What was your personal experience of a school playground ban?
Several years ago my son’s school put in place a “no touch” rule at playtimes. It created outrage. The press picked up on it, the Director of Education intervened and the head teacher – a hard working, well-meaning, sensible person – suffered as a result.

How did the children react?
My son and his friends thought the whole matter was ridiculous. A kind of anarchy spread, where children were deliberately running around pretending to touch each other – especially in front of the playground supervisors.

Why do you think the head took the action he did?
The facts behind why he took this approach were complex, but I believe he felt his hands were tied. It was a result of stress, frustration and perceived lack of other options. I would also suspect they were born out of ignorance and lack of understanding too.

What do you think lies behind these bans?
By tradition, the education sector does not fully recognise the value of playtimes. In all my 20 years of teaching, I’ve never had formal access to play or playtime training – even when doing my PGCE [postgraduate certificate in education]. Occasionally courses would come up on traditional games or skipping, but never free play. So I’d argue we have a whole sector trying to manage a period in school that they’ve never really thought about. They have had neither the time nor the opportunity to consider a holistic and participative approach to playtimes. They do not realise that a wee bit of love, care and positive action can make a huge difference. Thus what happens is that heads and other education professionals get frustrated about the perceived playtime millstones around their necks, the incidents, and the time spent on sorting out playground issues. At times it can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

How did you become interested in play?
I only stumbled by chance into play matters, through some work I was doing on school grounds improvements back in 1999. When consulting children, playtime issues kept on coming up. We addressed them through acting on their suggestions. It started with the children digging a huge, deep hole in the ground. They stuck at this project for a whole month, and were thoroughly absorbed and engaged in it.

I used to spend a lot of time outside at breaks and lunch times. It was a way of counteracting claims of bullying, violence etc. I could see what was going on, and generally I was proud of the children and the fantastic things they got up to at playtimes in all the schools where I was the head. I always used to put out old furniture and bits and pieces for children to use, just because it seemed a pity not to.

Have you any quick, practical suggestions for managing playtimes better?
When I was a head, almost all “incidents” happened when the bell went and children were in transition back into school. So we’d work out who was potentially vulnerable and find ways managing this 2-minute window. Also with “harder than average” classes, there’s a lot to be said for the class teacher being there outside when the bell goes to meet and greet their class in a friendly way. Often the retelling of an incident magnifies a fairly minor incident into something much bigger.

Finally, what can schools and educators do over the longer term?
I think school staff need to have a more concerted focus on the benefits of the hour or so of play/lunch times, and to value what happens out there. After all it is as much time as a child may spend on maths or literacy each day. Schools urgently need to re-consider the worth of this time, and its impact on a child’s life.

For example, I suggest that schools look at the current “success stories” around playtimes such as the Scrapstore Playpod initiative and Grounds for Learning’s Natural Play Projects.

Schools have to accept that playtimes and school grounds need ongoing and continued attention. Informal learning is just as important as the formal activities. If you don’t believe me, think back to what you remember most about schools. I’m sure most of us have prominent playtime memories.

These prohibitions were all passed on to me at an event where I was invited to talk on the topic of risk in childhood. After the talk, a parent came up to me. Her opening words were “I read your book No Fear a few years ago. Back then, I thought you were overstating your case. Now, I realise I was wrong.”

The parent – an articulate mother whose child goes to a private school somewhere in London and the South East – explained that the school had apparently enforced these bans because of concerns about bullying, arguments and upsets. But she was genuinely baffled as to why any school would take such drastic steps.

I share this parent’s bafflement. I take no pleasure in having been proved right, nor in sharing the news in this post. The parent is taking the matter up with the school, in the hope of getting the bans overturned – which is why I am not giving too many details, and not naming her or the school. I will let you know if I hear any more. In the meantime, I would be interested to know if you have heard of any similar prohibitions here in the UK. Leave a comment here, or contact me by email.

The core elements of the first version are still there: the requirement of 10 sq m of ‘playable space’ per child; a simple typology of play spaces of different sizes; clear tools to address access; the emphasis on inclusion; and the promotion of playful, creative, multifunctional, flexible approaches to design. Obvious improvements include a greater emphasis on nature (a strong response to my Sowing the Seeds report) and new material on community involvement and the role of volunteers. There is also updated information on technical planning matters, and a new spreadsheet for calculating requirements for play in new housing developments, which could be very useful.

One thing that strikes me is the number of great images of play spaces – many of them in London. When EDAW and I were drafting the first version back in 2006, we struggled to find inspiring case studies from the UK.

The existing guidance has been in place since 2008. As I mentioned in a post last summer, the Mayor’s planning team has been leading on the revision. I would have liked to have seen a proper assessment of the impact of the current guidance, as this is obviously the point of the exercise. However, officers have been actively engaging stakeholders from the play sector and beyond, and it looks like the document builds effectively on the current approach.

