Playwork is a practice – an art – in space and time. The role of the community and culture surrounding both the child and the playworker needs to be at the forefront of our discussions regarding the future of our practice now more than ever before, argues Eddie Nuttall.
Click below to hear this article in Eddie’s own words…
“Who is trying to transform, and for what motive? When there is a good fit between who you are and your actual environment then development just seems to happen”
Susanne Cook-Greuter1
“Everything that we are… is reflected in place.”
Alan Moore2
In the walking discipline of a seasoned ‘deep topographer’, or Flaneur as the French would have it, the layers of the city become revealed through a process of immersion with the environment one is passing through. It takes some experience to feel one’s way into the substrate of a place, but the rewards of doing so can be rich: a time before one’s own time can be found alive in that moment, and the echoes of other lives and happenings whisper all around. At times this experience can be almost akin to a mystical encounter that sharply contrasts the mundane; what the everyday world tells us in solid terms about the environment turns out to be a very partial truth at best – the deep layers of our human stories are alive in this very moment in the places where we live and work.
Few of the places I have been a playworker have the kind of layers that Felix Road adventure playground has built up in its half century as a ludic habitat. Firstly, there is the actual physical substrate to the place, which has played an accidental role in its longevity as a community play space. In very simple practical terms, you can’t build houses on it, as there is a very real risk that those houses could disappear down one of the 100-foot mineshafts that lie beneath the topsoil. This has kept the developers away and has allowed time and history to deepen the playground as a project, and coupled with the careful cultural tending it has received over the years, a unique environment has been established; an environment that taught me extraordinary things about both playwork and how people grow and develop in a supportive and rich setting.
PHOTO: “Felix Road Adventure Playground – Your Holiday Hub Bristol”, www.yourholidayhubbristol.co.uk/activity/felix-road-adventure-playground/2022-08-30.
Felix Road’s genesis can be traced to the Winter of 1972, when a young ‘playleader’ by the name of Jenny Evans – fresh from a NPFA3 play leadership course – was offered the opportunity to develop an abandoned plot that had belonged to the coal board and Cowlins into a site for play for the large numbers of local children wandering the streets. A diminutive 20 year old, Jenny describes being distinctly nervous about running the playground at the time, and there were a number of encounters in that first year that would test her resolve, including disturbing a group that had a knife one evening in a dimly lit corner of the site. Through time, Jenny gained the trust and respect of the community, forming a particularly close bond with the younger children in Easton, many of whom were first generation windrush kids or Sikhs that had also come to Britain to help with the on-going postwar reconstruction. As the workers held the space and tended to the environment, a distinct ludic culture began to emerge. Bev Douglas, the daughter of a first-generation Jamaican family that had settled in Easton, describes her personal experience of ‘Ventures at the age of eight:
For me, having an adventure playground nearby meant that I could play freely in my own way, in my own time, with no rules or hierarchy that I had to adhere to. Everyone who played there contributed to the build and shaped the environment according to their own vision. Apart from the playworkers, adults remained absent in our play space, so for me it was special. I was very much a loner outdoors. I loved how the secure environment of the adventure playground made me feel, enjoying my own company as it gave me a feeling of independence and a total sense of freedom. I could also run, jump, crawl and skip around the apparatus, together with other kids, and be as feral as the next one. It was up to me who I gave permission to join me in my little world.
Douglas, B (2021) Cutie. Silverwood
Over the years, the surrounding community would develop a deep affection for this discombobulated and forgotten enclave of post industrial Britain, and would come to play a significant part in the overlaying of a new narrative for the space. Unexpected friendships and alliances would unfold at Felix Road, in a distinctly Bristolian fashion, as the working class white and black residents came into contact with the more bohemian end of Bristol’s cultural scene. Somehow this coupling worked to form an effective relationship; rich in cultural heritage and at once deeply creative and recalcitrant. It is hard to describe the flavour of the environment it gave birth to, but a phrase that might aptly describe Felix Road on a busy day (and ‘busy day’ simply requires an absence of rain) is a carnival of colour and creativity.
