There are some pop-up adventure play sessions planned too. The event looks like a perfect example of the kind of playful tactical urbanism that is needed if we are to persuade people of all ages out of their cars and back into the streets.

I am sure you will join me in wishing the good folk of Seattle all the best for their 1 June hopscotchathon. They stole the idea from Detroit, it seems. Why don’t you do the same? And if there are any hop-scotchers planning to get along to the Pacific Northwest next month, please drop by here and tell us how it went!

Here is one fact that should not go uncelebrated: the story is hard evidence that children do still play hopscotch – a truly global game whose history goes back at least 300 years and was possibly played by Roman soldiers. What is more, they sometimes still play it in the street. One recent market research survey [pdf link] found that at least a third of children had played the game. As I have noted, this proves that statements about the imminent death of traditional outdoor games like hopscotch are somewhat premature.

The extent of the media outcry was surely good news too. It shows that we still have some appreciation of simple childhood pastimes, and some shared sense of children’s claim on the streets where they live and play.

Perhaps the most revealing aspect of the episode was the stance of the Kent Police. Even in the initial news report (at least the first one I read, in the Telegraph), the force was sounding somewhat defensive, implicitly questioning the truth of the story. By the next day, according to the BBC website, it was in full apology mode, stating that it was going to say sorry to the girl and her family. Kent’s Assistant Chief Constable Paul Brandon stated that the officer’s response had been wrong, over-zealous and disappointing.

Welsh Children’s Commissioner Keith Towler spoke about the case at this week’s Spirit of Adventure Play conference in Cardiff. He pointed out that while the police admitted that talk of ‘criminal damage’ was wrong, they still claimed that drawing hopscotch games was a legitimate police matter, and that the officer was right to ‘have a word.’ Towler begged to differ, and I agree with him.

Nonetheless, there is a telling contrast between this case and some previous occasions (discussed in my book No Fear) when chalk-wielding children have found themselves up before the law. In an incident from 2006, West Midlands police asked parents to remove chalk markings, and defended its actions by emphasising the need to tackle what it called “low-level crime”, on the grounds that it could prevent more serious problems developing. Likewise in 2007 North Wales police went so far as to issue £80 fines to two girls who were caught drawing flowers and rainbows on the pavement. A police spokesperson was unapologetic, stating that “chalk graffiti has been a persistent problem in upper Bangor for quite some time.” Even though the fine was subsequently waived after the local mayor stepped in, the police continued to stand by its actions.

This contrast suggests that perhaps, official attitudes to children and young people simply enjoying themselves in the open air are beginning to change. That said, there is still a long way to go before we create a climate that properly values children’s claim on streets and public spaces. Compare our culture with two international examples.

In 2008 the Canadian city of Kingston, Ontario  passed a law that allows the playing of street hockey – a national institution, but also a source of conflict and official head-scratching – in streets across the municipality. And in 2010, Germany’s capital and largest city formally recognised children’s right to make a noise when they play, exempting them from Berlin’s strict laws on noise pollution.

Now that truly is good news for everyday childhood freedoms.

There are standards for many businesses, industries and product types, and they do a number of jobs. One job is to draw up criteria that aim to reduce the likelihood of injuries. So for instance, the British Standard for the positioning of lights on motorcycles presumably aims to ensure that lights are easily seen and thus help to reduce motorcycle accidents.

Safety is a good reason for having standards for playground equipment. After all, it is obvious that manufacturers should not make structures that are built with inadequate materials, or come up with designs that can crush fingers or are at risk of collapsing. The picture is that standards help to eliminate hazards or sources of harm. But not all aspects of standards fit with this picture.

Think again about that wobbly bridge. Here, the hazard – the wobbliness – is a benefit as well as a risk, and so not something we want to eliminate. Things get more complex once we recognise the value of risk.

But can’t standards take this ‘beneficial risk’ into account? So the relevant part of a standard can specify just how wobbly a bridge can be (to use the kind of non-technical language that no engineer would ever use).

This is in fact what many parts of play equipment standards do. They do not aim to eliminate all risks, remove all hazards, or achieve absolute safety. Rather, they give a view about where the balance lies between safety and other goals.

