflection tree with advice or affirmations for others, and pick up a “happy jar” to take home for mindful resets.

• The Cal-Q-Lator – Start with our Commitment Wall where you’ll write and photograph your personal nutrition goals, build your own balanced meal using colour-coded food models and test your knowledge in our fast-paced “Fuel Up Facts” game.

2. POP! Into the Good Life – Weekend Highlights (19-21 & 26-28 Sep)

POP! Into the Good Life Image credit: Design The Good Life

a. Laundry & Let Go @ Hangout Laundry Bedok

📍 531 Bedok North Street 3, #01-706, Singapore 460531

Part One: Hang Your Thoughts Out To Dry

📅 19 to 28 Sep 2025
🕙 All day
🏷 Free

As you wash away the week’s loads, take a moment to reflect and refresh your mind. Write down your thoughts based on mindful prompts and pin it up on our “laundry line” wall for everyone to see to earn two free tokens for your next laundry cycle.

Part Two: Under the Shade

📅 19 to 21 and 26 to 28 Sep 2025
🕙 10am to 7pm
🏷 Free

We’re transforming the space under the giant tree next to Hangout Laundry into a pop-up social corner. Grab a book, start a fun conversation with our prompt cards, or challenge a new friend to a board game. It’s the perfect spot to slow down, connect with your neighbours, and turn laundry day into a social escape.

Part 3: Mindfulness Made Simple

📅 21 Sep 2025, Sunday
🕙 11am – 12pm
🏷 Free | Registration required here

Based on the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programme, this session includes:

Gentle mindful movement to release tension
A mindful drinking practice to awaken your senses (includes a hot drink and complimentary nonya kueh)
A guided awareness of breath meditation
Insights into how stress affects your body and mind
Practical sleep tips for deeper, more restful nights

b. Lenscape by Goodlife Studio × Kampungmakers @ Goodlife Studio (Tiong Bahru)

📍 Montfort Care Goodlife Studio – 10B Boon Tiong Road #01-539, Singapore 164010
📅 20 Sep 2025, Saturday
🕙 9.30am – 12.30pm

A collaboration between Goodlife Studio, Bold At Work and Kampungmakers, Lenscape is a lab for explorers across generations to play and co-imagine what it means to live a good life.

Participants can move through interactive stations themed around 3 categories – Past, Future, and Present, that allow for playful engagement and deep reflection about ageing well. Think Anonymous Confessional Booth, A.I Photo Booth, Live Auction of Good Life Items, Photo Gallery, and an alternative cafe. Come curious, and walk away feeling connected to self and others.

c. Memory, In Shapes by Dementia Singapore’s Youth Advocates @ National Gallery Singapore

📍 Ngee Ann Kongsi Auditorium & Foyer, National Gallery Singapore (Levels B1 and BM, City Hall Wing) 1 St. Andrew’s Road, Singapore 178957
📅 27 Sep 2025, Saturday
🕙 12pm – 4pm

Step into an exclusive, one-day showcase created by Dementia Singapore’s Youth Advocates. You’ll find yourself within a series of Memory Nooks – immersive installations designed to help you see, feel, and understand. This is a space to reflect on how dementia changes lives, to connect with the human stories behind the condition, and to celebrate the strength, love, and memories that always find a way to shine through.

d. Rebuild & Restore – Modern Kintsugi & Pottery Handbuilding Workshops @ Stay Gold Studio Hillview

📍 Stay Gold Studio by Gold & Behold – Hillview Building, 48 Hillview Terrace #05-02A Singapore 669269
📅 20 or 27 Sep 2025, Saturday [Kintsugi]
📅 21 or 28 Sep 2025, Sunday [Pottery]
🕙 3pm – 5.30pm

Choose between 2 workshops:

i) Restore with Modern Kintsugi

Restore through Kintsugi. This reflective, hands-on workshop introduces you to the meditative art of Modern Kintsugi – a contemporary take on the Japanese philosophy of repairing broken pottery with gold. But here, you’re not just mending objects, you’re gently tending to the fractures in your own story.

Using defective wares, you’ll learn to break and reassemble the pieces with care, gold dust, and intention, exploring what repair means to you emotionally, creatively, and personally.

In designing the good life, we often chase the unbroken, the perfect, the polished. But Kintsugi offers a quieter kind of wisdom: that beauty lives in the brokenness made golden. That you can always restart and rebuild, and emerge more complete, more resilient, because of what you’ve survived.

ii) Rebuild with Pottery Handbuilding

Rebuild through clay. This lighthearted yet liberating workshop invites you to reconnect with your hands, your senses, and your creative spark – one pinch, coil, and squish at a time. No wheels, no pressure – just presence, play, and the freedom to make without needing to be perfect.

Whether you’re shaping a cup, a bowl, or something delightfully abstract, you’ll discover the joy of letting the clay guide you. You can collapse it, reshape it and start over. Because you can always restart and rebuild.

In designing the good life, play and liberation go hand in hand. This is your space to experiment, to laugh, to let go of expectations – and to remember that a beautiful life isn’t just built – it’s playfully, imperfectly, and courageously handbuilt. By you.

Prices:

Restore with Modern Kintsugi: $138.88 (U.P. $168.88)

*Includes 1x Kintsugi masterpiece

Rebuild with Pottery Handbuilding: $138.88 (U.P. $168.88)

*Includes 1x fired and glazed pottery piece (single colour only)

**Additional cost for firing and glazing of additional pottery pieces

Restore and Rebuild (Kintsugi + Pottery): $258.88 (U.P. $337.76)

*Participants to select 1 Kintsugi + 1 Pottery workshop

Purchase workshops here

September School Holiday

It is the one-week September school break. Do check out our compilation of things to do this September School Holidays 2025.