Central Government’s ‘localism’ agenda is leading it to propose dramatic reductions in its guidance on planning. As Play England has argued, there is a real risk that children will lose out in the pursuit of short-term economic priorities. Given this shift, the Mayor of London’s guidance provides a model of child-friendly policies that can and should be promoted and taken up in other towns and cities.

What do you think? Is the new guidance about right, or are there gaps or flaws? I’d love to hear your views – and I am sure the planners in City Hall would too.

The consultation runs until 27 April 2012.

City Builder Book Club » Mary Rowe on the Introduction: Why you will read and reread this book.

This book completely changed the way I think about cities: how they work, how they change, how people can change them (for better or worse). It is still in print and widely available, so why not get a copy (if you don’t have it already) and join the City Builder Book Club?

Even if you are not sure you want to read the whole thing, you really need to get at least up to Chapters 4 (entitled “The uses of sidewalks: assimilating children”) and 5 (“The uses of neighborhood parks”). I promise you, you will never look at streets, parks or playgrounds in the same way again.

Of course the world has changed since Jacobs’ time, and she is not right about everything. But the central question she asks – about how people of all ages and backgrounds can get along in big cities, even though we will never know even a fraction of our fellow city-dwellers – is absolutely the right one. And by the way, don’t be put off by the word “American” in the title – her insights are relevant to cities around the world.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this book.

Affordances are often specific to particular groups. A 40 cm high flat surface does not afford sitting if you are three years old – though it may afford climbing on. That same flat surface – if hard and smooth enough, and if above another flat, smooth, hard surface – does afford grinding – to a skateboarder.

Affordances are also often sensitive to small physical changes. Install an anti-skating grommet, and the grinding affordance vanishes (though not the sitting affordance).

The idea of affordances is especially helpful for anyone interested in play space design. Why? Here is an anecdote – and an image – that helps to explain. When my daughter was about 6 or 7, we were out on a family walk and came across this stile.

Look carefully at this picture. Do you see anything unusual about the stile? In functional terms, it is redundant. You can simply walk round it and carry on your way. Which is precisely what all the grown-ups did. But not my daughter. She climbed the stile. How does this relate to affordances? In simple terms, she was alive to the climbing affordance offered by the stile.

I use this anecdote when I present to designers and landscape architects, to help them shake off the idea that play equals fixed play equipment. What is more, I cannot help but see this story as evidence of children’s innate playfulness. They are constantly, actively seeking out novel, stimulating ways to engage with whatever is around them.

While I do use the idea of affordances when talking to design professionals, I am curious to know how useful it is with wider audiences. Does it expand people’s way of thinking about playful places? Or is it too abstract and philosophical to be easily understood? This is where you come in.

If you are familiar with the concept of affordances, how much do you use it – and how useful is it? If this is the first time you have come across it, did you find it confusing, or revealing? Were you left scratching your head, or did light-bulbs go off inside it? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Footnote: the concept of affordances is closely associated with the pioneering American psychologist J J Gibson – in particular, his book The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (which made a deep impression on me as an undergraduate). Rather wonderfully, I have since found out that the idea can be traced further back, to observations of children’s playful engagement with the world around them. A few years ago I took part in a lecture tour with Prof Harry Heft, who has written on affordances and children's play [pdf link]. He explained that the concept is linked to the work of another psychologist, Roger Barker – one of the founders of environmental psychology – and his book One Boy’s Day, written back in 1951. This includes detailed descriptions of the rich, varied ways that a seven-year-old boy plays in, on and with the features of the physical environment in which he lives, in the course of a single day. I hardly need add that such a day would be beyond the imagination of most seven-year-olds in America (or the UK) today. Barker's study - and Harry Heft's work - were in turn the basis for some innovative research into children's independent mobility and the child-friendliness of neighbourhoods, carried out by the Finnish academic Marketta Kyttä (who joined Harry and me on that lecture tour; they were terrific company, and thanks to Facebook, we are still in touch). I reckon I will return to Marketta's work here at some point.

The message ‘don’t trust strangers’ takes us to a place where nobody trusts anyone. Where the slightest pleasantry with a child is grounds for suspicion, where basic human concern is rebranded as a naïve and foolish emotion, and where people are anxious even to come to the aid of a child in obvious distress.

In one unbearably tragic case from a few years ago – discussed in my book No Fear – a toddler had strolled unnoticed out of the gates of a playgroup. A man saw the child, but did nothing because he was afraid of being accused of abducting her. She was later found drowned in a nearby pond. One playworker told me of a more mundane but equally troubling episode, when he came across a child he knew in an unfamiliar part of town, lost and desperate. Even though there were people around, he was terrified to ask anyone he didn’t know for help.