The central problem with standards is that they give a one-size-fits-all answer to that question about where the balance lies. They close down judgement and decision-making. To quote my sometime collaborator Bernard Spiegal from a post of his last September: “they trespass on, or colonise, areas where they have no right to be.”

Sometimes, one-size-fits-all is fine. For instance, a single standard for the weight-bearing capacity of a swing is a good idea. For your average swing, we would all want to be sure that no matter how light or heavy we are, it will support our weight.

However, standards cover many topics that would be better left open to judgement. After all, play spaces are – or should be – places that are shaped by all sorts of factors. Factors like the age and abilities of the children who use them, the nature and style of supervision, the goals they are designed to meet, their locality, and the attitudes of parents and of wider society.

Those outside the industry have little idea of how extensive playground standards are. The British Standards Institution (BSI) website lists 13 current documents on outdoor playground equipment and surfacing (the number has grown significantly over the years). One version of the current set, produced by the BSI’s German equivalent, runs to over 400 pages of dense text and diagrams. While some of this material is sound, and has a basis in objective fact, much is subjective, and open to question.

Here is an example of a part of a standard that is open to question (taken from a previous post of mine). Discussing the image below – of a structure in a public playground in Islington, London – I said:

Look at the steps leading to the raised platform. They are wonky, and unevenly spaced. As such, they are in direct contravention of British (in fact, European) play equipment standards. These state: “The inclination of stairs shall be constant […] The treads shall be spaced equally, shall be of uniform construction, and shall be horizontal within ± 3°.”

So far as I know, no child has had a serious accident on these wonky steps. I am told that the playground (presumably including these steps) has been inspected, and is deemed to be safe. If so, it raises the question: why is the European Standards committee drawing up rules about the inclination and spacing of steps?

This problem is made worse by the fact that all too often, standards are given a status that they do not have. They are seen not as one possible answer to the question “where does the balance lie?”, but as the only answer to that question. They are seen as a being the sole benchmark of good safety practice, and are treated as in effect a legal requirement, even though in most countries, they are not. When schools or councils ask themselves – or their lawyers or insurers – “how do we avoid getting sued if a child has an accident on our playground?” the near-universal reply is “make sure your equipment meets the standards.”

This can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If everyone says that good playground safety practice is all about compliance, then failure to comply is seen as a sign of negligence by the courts, just as it is by everyone else.

Those involved in (thankfully rare) legal cases tell me that the courts do indeed set great store by standards compliance. In fact, compliance may not be enough: according to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, the standards themselves state: “compliance with a British Standard cannot confer immunity from legal obligations.”

None of this is to say that standards should be scrapped. I am not arguing here for the complete deregulation of playgrounds. To repeat my point above: some aspects of equipment design and construction need to be clearly specified, and manufacturers should be expected to meet these specifications. Furthermore, it may well be the case that the original introduction of standards led to a reduction in cowboy manufacturers and to the removal of equipment that was genuinely dangerous (though I would like to see hard evidence of this, rather than anecdotes and assertions).

Standards urgently need revisiting. They are not just technical documents, and not just a minor aspect of playground design. Their contents have a chilling effect on designers and providers, especially those who wish to move away from the ‘KFC’ (Kit, Fence, Carpet) design formula. My aim here is not to get rid of standards, but to kick-start some serious discussion about them.

Acknowledgement: as with my last post – and indeed much of my thinking on risk in play – I want to acknowledge the work of David Ball and Bernard Spiegal, co-authors with me of Managing Risk in Play Provision: Implementation Guide – and of Harry Harbottle, veteran of playground equipment standards committees. The views here are my own.

I discuss wobbly bridges in Play and Risk, an information sheet [pdf link] I wrote that has just been published by Play Wales. Here is an extract:

“In a factory or workplace, there would be no good reason to build a bridge that wobbles. If there were such a bridge, it would probably be flagged up in a risk assessment as needing remedial action. Yet in a play context, a wobbly bridge has inherent benefits, even though it may lead to more accidents than a rigid bridge. A wobbly bridge presents a challenge to children: are they steady enough on their feet – and brave enough – to cross it?”