From a professional perspective one didn’t have to worry about play much at Ventures. As my old teacher Stuart Lester used to say, ‘if the circumstances are right, playwork is a doddle.’ What he meant by this is that if children have a rich, open-ended, permissive environment to interact with, then a hugely diverse repertoire of play behaviours will bear forth, as surely as a rainbow will shimmer in the air of a sunlit downpour. This was palpably the case during my first school holiday experience as coordinator at the playground; I could barely conceal the grin on my face as I tended to and observed what I could honestly describe as the best play setting I’d ever witnessed in my twenty-some years of playworking. ‘it’s in the bloody brickwork’, I amazed to myself.
Most environments that I had worked in up to my employment at Felix Road were not purposed for play in the first instance, and in many cases they were outright hostile to the free association of children. In my formative playwork years in Manchester I had watched children trying to build dens in a school next to gossamer-thin chain link fencing separating them from an industrial estate; I can recall months spent in church halls and annexed classrooms; I remembered the height restrictions and whitewashed breezeblock interior of my old addy, devoid of artwork or any evidence of children generally – even adventure playgrounds were not exempt from recourse to to the functionalism of the urban environment that lay beyond it’s walls. This was not how it was at Felix Road however. there was an innate understanding that a different configuration of time, space and interaction was necessary there, and this understanding ran deep. It was such a powerful credo that almost everyone that came through the gates could appreciate the logic of the space and the permissions it afforded. The space worked magic upon anyone who entered it.
In such a wonderfully attuned ludic habitat, I had an unprecedented amount of freedom to consider those that were ‘holding the space’ for playing – the playworkers. As well as the obvious requirement for a senior to convene planning and debriefing sessions, I would stand for long periods of time on the structures and watch the adults interacting with the children. Through the seasons I built up a kind of panchromatic picture of their interactions; as much an emotional tapestry as it was a logical or intellectual one. This picture very much informed how I approached my relationship with them both individually and collectively, and served to strengthen that relationship in ways that are perhaps less common in other more hierarchical models of management.
My employment as the coordinator from 2014 to 2022 was as the latest in a long line of ‘seniors’, and anything I could find out about these people deeply interested me. One of the most important instructors I had in this regard was Garfield Martin, who had been the coordinator for many years but had elected to stay on as a playworker when I came in. Garf embodied the historic community for me; he had the kind of open hearted ethic that a thousand training courses could never instil in a person and through his natural disposition to the role he ensured that we all held to the same principles. If we had to bring a group of kids into the office because racist language had been used for example, there was in fact little we need to say to them – they knew that wasn’t the Felix way, and that in the slings and arrows of the kind of hierarchical play that children can and must engage in they knew they had crossed a line.
PHOTO: “Persistence and Change Part 1: Children Play, and Adventure in the Urban Environment – Ludicology.” Ludicology, 14 Mar. 2023, .
Garfield applied this simple approach to other incidents that might have provoked more authoritarian responses in less experienced playworkers. I recall a time during my first year when I was making dinner for the kids in the kitchen, alongside a Roma lad called Dan and a white working class girl called Lacey, who were concurrently running the tuck shop. We were packing away at the end when suddenly Dan exclaimed “she took it, she took it!” Lacey moved quickly towards the door looking distressed, and left. It transpires that she had impulsively pocketed a fiver from the float, and Dan had caught her in the act.
In the debrief at the end, we pondered how to tackle this incident. Garfield was untroubled. “she will bring it back in a couple of days; she knows she did something wrong and from what you are describing it was a reflex thing rather than something she planned.” There was a pause, and Garf smiled. “If you can’t fail at an adventure playground, where can you fail?”
I loved this simple wisdom; it reminded me of the famous Zen story, summarised thus:
“Master, how does one gain enlightenment?”
“Through good judgement.”
“And how does one gain good judgement?”
“Experience.”
“And where can experience be found?
“In bad judgement.”
Two days later Lacey came back with the money. She attended the playground for another five years and went on to become a volunteer for us, completing two weeks work experience at ‘Ventures in 2018. She was a regular visitor until I left last year.
Three brief case studies in a rich community playground and professional development4
Aliya Douglas
Aliya came to work at Felix during my very first holiday. As I remember it she was in her first year of sixth form at the time; I recall a shy and very polite young person who was very popular, particularly with the Roma girls. Her elder brother Joel was also on the team; a quiet, gentle presence who was pursuing separate interests in music, spoken word art and filmmaking5. Aliya was an occasional presence in the Felix Archive of photos, often in close proximity to Carol, a playworker of Caribbean heritage who sadly passed away in 2013 (Aliya had dual Pakistani and Jamaican heritage). Aliya remained a regular on the Felix team for the next eight years. I was privileged to watch her gradually change in this time; to become an articulate woman with a deeply held conviction in social justice.
