Photo by Feral78 from flickr
I am pleased to say that I will be returning to Australia this July and August for another series of talks and workshops, visiting Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane. There is a full itinerary at the end of this post. My diary on this trip is very full, so I will have limited opportunities for additional visits and meetings. However, I will try to share some of my thoughts and experiences here, as on previous trips. One question has been on my mind for a while: are Aussies more well-disposed towards children as a group than we are in the UK? Does Australia as a nation care more about the freedoms it allows its children than we do here in the old country?
Here is a true gem from the archives of play: extended video footage of Lady Allen of Hurtwood. Lady Allen is the foremost figure in the history of children’s play in the UK (I reviewed her classic Planning for Play – available as a pdf from the marvellous Playscapes blog – in a previous post). The video focuses on the staffed adventure playgrounds Lady Allen created in the 1960s and 1970s to provide play opportunities for disabled children, some of which continue today under the management of the charity Kids.
Some health warnings: at times the language used in the video to describe the children is old-fashioned, inappropriate, and even offensive to today’s ears – though in Lady Allen’s day the terms were standard. Also, the video is somewhat grainy and jumpy. Oh – and Lady Allen’s accent could cut glass at 20 paces. But do not let any of this put you off, or you will miss out on as clear a manifesto for adventurous play as you are ever likely to see.
Posted in Child development, Outdoor play, Risk
Tagged Adventure playground, disabled children, inclusion, Lady Allen, London, play, Risk, video
I have written before about street play, and plugged the Playing Out project, whose community-based approach to opening up streets for play is spreading fast. A couple of weekends ago I witnessed a whole Playing Out session from beginning to end (and you will have the chance to see the edited highlights on primetime TV [Update Weds 3 July 2013: watch a clip from this blog post of mine]). It was a thrilling event, welcomed and enjoyed by people of all ages. But while I shared their enthusiasm, I was left wondering if the sheer energy of the occasion could paradoxically weaken the initiative’s prospects. I’ll come back to that thought later – but first, let’s set the scene.
Posted in Outdoor play, Urbanism
Tagged child-friendly cities, community, neighbourhood, playing out, road closure, streets, transport, urban design, urbanism
George Bernard Shaw allegedly once advised that if you are going to espouse radical ideas, you should wear a respectable suit. David Bond, director and protagonist of the new documentary film Project Wild Thing, clearly has no time for Shaw’s advice: at one point he appears in a huge squirrel costume, manically leafleting a shopping mall in an effort to switch uninterested consumers on to the joys of nature (a scene that crops up in the trailer at the end of this post).
Project Wild Thing, like Richard Louv’s book Last Child in the Woods and my own Sowing the Seeds report, takes up the challenge of reconnecting children with nature and the outdoors. At the start of the film Bond (channelling Pete, the longsuffering dad in the hit BBC sitcom Outnumbered) tries to pull his 3- and 5-year old kids away from their screens and go outside to play. Faced with stubborn resistance, he appoints himself Marketing Director of Nature to, in his words, “flog the benefits of nature to the public”. (And he really did – I blogged about one of his schemes last summer.)
Posted in Nature, Outdoor play
Tagged campaign, documentary, film, media, National Trust, nature, nature deficit disorder, Project Wild Thing
Call it fate, call it something in the ether, or call it a sign of changing times, but word has reached me of a hopscotch game that will put ten-year-old Lilly Allen’s efforts to shame (not that we’re being competitive). Residents of Seattle are organising a hopscotch trail that is set to go for nearly 2 miles across the Central District – and it’s happening in a couple of weeks!
Posted in Outdoor play, Urbanism
Tagged hopscotch, Seattle, street play, streets, urbanism, USA
Rethinking Childhood 