What the wobbly bridge reveals is that in a playground, unlike in a factory or workplace, the presence of some types of hazards – sources of harm – is a good thing. To put it another way, some risks have inherent benefits.

It was the risk management academic Prof David Ball who showed me the value of thinking about wobbly bridges. When I first met David around 2000, he was carrying out a study into playground accidents [pdf link], funded by the Health and Safety Executive. At the same time, I was trying to tackle the problem of the ramping-up of playground safety, in my role as convener of the Play Safety Forum.

In 2002 the Play Safety Forum took the bold step of making balance – not risk reduction – the heart of good risk management, in its groundbreaking position statement Managing Risk in Play Provision. That it did so was thanks in part to David’s research, which showed that playgrounds had for decades been comparatively safe places for children to play. The move was also, in my view, part of a wider reaction to concerns about the over-protection of children.

David and I have since become close collaborators, along with Bernard Spiegal of PLAYLINK. In 2008 the three of us co-wrote Managing Risk in Play Provision: Implementation Guide, which introduced risk benefit assessment to the play safety world. (A new edition is due out in the coming months.)

More recently David, Bernard and I have teamed up with Harry Harbottle, a playground industry insider who has served his time on playground equipment standards committees and is co-author of a handy guide to the European Standard. Our goal is to create more space for professional judgements about what balance means – what it looks like – in different situations and circumstances. For us, this means rethinking the role and use of playground equipment standards.

I plan to explore standards in more detail in my next post. For now, I hope I have shown you just why managing risk in play spaces is different to managing risk in factories – and also hope I have persuaded you of some of the insights to be gained from wobbly bridges.

I will also be saying more about managing risk in play in my keynote at next month’s Spirit of Adventure Play conference in Cardiff.

I asked a question from the floor about the decline in children’s everyday freedoms over the past generation or two. This led to the following exchange on twitter:

I am taking @indoorplaymag’s comments at face value – setting aside any interest their author may have in painting a negative picture of the outdoors – because I think they reflect a widely held view. Many people believe – because they read it in the news every day – that the world beyond our front doors has become much more dangerous to children. And many parents and educators struggle to know how to react to news, both in the everyday decisions they make about children and in response to children’s own questions.

Coincidentally, this weekend’s Guardian featured a gloves-off attack on news by Rolf Dobelli, a best-selling writer, thinker and entrepreneur. He argues that too much news is just as bad for us as too much food. You could say he has added the condition of ‘News Consumption Disorder’ to the list of modern ailments (I jest, but only a little).

Dobelli’s key argument is that news “leads us to walk around with the completely wrong risk map in our heads.” There is good evidence to show how news skews our beliefs about how often bad things happen – such as this American study [pdf link] which shows that people who watch “crime-saturated local television news” have an increased fear of crime.

News coverage also skews our understanding of why bad things happen. For a breathtaking example, see this Australian news story about the tragic death of a young baby in a car crash. The report leads on the fact that the mother had apparently incorrectly used a second-hand child restraint. It is only ten paragraphs later that the report reveals the fact that the car, which was being driven by the father, crashed because it was “travelling at 118 km/h as it approached the bend, despite signage advising motorists to slow to 40 km/h.”

Another tragic event – again from Australia – gives a chilling illustration of what can happen when we have the wrong risk map. This story involved a baby in a stroller, who rolled down a slope into a river and drowned after her mother had been momentarily distracted answering a phone call. She was convinced her son had been abducted. So the early search efforts looked in the wrong place and possibly (though this cannot be known for sure) missed out on the chance of saving the child. I cannot help but note the echoes with another illustration of skewed risk: the case of two-year-old Abigail Rae, which I described in No Fear. The toddler had escaped unnoticed from her nursery, and was found soon afterwards drowned in a nearby pond after falling in. During the inquest it emerged that a man passing by had seen her wandering the streets on her own, but did not stop to help, because he was afraid of being accused of abducting her.

Recent years have also seen a collapse in levels of trust of all forms of media, as political commentator Peter Kellner showed in this piece from last November. Kellner’s figures pose the question of why anyone would defend their assessment of danger by pointing to news coverage. The reason, I believe, is that growing numbers of people are losing contact with the everyday world around them, so the media is almost the only source left.