So where does all this leave parents, teachers and childcare professionals? Surely our starting point is to be unceasingly honest with children about the real level of threat. This means being clear that most adults, most of the time, are not a danger, and indeed will help if they can.

I am not saying we should pretend that horrific crimes never happen. I am not saying we should shield children from them on the mercifully rare occasions when they do. I am not saying that we should not help children to keep themselves safe – though I do think our support should focus on helping children to be more socially confident and assertive as they grow up, and be less reliant on simplistic safety rules. What I am saying is that we need to think much more about the messages we give children. And telling them that the world is full of grown-ups who want to hurt them is not only untrue, it also undermines the very fabric of trust and solidarity that in practice makes communities more safe.

A version of this article was published in June 2006 in Nursery World magazine.

I love the rough-hewn quality of this photoset. We are being given fleeting glimpses into the children's private realm. We see real adventure - and real danger - alongside depictions of great creativity and camaraderie.

The photos were taken by the mother of one of the boys, Tina Govan, who is a local architect.  Tina heard me speak a few years ago at the annual Growing in Place conference organised by Robin Moore and colleagues at the Natural Learning Initiative. She emailed me the link out of the blue last week, generously saying that my talk had made a strong impression on her. She adds that a version of video may be shown at this year’s conference.

Tina says: "most parents in my neighborhood are very fearful and their children are tethered to their computers and video games. My older son, though, was fortunate and was able to able to connect to a group of boys whose parents were less controlling and less worried about 'what's out there'."

Here in London, I sometimes see evidence of children and young people’s everyday outdoor adventures when I go for walks or cycle rides in the woods near my home. Just before Christmas I came across this den.

It too is a refuge, a place of escape and maybe of transgression.  The writers Michael Symmons Roberts and Paul Farley, in their book Edgelands, note that “part of the unspoken contract of dens includes elements of danger, as if the nest-like space is all the more cosy and secure for having some darkness or threat it needs to keep out.”

I have no doubt that such experiences are in decline. But Tina's slideshow reminds us that what playwork theorist Bob Hughes calls "wild, adult-free play" still happens. In the right places - urban woodlands, canals, derelict factory grounds, beaches near coastal towns - you can see the tell-tale signs.

These sorts of experiences are resonant to many of us, and I am sure these photos evoke strong memories. However, what I would really love to hear is more evidence that children today are making the same kinds of memories for themselves. What 'play traces' from childhood today can you share with me?

But first, why should we take note of this initiative? Isn’t it just another example of shallow PR-driven ‘research’ being used to smuggle into the public arena its own spiritual values (remember, the Children’s Society is in effect the charitable wing of the Church of England)? Far from it. The Good Childhood programme – launched by the society back in 2006 – is a serious, in-depth, long-term project to gain children’s perspectives about what makes them happy. Using smart statistics alongside thoughtful qualitative studies and engagement work, it aims to tease out their broad concerns in a way that fairly reflects the complexity of their lives, without drowning us in numbers. This latest survey was supported by Prof Jonathan Bradshaw, author of the hugely influential 2007 UNICEF report that ranked the UK bottom of an international league table on child poverty, and a world leader in quantifying what matters to children. It patently is not a vehicle for promoting religious views. Indeed at last night’s launch, one cleric made clear his dissatisfaction at the lack of emphasis on spiritual matters.

Let’s come back to what the report says. At its heart is a strikingly clear progressive message: children hunger for autonomy in their everyday lives. Out of ten factors, this was the one that was most closely related to their sense of well-being. Not family life. Not friends. Not money or material goods (see table).

For those who might wish to dispute this last point, perhaps with last summer’s riots in mind, it is worth emphasizing here that, even in London, well over 99 per cent of the city’s  children had nothing to do with those disturbances.

The project also highlights the importance for children of their local area, and of play and recreation. One telling quote from a child gives a simple request: “to be able to go out of the house and have plenty of things to do but don’t have to spend money” (p.53). There are useful policy hooks for play advocates. The society’s report for decision-makers, also published yesterday, lists “a safe and suitable home environment and local area” as one of six priorities for children’s well-being (p.6). Another priority, having the conditions to learn and develop, explicitly mentions play.

At a time when public attitudes to children and young people appear to be growing ever more hostile, we need to make sure that all those in positions of power hear the clear message from the Good Childhood report: children have an appetite for agency, and want be active in, and feel a connection with, their neighbourhoods. Giving children real opportunities to get to grips with the world – knowing what it is like to have some control, make decisions and take responsibility – is central to their sense of living a contented, meaningful life. Thinking of our own lives, and of the tumultuous changes unfolding around the world, is this really so surprising?

