Writing

Blog

“A brilliant blog” Hattie Garlick, The Times, 16 April 2012.

For Tim’s blog posts, head for this website’s home page. Use the ‘search this site’ box, categories and tag links to browse or search. Subscribe using the ‘get new posts by email’ button on the home page to get new posts in your inbox as soon as they are posted. It’s free, and you won’t get any spam. Facebook users can ‘like’ the home page to follow Tim’s Facebook page and join in the conversations with other followers. Follow Tim on Twitter, where he tweets as @timrgill.

Journalism in the Guardian

Between 2004 and 2011 Tim was a regular contributor to the Guardian‘s Comment is free website. Read his views on risk aversion, parents, early education, childhood in the UK, traffic and planning, bullying, adventure playgrounds, vetting and child protection and other topics.

Alongside the above online articles, The Guardian newspaper also published these op-ed comment pieces in its print edition (most are included in Tim’s Comment is Free pages, though not all):

• ‘The end of zero risk in childhood?’ (July 11)
• ‘Cotton wool revolution’ (Oct 07)
• Nature play (Aug 05)
• Children’s moral development (April 05)
• The extinction of the outdoor child (Sept 04)

Selected feature articles

• ‘Coronavirus: Just letting children play will help them, and their mums and dads, cope’, online article in The Conversation, co-authored with Prof Helen Dodd (2020).
• ‘Crucial indicator for a successful, healthy city: children’, opinion piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer (2017)
• 6 top tips for parents, FQ Magazine (2016: summarised here).
• Risk and learning in the early years, Early Years Update magazine, reproduced here (Oct 2010 – subscription or free trial needed).
• Child-friendly neighbourhoods in Children and Young People Now magazine (Jul 2010).
• ‘We don’t need no supervision’ Ode Magazine (Jan 2008; email Tim for the text).
• Comment piece on child safety, Hello! Magazine (Dec 07) (true!)
• Ecologist magazine cover story on outdoor play (Sept 05). An edited version was published in the Independent. An edited version is also included as a chapter in the book Foundations of Playwork.

Selected academic writing & discussion papers

The papers below are open access, unless otherwise stated. I am generally happy to email copies.

• ‘The international certification mechanism of child-friendly cities (communities) and related practices and theoretical developments in Europe and America’ [Mandarin], paper in the Chinese-language journal Urban Planning International, (2021, co-author).
• ‘Living with uncertainty: Building a balanced, thoughtful approach to risk in outdoor play’ in Research Intelligence (journal of the British Educational Research Association) Summer 2021 edition. Closed access.
• Leading editorial for child-friendly cities special issue of Cities & Health (2019, co-author).
• ‘Widening the bandwidth of child-friendly urban planning in cities’
  Short ‘travelogue’ paper in Cities & Health (2019, closed access).
• ‘Designing Cities for Outdoor Play’ 
  Paper in Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development (2019).
• ‘Avoiding a dystopian future for children’s play’
  Paper in International Journal of Play (2019, co-author; email Tim for a copy).
• ‘The Evolution of Policy on Risk Management in Outdoor Play’
  Chapter in The SAGE Handbook of Outdoor Play and Learning (2017).
• ‘A Systematic Review of Research into the Impact of Loose Parts Play on Children’s Cognitive, Social and Emotional Development’
  Paper in School Mental Health (2017).
• ‘Play in the good times: the (English) inside story’
  Paper in International Journal of Play vol 4 issue 3 (2015). Reprinted in the published collection Play and Playwork: Notes and reflections in a time of austerity (Brown F and Wragg M eds, 2018). Closed access.
• ‘The Benefits of Children’s Engagement with Nature: A Systematic Literature Review’
  Paper in Children, Youth & Environments vol 24 issue 2 (2014: on JSTOR).
• ‘Children’s Play Space and Safety Management: Rethinking the Role of Play Equipment Standards’
  Paper for Sage Open (2014: co-author with David Ball, Bernard Spiegal and Harry Harbottle).
• Book Review of Designing for Play (2nd edition) by Barbara Hendricks in Children & Society vol 26 issue 6 (2012).
• Two chapters in The Cat Came As A Tomato, published in 2010 by (and only available from) the South London Gallery. A lightly edited version of the chapter entitled ‘Control and chaos’ is on my website here.
• ‘Risk, resilience and childhood freedoms: A plea for a balanced approach’
  Chapter in Tussen Kind en Samenleving: Over het sociale actorschap van kinderen (Children and Society: On children’s social agency) published by Kind en Samenleving (2010, chapter in English).
• ‘Keeping it Real: Why and how educators should be expanding children’s horizons’
  Chapter in Born Creative, edited by Charlie Tims and published by Demos (2010).
• ‘Space-oriented Children’s Policy: Creating Child-friendly Communities to Improve Children’s Well-being’
  Paper in Children & Society vol 22 issue 2 (2008). Closed access. A shorter version of the paper in the Smith Institute monograph – see below.
• ‘Children’s well-being in a changing world – are services an adequate response?’
  Chapter in Advancing Opportunity: Children, rights and social justice published by the Smith Institute (2007).
• ‘Home zones in the UK: History, policy and impact on children and youth’
  Paper in Children, Youth and Environments vol 16 issue 1 (2006: on JSTOR). Available in English and Japanese (thanks to Kenta Kubo).
• ‘UK Policy on Children: Key themes and implications’
  Paper in Children’s Geographies, vol 4 issue 1 (2006; co-author). Closed access.
• ‘Play, child care and the road to adulthood’
  Policy review paper in Children & Society vol 13 issue 1 (1999). Closed access.
• ‘Home zones’
  Policy review paper in Children & Society vol 11 issue 4 (1997). Closed access.
• Electronic Children: How Children Are Responding to the Information Revolution (editor)
  Edited collection of articles from a 1997 conference organised by the National Children’s Bureau and Children’s Play Council.
• ‘Photographic B-band monitoring of NGC 4151′
  Paper reporting on the variations in electromagnetic spectrum emissions of a Seyfert galaxy (1983). For serious astrophysics nerds only.