I explained in simple terms how this works in an interview with Decca Aitkenhead after the publication of No Fear. A generation or two ago, people based their views about risk on a wide range of sources drawn from across their everyday lives, including their own experiences of being out and about, friends, and neighbours, as well as a much less intrusive media (never mind the internet: let’s remember that 24-hour rolling news only came into the mainstream in the last decade). Today, to quote local government spokesperson Councillor David Simmonds from last night’s NCB debate, life for many has “retreated behind the citadel of the family.” People spend ever more of their time in homes, in cars and out-of-town supermarkets, rather than in local shops, streets and public spaces. Deprived of a mix of information sources, all that many people hear is the ever-growing klaxon of doom-laden news stories.

So what is the cure for News Consumption Disorder? For a start, we can check the facts. To its credit, the Channel 4 News website did just this in the aftermath of the unfolding tragedy in Machynlleth last November. Focusing on the threat from strangers, its careful review of the evidence led to this reassuring conclusion:

“There is no evidence that the most serious crimes against children are on the increase. There’s no statistical reason for parents to be more worried now than in previous years. And in absolute terms, cases of abduction, homicide and serious sexual assault remain, mercifully, very rare.”

Of course, the facts show that the strangers who pose the greatest threat to children are those behind the wheel of a car. In 2008 [pdf link] for instance, 91 children under 15 were killed on the roads. By comparison, there were 23 homicides (and as I show in No Fear, most child homicides are committed by parents and members of the extended family, not by strangers). The comparative lack of media coverage of, or debate about, road danger is itself a telling example of news bias. For the record, I believe that – unlike the threat from strangers – it is a danger that parents are right to be concerned about.

Dobelli has a radical cure for News Consumption Disorder: simply stop consuming news altogether. For many, this will be an excessively extreme prescription. So here is my more balanced five-step antidote for parents and educators (drawing in part on a previous post of mine on this theme):

Step 1: realise that you can feel sympathy with people who have suffered terrible loss, without forever having to see the world through their eyes.

Step 2: seek out the facts behind the scare stories.

Step 3: take the time to dig deeper into the issues that matter to you.

Step 4: stay alert to the agendas of news outlets themselves, and maintain a critical stance towards what they serve up.

Step 5: help children to put the news they hear into perspective, and help them to understand why and how the media wants to frighten us with so much bad news.

Oh – and there’s one more step: get out of doors more, with and without your kids.

Update Thursday 18 April 2013: The NSPCC today launched a report which suggests children are in some respects safer today. One of its key findings is that “the child homicide rate is in decline and fewer children are dying as a result of assault or suicide.” The Daily Telegraph covered the report here, and states that overall, it “shows a significant long-term decline in violence against children in comparison with previous decades, contrary to public perceptions.” The report was also covered in today’s Daily Mail, under the headline “Thousands of children abused in their own homes are not being protected by local authorities, damning NSPCC report warns”. It did not mention the declining trend in violence, abuse and neglect.

I’ll start with some numbers. Here are my top five posts, by number of page views:

Curiously, my most popular post was not even written by me. Its popularity is partly, I suspect, because it is such a simple, clear account of a common, yet under-recognised problem: the impact of sprawling neighbourhood design on children and families. Its chart-topping status also shows the power of social media. It was quickly picked up by influential urbanist Richard Florida via his twitter feed, and then hotly debated on an American tech website.

Road near Bailey School, Minnesota. Source: Strongtowns.org

Second on the list is a kind of manifesto statement about playground safety: a topic that has been a focus of my work for at least 13 years. It makes greater use of images than many of my posts. Perhaps this is reflected in its staying power (it still gets 3-400 views a month, a year after it was first posted).

The bronze medal post is on children’s independent mobility (to use the research term). As I said in that post, my thinking on childhood has been hugely influenced by the work of researcher, policy analyst and environmental campaigner Mayer Hillman. I like to think that its reach is in part in recognition of the significance of Mayer’s work.

