Tucson Village Farm is turning to the community to help build a "Clayground," a large-scale, hands-on playground made of adobe, cob and straw, aiming to make it free and open to everyone once complete.

The farm is a project of the Pima County Cooperative Extension and the University of Arizona. Founded in 2010, it's a seed-to-table program that reconnects young people with healthy food systems while teaching them how to grow and prepare fresh food and make healthy life choices.

The Clayground, announced on the project's official Instagram page last month, will blend art, nature and education into a space where children can climb, explore and learn about sustainable building practices. It will include eight structures, ranging in size from small to large scale, similar in style to a 9-foot birdhouse sculpture the group built as a pilot project earlier this year.

Organizers describe it as more than a playground, envisioning a "living classroom" where children and families can learn sustainable building practices firsthand while strengthening their connection to the natural world, all in a permanent, free space built to serve the more than 20,000 people who visit Tucson Village Farm each year.

"This idea bloomed half a year ago when local artists Lindee Zimmer and Lisa Rooney organized a bunch of workshops to build a birdhouse that started with just a small piece of clay," said TVF Community Engagement and Development Coordinator Jessica Bell.

The initial round of eight workshops filled to capacity within 24 hours, reflecting strong early demand for the project.

"It feels special that the community will join us to build this," Bell said.

Zimmer and Rooney received support from the Arts Foundation of Tucson and Southern Arizona's StArt Grant to host eight workshops that included more than 70 community members who helped build a 9-foot birdhouse that will become a native bird habitat at the farm.

The grant funding will allow the Clayground to be free and accessible to the community, but the artists still need funds to support its creation.

The fundraiser's immediate goal is $11,000, though organizers say that figure is just the first phase of a much larger $92,000 vision to complete all eight sculptural works that will make up the full Clayground.

Donation tiers range from $25 to sponsor materials for a single workshop participant up to $16,000 to fully fund a large-scale sculpture.

"We have raised about $9,000 so far, but we have many, many more dollars before we can complete the project," Zimmer said. "It's a sliding scale depending on how many we can get with regards to funding."

This isn't Zimmer and Rooney's first time building a playground. They created something similar at an elementary school in Marrakesh, Morocco.

"After the work we did in Morocco, we were very excited and were like, 'What is the combination of all our interests? Being outside, working with the earth, working with the community and also creating things that people could interact with that are sculptural and clay-based,'" Rooney said. "We've always had this idea at the back of our heads and it now feels like a dream coming from the subconscious to the conscious."

Kamsiyochukwu Kanma-Okafor is a University of Arizona journalism student and Tucson Spotlight intern.

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