Educationalist Sir Ken Robinson, known to millions for his work on creativity in schools, yesterday shared his thoughts on outdoor play.
The 20-minute talk, in a video recorded as part of the Dirt is Good campaign sponsored by Persil (in the UK) and Omo (in many other countries), gives some powerful messages to parents about why play matters for children’s development and learning. This post shares some edited highlights from the talk. You can stream the full talk at the end of the post.
Posted in Child development, Education, Outdoor play, Parenting
Tagged campaign, Dirt is Good, education, outdoor play, parenting, Sir Ken Robinson
I was lucky enough to visit Emdrup – the world’s first adventure playground – on a study visit to Copenhagen in 2003, and I still remember its relaxed, low-tech, quietly self-assured ambience. It would be tantamount to a crime against children’s culture to stand by and see its spirit die as a result of bureaucratic whim.
Emdrup, 2003. Photo credit: Ben Spencer
Please do what you can. You can support the campaign by writing to Dorthe Rasmussen Kjær at dk@rysensteen.dk. More details are in the reblogged post.
You may want to highlight why it matters for children and young people of widely differing ages to be given the chance to play together. US psychologist Peter Gray has good things to say on this [pdf link].
For more on the adventure playground model and the debt it owes to Emdrup, see this 2014 Guardian article.
Hats off to Play England for sharing news of this campaign. And a hat-tip to Alex Smith at Playgroundology for prompting me to include the contact details here.
Please note the title of the blog post that follows has a typo: the correct Danish word is ‘Skrammellegepladsen’ (translation: junk playground).
Source: Save Skrammelselegepladsen i Emdrup | Love Outdoor Play
Posted in Outdoor play, play, Play spaces, playground
Tagged Adventure playground, campaign, Denmark, emdrup, outdoor play, Play England, playwork
Public play facilities have suffered huge cuts in the last 3 years. New data shows that spending by English local authorities fell by nearly 40 per cent between 2010 and 2013. Revenue spending has been even more badly hit, falling by over 60 per cent. As a result, almost one in three councils have closed at least one play facility.
Posted in play, Public policy
Tagged campaign, councils, cuts, local authorities, playwork, public policy
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
Image from parkstarter.com
Have you ever looked at a piece of derelict land in your area and thought “that could make a nice spot for a park” – and then felt your spirit fall as it sits boarded up for years, or worse still, gets turned into a temporary car park? Manchester resident Sam Easterby-Smith has, and has decided to do something about it. He has created Parkstarter: a crowd-funded, pop-up park creation scheme. And he wants to try it out in his home city.
Posted in Public space, Urbanism
Tagged campaign, home zone, Manchester, parks, peak car, urbanism
You may have heard about the battle for Battersea Park Adventure Playground, whose closure was the prompt for an occupation from activists linked to the global Occupy movement. But it is not the only play facility under the cosh.
Rethinking Childhood 