My fourth most popular post is also a manifesto of sorts, this time on risk: a theme that (according to my tag list) is my most popular topic. It is another post with staying power, getting over 400 views a month.

Fifth on the list is my takedown of parent-blaming. It is one of the few posts where I have experimented with form, using a couple of handwritten diagrams to show my argument.

The post also made a point of being based on hard evidence. I have a bee in my bonnet about the importance of sound evidence. It’s so easy to slip into armchair nostalgia, lazy generalizations and dodgy assumptions when thinking about childhood and how it has changed. But if the debate about children’s everyday lives is to step outside the bar-room – as it must – then it has to square up to the facts.

I have had a website for nearly a decade. For much of that time, the content was largely static – a kind of online business card and CV. Here are a couple of warts-and-all screengrabs, from 2004 and 2010:

Two reasons for starting to blog were to reach a wider audience with my writing, and to have more conversations with those interested in my work. I’ve no real idea about what the page view figures mean in terms of audience – though I do know that my book No Fear has sold around 5,000 copies, so my most popular posts are reaching significantly more people than are likely to have read it. (I also know that a tumblr post by my teenage daughter – an anecdote about a star from the cult TV show Supernatural – attracted 40,000 views in 24 hours!) As the chart below shows, monthly trends for viewing figures seem to be upward, though with some peaks and troughs.

As for conversations, on average my posts get around ten comments (not counting my own). My sense is that this is a high level of audience engagement (are there benchmarks for ‘comments per page view’, I wonder?) Some posts have gotten a lot of comments – here are my ‘top 5’ by number of comments:

Thanks to all who have taken the time to comment… and hat-tips to the most frequent contributors, Arthur Battram (aka plexity), Peter Clinch, Bernard Poulin (oldnp), Robin Sutcliffe (grumpysutcliffe) and Juliet Robertson.

Sometimes I worry about singing to the choir – most of those commenting are offering support or endorsement – but I suspect that a degree of preaching to the converted is hard to avoid. Having said this, there have been some lively exchanges (for instance on my twin posts on playground design and children’s participation). Moreover, I am grateful that my website has seen none of the aggressive attacks and exchanges that can make online activity an unpleasant experience.

Finally, a word on how people arrive. Aside from Google, Facebook tops the list of referrers with nearly 25,000 referrals (over 10 per cent of the total page views). Twitter is next, but with only around 5,000.  I must confess I was a reluctant joiner of Facebook, and still have mixed feelings about it (in my personal life I pretty much lurk). But it is clearly central to the way that many of us get information these days.

I thought carefully before starting this blog. I knew it was unlikely to generate much direct income (it generates none, in fact – though it has lead to some paid work such as speaking engagements and commissions – and as a freelancer, this is of course important). I also knew it would take time and effort. My guess is it takes about a day a week all told, including time on Facebook and Twitter and following other blogs and news feeds. And it took a while to get the hang of WordPress (with some help in the early days from Guerilla Geographer Daniel Raven-Ellison – thanks Dan!)

Has it been worth it? Perhaps the best answer I can give is that I can hardly imagine working without blogging now. It is simply the most effective way of sharing my work and engaging with others in the connected, digital world that so many of us now live in.

The paper, by Marguerite van den Berg at Amsterdam University’s Institute for Social Science Research, argues that one explicit aim of decision makers in Rotterdam is “the replacement of part of the current population by a new and better suited generation”, and that child-friendly initiatives are a key part of this process. The paper raises some crucial questions about the politics behind child- and family-friendly urban policies. After setting out some of its arguments, I will offer some thoughts of my own, as someone who is grappling with questions about child-friendliness and gentrification both professionally and personally.

Rotterdam is the poorest, most industrial and most ethnically diverse city in the Netherlands. For most of the post-war era its families – at least its wealthier families – tended to leave the city if they could. Yet according to van den Berg, the city is now making huge efforts to reverse this trend. She writes:

“Urban administrators are considering middle-class families as the desirable new inhabitants of urban neighbourhoods and sometimes seem to regard them as the silver bullet that will solve a variety of urban problems… Children, youngsters and parents are thus a focal point of gentrification policies.”