In Spring of last year, Aliya participated in a project led by The University Of East Anglia that was exploring ‘postcolonial narratives in contemporary Britain’. She had expressed an interest in doing a presentation to the students and I was happy for her to run with it. I got a couple of messages late the night before saying she had finally finished, followed by some exhaustion emojis, but I had little insight into the content of what she was going to present other than it being ‘something about playwork.’
Aliya really took me back with what she brought to that session. She initially gave a whistle-stop of everything I had presented in previous training days at Felix, from enriched environments to The Principles to The Play Cycle. But it was the second part of her presentation that really hit home.
With heartfelt passion and no little emotion, she spoke of how Felix Road had been the only environment outside of home where who she was made total sense and was in turn completely accepted. She explained how her relationship with the playground had helped her to develop the confidence to navigate the challenges she encountered during her schooling, and afterwards, how it had been a key factor in her becoming the woman who she was today. I recall her looking at me at the end and I was fighting back the tears. I felt both proud and honoured to be a witness to what I was hearing and to also have been a witness to part of the journey that Aliya was describing.
A cynical mind might have passed this off as rhetorical hyperbole. Only I knew that Aliya’s experience was genuine and it was by no means an exceptional narrative either.
Julia Grobe
Julia came to stay in Easton in the Winter of 2017. An Erasmus exchange student doing teacher training, Julia had seen our website and liked the look of the place. Julia had no significant adventure play background, though she had visited some of Germany’s playgrounds and had felt drawn to the philosophy.
A committed vegan with connections to the East German punk scene, Julia had a quiet and considered demeanour that combined intriguingly with a subtly animated physical presence. In her teens Julia had been a ballroom dancer, and at 5’ 11” she filled a room, but her gentle nature and quiet emotional intelligence was a perfect counterweight to her physical stature.
Julia stayed with us over Christmas of that year, and spent her days digitally archiving the piles of photographs boxed up on the playground’s mezzanine, then sitting and painting with the kids after school or pottering around outside. She was popular and her gentle, intelligent nature saw her quickly accepted by all the regulars. She internalised the culture of the playground rapidly and in the few short months she was there blossomed into one of the best playworkers I have worked with. I was of the opinion that in another couple of months Julia would have been able to run Felix Road and represent the community admirably.
Playworking in an urban environment isn’t just about sensitivity. You have to have fire and authority at times, and be quick on your feet when things flare up both literally and figuratively, whether that is amongst the children or between a group of parents. Julia really surprised me on this front one afternoon in late January.
During this period we were struggling with a group of 16-18 year olds who had been asked to leave the playground indefinitely for persistent poor conduct and bullying. That afternoon a couple of them were on the site and causing problems – kicking kids off the pool table, getting up in people’s faces and so forth. The group in question had been persistently disrespectful to girls and female playworkers on site. Julia stepped in and was helping to get them off site when one of the older boys, who was known to be especially volatile, grabbed a gardening fork and turned on Julia.
“Do you want me to use this, bitch?” He spat. His stocky, muscular frame added weight to his threat, and I worried what the outcome might be.
Julia held her ground and stood to her full height, towering a full six inches over him.
“Go on then,” she responded, meeting him with a firm gaze. She was nonplussed by his aggression and fearless in her response. The boy put the fork down, and skulked out of the gate.
Marya Kadir
I remember the day Marya came into Felix Road quite vividly. A bundle of energy and enthusiasm, Marya had come to ask about volunteering and it was clear within five minutes that she was going to bring some incredible attributes to the playground; everything about her demeanour said ‘playworker’ to me. She went about talking with the kids straight away and had that kind of ‘sing-song’ cadence in her voice that a lot of playworkers use to such wonderful effect; she made strong and warm eye contact with everyone; she moved playfully.
It was of no surprise to me to find out when we spoke later that she had spent a lot of her childhood on Felix Road after her family settled in Easton after coming to the UK from Kurdistan, and knew Garfield and others from her childhood. She was another clear example of someone that had internalised the culture of the playground to a point that she basically became a playworker in the first moment of returning there.
