Category Archives: Outdoor play

Outdoor play

Hopscotch ban is not all bad news

Screengrab Sun hopscotch storyIn case you missed it, last week’s everyday childhood news flurry featured a ten-year-old girl, a street hopscotch game and an over-zealous police officer. Having threatened the child with criminal damage, the officer found himself the target of screenfuls of righteous media anger, led by the Sun newspaper. It is easy to slip into “ain’t it awful” mode with stories like this. But while I am not about to defend the police’s actions, I do want to offer a more positive twist on the tale.

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The wobbly bridge revisited, or the problem with playground standards

3 boys in playground, one falling off a beamIn my last post, I used the example of a wobbly bridge to highlight why it is hard to manage risk in play spaces. I promised to say more about the role of equipment standards in managing risk, and why they need to be rethought. This post delivers on that promise.

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The wobbly bridge, or why it is harder to manage risk in playgrounds than factories

Rope bridge in play area“How can we make our playground safe?” It seems a simple enough question. Yet the answer is anything but (and even the question is not as simple as it looks). In fact, managing risk in a playground is much more complex than in a factory or a workplace. The reason for this is down to a fundamental difference in the nature of the task. One way to grasp this difference is to think about a wobbly bridge.

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A broken limb, the Health and Safety Executive, and a good outcome

broken arm in plasterThe Health and Safety Executive – the nation’s safety regulator – is so often the fall guy for everything that is wrong about the way risk is managed. But last week I heard an anecdote that brought home to me – in an unexpected way – the positive role HSE is playing in building support for a balanced, thoughtful approach to risk in children’s play. I was running a workshop on risk-benefit assessment at a playwork conference, and one of the participants – a manager of an after-school club – shared a revealing story. It begins last September, with a boy breaking a limb.

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Seven principles of playground design

Lion sculpture in Aaholm school playgroundI really appreciate the thoughtful comments to my last post about playground design. It prompted me to summarise my own views in the form of seven design principles (plus an extra one for luck). What do you think of them? Feel free to continue the conversation!

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Whose playground is it anyway?

playground motorbikeAt last September’s Open for Play seminar, London playground designer Jerry Cooper of Theories Landscapes wondered whether there was a danger of losing sight of the child who – he argues – should be at the centre of playground design thinking. “Are we,” he asked, “turning ‘play’, a free-flowing and natural activity, into an adult controlled, designed and spatially confined event in places and ways that are adult-devised, justified and rationalised?” It’s a good question (which Jerry reminded me about in an email exchange last week).

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