Child-friendly public space projects such as playgrounds and improving walking and cycling routes form part of the municipality’s approach to attracting families to neighbourhoods. However in the Netherlands – as in many other rich nations – children and young people are also looked upon as a source of urban problems. Van den Berg discusses one example: the ‘mosquito’ (a device which aims to disperse youths by emitting high-pitched sounds that only young people can hear and that they find highly unpleasant). I can report from direct experience that these devices are almost medievally brutal in the way they work. A few years ago I was taking a group of teenage boys studying for a construction qualification on a morning walking tour of the EC1 area of London. We headed to a McDonalds for some refreshment – then had to leave quickly, because the mosquito’s sound was too much for some of them to stand (though I could hear nothing – and neither could some of the young people, which brought home perfectly the indiscriminate effect of the gadget).

Hence, for van den Berg:

“The focus on children and youngsters in the contemporary city is thus two-sided: middle-class children and highly educated parents are imagined as the solution to urban problems, whereas poorer young urban inhabitants are mainly seen as the cause of many ‘liveability’ problems or generally as ‘illegitimate subjects’.”

She discusses Rotterdam’s policy of promoting the combining of two smaller apartments into one larger one, to create a larger living space that is more attractive to families. It may lead to more (wealthier) families moving into a neighbourhood. But if that neighbourhood is overcrowded, this will only happen if some existing (poorer) residents are in effect pushed out.

While this policy could be said to have as a side effect the marginalisation of poor people, van den Berg also discusses some initiatives that have as their main goal the exclusion of undesirable individuals and families. For instance, she points to “measures to ban low-income tenants […] from renting housing in specific areas.”

The case Van den Berg makes against Rotterdam’s child-friendly policies is that they are both discriminatory and regressive. They in effect ‘sort’ families into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ on unjustifiable grounds, then target collective effort at those families who are already comparatively well-off, while leaving the poor to fend for themselves. For her, the city’s approach to gentrification:

“one-sidedly attributes responsibility for urban problems to individual poor families. It obscures the structural causes of the deterioration of certain neighbourhoods, of poverty and of the quality of life of children. This case study shows how Rotterdam focuses on removing ‘opportunity-poor’ children and replacing them with ‘opportunity-rich’ ones, instead of investing in a more equal distribution of these ‘opportunities’.”

Van den Berg does not condemn child-friendly policies per se, but rather the way they are being taken forward in Rotterdam. In her view, the city’s plans for gentrification

“could indeed produce a more equal urban space for girls and boys, men and women. However, because ‘child-friendly’ means ‘middle-class friendly’ in the plans, it is to be expected that the gender equality of the middle classes is facilitated, while the poor become further marginalized.”

Given my distance from the city of Rotterdam and its work, it would be foolish for me to pass final judgement here. But I did find the paper of value in revealing some neglected issues about child-friendly city programmes. The first is the significance of the very fact that Rotterdam – a big, economically significant city with real problems – has made child-friendliness a key strategic goal.

What is more, the city appears to be pursuing the goal with focus and purpose, as this powerpoint file shows [pdf file]. On the face of it, the programme is a fine example of the arguments of Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogotá in Colombia, who has said “Children are a kind of indicator species. If we can build a successful city for children, we will have a successful city for all people” (a maxim I embraced in my Sowing the Seeds report). As van den Berg herself points out in her conclusion, such a move could be pursued in  progressive ways (as Peñalosa did in Bogotá).

Gentrification is undeniably a double-edged sword for poor neighbourhoods. Take for instance Walthamstow, the London suburb that I have made my home for over 15 years. It has threatened to become gentrified throughout that period (thanks in part to young families moving here from areas of the city where decades of gentrification have driven house prices beyond their reach). Indeed the Guardian newspaper recently ran a breathless sales pitch for the place. Even though it is still endearingly scruffy, I have seen the tensions generated by the mere prospect of an influx of wealth. Some existing residents and small businesses are becoming resentful of the influence of newcomers who appear to be more successful in getting the attention of decision makers.