Marya attended training with us and with BAND6 before the holidays began, and joined us on the team over the summer as a paid worker. In the Autumn she was seconded one day a week to supporting a child with autistic traits who she developed a really trusting relationship with. In the year I left she returned to her career as a physiotherapist but she really enriched Felix Road in the time she was there.
Love merely as the best
James Merrill
There is, and one would make the best of that
By saying how it grows and in what climates…
To say at the end, however we find it, good,
Bad or indifferent, it helps us, and the air
Is sweetest there. The air is very sweet.
Quoted in Gillian, C (2002) The Birth Of Pleasure. Vintage.
As precious as these spaces are, adventure playgrounds are sadly by no means sacrosanct in the urban landscape. As well as the hundreds that have foreclosed over the last seventy years, the importance of the adventure playground community in holding the space is not always well understood by those operating in the organisational context outside of the participating community, and that this sometimes partial understanding of the environment can be exacerbated by spacial factors as cities shift and community infrastructure is regenerated, reimagined and repackaged to encourage those with greater financial resources into an area. I have witnessed more than once the ownership of an adventure playground drifting away from the community of children and parents and towards the more removed and less situated designs of the organisation (or organisations) that maintains the space, and away from notions of freely chosen play towards assumed ideas of neoliberal citizenship or socialisation. All of this represents a paradigm shift from a response-based ethic as adult custodians of the established ludic culture (in essence, in service of the children and their playing) to a more institutionally focussed narrative that will default to shaping the space around the prevailing memes of the funding climate; where play happens alongside the main organisational imperatives; where children are ‘active citizens’ or ‘green ambassadors’ or ‘learners’ or ‘young consultants.’ The stories that are held by the community and the space itself are slowly eclipsed (if not co-opted) by the earnest narratives of progress and utility that are so ingrained in our society yet are in fact in contradistinction to the foundational narratives of playwork and the simple right all children should have to environments for play and free expression.
When we muse about the future of adventure playground communities in all of this, it can be useful to our resolve to think of the village in the broadest sense that we possibly can, in the light of the sad truth that a great many of these historic spaces have come to pass, or shifted in purpose, orientation and function. We have to counter what the English mathematician Alfred North Whitehead called ‘the fallacy of simple location’7. At its most fundamental level, the adventure playground and its community exists as a shared emotional notion between individuals that have the intention to hold a space for children to play within. Over time the community grows around this idea, like the accretion of planets around a host star, and the foundational precepts of the space become established by the good intentions of that community – to create and maintain a space for children to express themselves freely. That such spaces have been able to hold their ground in the cities of the United Kingdom and mainland Europe for over seventy years is an astonishing testament to the persistence of the human spirit in the face of the expansion of capital and the huge changes to urban environments that have occurred in that time.
The places that we play have a huge influence on the kind of humans that we become. For those of us that are playworkers this is a particularly pertinent truism. It is vital that we do not lose sight of the need to hold spaces for children in the difficult years that exist ahead of us, and in the many ways we as a society are called to do so: to rewild, to lobby and campaign, to demand, to occupy, to provoke. Those that undertake these tasks are playworking, even if they do not self-identify with the hitherto vocational title of ‘playworker’. We must take the village forth into our communities and cities and become the change that we want to see for our children.
- Quoted in an interview at the Integral Experience Conference, Asilomar, California, 2009. See Cook-Greuter S (2004) Making the Case for a Developmental Perspective. Industrial & Commercial Training Volume 36 – Number 7 – 2004:275-281 Emerald group Publishing ISSN 0019- 7858 ↩︎
- From the John Rogers short film Unearthings ↩︎
- NPFA was the national Playing Fields Association (now Fields In Trust), a charity set up to promote accessible spaces for play, sport and recreation, and an early sector skills provider for play leaders – the older term for a playworker between the late 1940’s and early 1970’s ↩︎
- These case studies and further examples will be explored in a forthcoming co-authored book on adventure playgrounds, children’s agency and urbanism. ↩︎
- Aliya and Joel are Niece and nephew to Bev Douglas, the aforementioned author of Cutie. ↩︎
- Bristol Area Neighborhood Daycare provide training for plaworkers local to the city. ↩︎
- Quoted in Santos, F., Sia, S. (2007). The Fallacy of Simple Location and the Ontologies of Substance and Event. In: Personal Identity, the Self, and Ethics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. ↩︎
The Playwork Foundation 