Parents have a tough time navigating this territory. Schools, early years settings, play and childcare services have an even tougher time. They are caught between children’s ever-growing appetite for experience and their parents’ fears and anxieties.

The first step on the path to enlightenment about risk is to accept that there is simply no such thing as a risk-free environment. Did you know that in the USA between 1990 and 2007, around 300 children have died as a result of falling furniture (typically, television sets in their own home)?

Every game you play, every craft activity you run, every play area you use, every table and chair in your room is a potential source of harm. You are already in the game of balancing risks against benefits, even if you don’t see it that way. So every time you talk about an activity or venue being ‘safe’ what you really mean is ‘safe enough’; safe enough for there to be every likelihood that children will enjoy the experiences on offer without coming to serious harm.

That phrase ‘serious harm’ is crucial. Getting hurt – physically or emotionally – and then recovering is part and parcel of childhood. Children need the chance to make mistakes and learn from them, as long as they can pick themselves up, dust themselves down and move on – with a caring grown-up to wipe way the tears, if needs be.

In fact, these minor childhood upsets are so vital that if they never happened in your club, you’d be doing something wrong. Yes, inspectors, regulators and insurers sometimes appear to expect zero-accident settings – but they work in the real world too – and what is more, some of them are arguing for a more balanced approach. Yes, some parents are excessively anxious – but not all. Moreover, most parents want their kids to grow up confident and capable. Getting to grips with everyday challenges is central to living a rich, meaningful and fulfilled life.

In our over-anxious culture, risk should be at the heart of your parenting, your setting, and your thinking. Have you managed to move on from the zero risk childhood? And if so, how did you do it?

A version of this article was published in Nursery World in January 2006. Reproduced with permission.

For some at the forefront of this movement – and I include myself here – items like the ‘springy chicken’ epitomise an impoverished way of thinking about what appeals to children. So when Barbara Hendricks in her book Designing for Play calls the ‘spillophøne’ – a closely related species – “a beautiful design”, I know my views of what makes for a good play space will be challenged.

Hendricks – a play space designer who has collaborated with the spillophøne’s manufacturers, Kompan – makes the case in her book for a design philosophy that resists adult ideas of what is ‘good for children’, instead arguing for a strongly child-centred approach. The focus is firmly on dedicated outdoor play space, and largely on the pre-adolescent age group. Spaces for teenagers – where the design challenges are quite different, with physical risk, performance and sociability coming to the fore – are all but ignored. So are public spaces such as streets, squares and shopping centres, and the broader concept of a child-friendly public realm. This is a missed opportunity, since ideas about playability and flexible, shared use are gaining ground amongst urbanists.

Sadly, Designing for Play fails to offer a clear design philosophy. Instead, Hendricks devotes many pages to opinionated and at times meandering debate on contemporary childhood themes such as commercialism, aesthetics, technology, education and nature. This last topic is explored through a particularly extended and unenlightening attack on the ‘nature playground’ movement.

These criticisms were well made in a review of the first edition by Prof Robin Moore, a leading authority on outdoor play. So it is all the more disappointing that this new edition has largely failed to address them.

Hendricks is clear that her book is no ‘how-to’ guide. She is right that there is no simple recipe for a good play space, just as there is none for a good restaurant, museum or town square. Nonetheless, she could have said so much more about the ingredients, and what a good design process looks like. There are also some hot design topics that are ripe for thoughtful exploration. Nature is one, but others include risk, the inclusion of disabled children, social safety, community engagement, and the constraints imposed by management and maintenance.

Search hard, and you will find some gems, such as a thought-provoking discussion of the perils of an equipment-centred, wheelchair-obsessed focus on inclusion (pp 158-9). Likewise, Hendricks’ remark “the most important loose part on a playground is the children” (p.102) is a wonderful aphorism that merits unpacking. Yet nowhere are these nuggets pulled together into a coherent whole. What is more, the design and structure of the book, with text-heavy pages and only two detailed case studies, makes it even harder for the budding enthusiast to engage with the content.

Coincidentally, while I was writing this review, Planning for Play – long out of print – was made available as a download. Thanks are due here to Paige Johnson, whose playscapes blog is consistently quirky, thought-provoking and inspirational. This book, written by tireless play champion Lady Allen of Hurtwood, is full of insight, using a simple structure, well-chosen case studies and plentiful photos and diagrams to make a compelling case for more playful outdoor space.

I am sure that Hendricks is just as passionate and committed as Lady Allen was about the value of great places for play. I suspect she has just as many interesting things to say. I just wish she had Lady Allen’s clarity and focus. If she could take her cue from the godmother of adventure play, the third edition of her book would have rather more to say about good design, and be rather less concerned to come to the defence of springy chickens.

Copyright for this book review is held by Wiley. The review is due to be published by the journal Children & Society. Reproduced with permission.