Yet any neighbourhood that cannot attract people to live and work is destined to struggle. I recall over ten years ago, speaking to a regeneration manager involved in a pilot home zone project in Northmoor, a run-down part of Manchester. His job of getting residents to agree changes to the street layout was made much easier by the fact that car ownership was so low. Yet he was clear that if the improvements led to more people with cars moving in, that would be a sign of success, even if it was in tension with the new street design’s goal of being a more sociable and playful place.

The strongest criticism of the city of Rotterdam is that it appears to be deliberately and actively marginalising poor families, in the pursuit of an image and ambience that will appeal to more affluent and desirable residents. However, it may be that these policies are not as joined-up as the paper suggests. I know from my own work with municipalities that policies do not always fit together coherently. So the Parks or Planning Department, say, may have fine child-friendly policies and practices, but these can be undermined by the work of colleagues in crime prevention or transportation.

Cities are complex places, as Jane Jacobs recognised – (and her writings on what she called ‘unslumming’ poor areas are well worth revisiting). Wealthier incomers do not necessarily lead poorer families to be pushed out. Public agencies do not necessarily share the same goals or values. It seems to me that what Rotterdam shows is the importance of a clear, coherent guiding vision that everyone in a city (or at least, everyone who cares about that city) can sign up to, regardless of income or background. My own vision of child-friendly neighbourhoods is that they are welcoming and inclusive places, and also places where people work systematically and collectively to tackle poverty and disadvantage, rather than simply blaming poor people for the situation they are in.

Acknowledgement: Uncredited images taken from Rotterdam, City
with a future: How to build a child-friendly city [pdf link] published by City of Rotterdam. Thanks to Dr Geoff Woolcock of Wesley Mission Brisbane for alerting me to Marguerite van den Berg’s paper.

It was the boy’s very first day at the club, and he had fallen off a piece of equipment. The manager said that what happened was a straightforward accident, and that there were no problems either with the equipment or the supervision – and I have no reason to doubt this.

The boy’s parents were understandably upset at the news. What is more, they found it hard to accept that no-one was to blame. The manager said that the next week or two were very difficult. The parents kept pressing her for an explanation about what had gone wrong, and what she was going to do about it. They were not after compensation, she explained. They just could not accept that their child, whom they had entrusted to the club’s care, had ended up in hospital, and that this was not a sign of failure.

Around about this time, HSE published its High Level Statement on taking a balanced approach to risk in children’s play and leisure. (I blogged about the launch of this statement here.) In an attempt to help the parents see things from a different point of view, the manager shared and discussed this statement with them.

The statement declares early on that HSE “wants to make sure that mistaken health and safety concerns do not create sterile play environments that lack challenge and so prevent children from expanding their learning and stretching their abilities.” It has some forceful messages about children’s play, stating that it “provides for an exploration and understanding of their abilities; helps them to learn and develop; and exposes them to the realities of the world in which they will live, which is a world not free from risk but rather one where risk is ever present.” And significantly, it says that “children will often be exposed to play environments which, while well-managed, carry a degree of risk and sometimes potential danger.”

This was the point in the conversation where the parents let go of their concerns and moved on from the incident. In short, HSE’s statement helped to change the way they thought about what had happened. To understand why there can be a risk of injury in a good play facility. To see that sometimes, bad things can happen and no-one is to blame.

In my work, I tend to focus on the more theoretical end of risk: getting clarity about values and ways of thinking, improving procedures, building a shared approach within settings and across different stakeholders. I rarely get to see what this all means at the sharp end: in the day-to-day exchanges and interactions between children, parents and play providers.

The High Level Statement, which I was closely involved in shaping as part of the Play Safety Forum, was first and foremost written for providers, and for those who support and oversee their work. So it did not occur to me that parents might be interested in what it says, and open to its messages. But as this anecdote shows, they are.

It would be a heartless soul who took pleasure from news of a broken arm or leg. However, I must confess that I was grateful to have heard this story. It reminded me that even those who have to deal with the downside of risk in play can take a broader view of what has happened. It also brought home to me the fact that HSE, precisely because it bears the mantel of guarding the nation’s safety, deserves praise for publicly adding its voice to the call for balance and proportion.

With councils under huge pressure make cost savings, these are tough times for UK play services – and especially supervised play services like staffed adventure playgrounds, playcentres, play ranger programmes, playbuses and holiday playschemes.

In response, a group of playwork bloggers has set up a listblog called ‘Play in Peril’ to gather information on cuts to play services here in the UK (and especially England). Arthur Battram – a playwork and management consultant, and a frequent, active and lively visitor to these pages – is a member of Play in Peril, and is acting as spokesperson for the group. He is asking people to post on the site as much detail as possible about cuts to local play services – and also to pass on his request for information to others. He explains:

“This is not a blog for writing about stuff, it is a blog for collecting info on endangered stuff. https://playinperil.wordpress.com/
Please be clear: This is ACTION (specifically info gathering) NOT TALK. Please email/phone people and get them involved!

“Please email or phone or tell your colleagues and everybody to visit and SIGN UP, and collect info and spread the word and ACT!

“Please give them this link  https://playinperil.wordpress.com/ – it will always take them to the welcome explanation ‘featured’ info, which is updated regularly and ‘datestamped’. Ask them to pass on all of these words in ‘quotes’ to the next person.”

As this message makes clear, the aim of the site is to use online networks and crowdsourced information to build a better picture of what is happening on the ground. Arthur is also inviting people to become editors of the site, in order to help with moderation and managing content. He tells me he is learning fast, and has already changed his mind about the usefulness of Facebook in reaching people.

So if you know of any services under threat – and/or if you want to help with the admin – please head over to the blog, share your information, and build an effective response to cuts to local play services. As Arthur himself might say, information is power.

Note 11 March 2013: this post has been slightly edited for factual accuracy about the creation of Play in Peril.

Update 12 March 2013: the magazine Children and Young People Now covered the launch of the website here.

1) Design is a creative process, not a mechanistic one. So it is simply wrong to try to limit designers in advance. While I have some worries about designer ego, I would be much more worried if designers with an urge to be creative felt their wings were being clipped at the outset. All great play spaces have something special about them, and many have hidden meanings and a sense of place, of depth and of mystery. I find the idea of ‘genius loci’ (or ‘spirit of place’) helpful, as introduced to me by my friend, Danish landscape architect Helle Nebelong. (You can see a few of my photos of her work on my Flickr site).

2) We should not place the burden of designing on children. That is our job as adults. Designers may want to gain inspiration from engaging with children, but that should be linked to a designer’s wider intentions and approach.

3) Children may have useful things to say about design – and also about location. (Sadly, all too often the location of a site is a given, when it should be a critical topic to explore.) If you plan to involve children in design, it is vital to be thoughtful and creative (as Felicity and Tom point out in their comments on my original post). Asking them ‘what equipment do you want?’ is almost guaranteed to lead to an unimaginative shopping list of pieces of kit. We all know how much children like splashing about in the rain. Yet no child would ever say “I’d like a puddle in my play area please”. (Which doesn’t mean kit has no value. It does. But that is a line of thought for another time.)

4) It may be helpful to capture children’s views as part of an awareness-raising process aimed at adults. This may well encourage parents, residents or decision-makers to revisit their ideas about what makes for a good place for play. But it needs to be done thoughtfully, in ways that recognise both children’s abilities and qualities, and their limitations. As Grace comments, “children are not great at self-analysis or meta-cognition.”

5) We should ground our designs in a sound understanding of the depth and richness of children’s play, based on (amongst other things) extensive, thoughtful observation of different children at play in different kinds of places (yes, Arthur and Bob) and on our own childhood memories (yes, Nancy).

6) Form should follow function: the Bauhaus design ethic quoted by Aileen is not a bad place to start. Different types of project – a small neighbourhood play area, a destination park, a nursery garden, an inclusive play space, a staffed adventure playground – need different approaches and have different constraints.

7) The views of parents, other residents, staff, facility managers, regulators and other adult stakeholders are important. They cannot and should be ignored. But they should not distract designers from the central job of a play space: to offer great play opportunities for children.

One final thought: my hunch is that play spaces would be much more scruffy (to quote Aileen again) if we paid more attention to the kinds of places that truly spark children’s playful impulses.