SAVE THE DATE! 🗓️ The next Open Meeting of @PlayworkF will be 14/10/22. We want to give playworkers, wherever they are in the world, the chance to share their memories of Summer 2022. Join @pennywilson this coming Monday to find out more!https://t.co/b3n58QaZsspic.twitter.com/IphD41LSZf
Tomorrow is set to be a bumper election day in Great Britain!
In England alone, there will be local council elections, mayoral elections, Mayor of London elections, London Assembly elections and Police & Crime Commissioner* elections. Some of these are elections that were postponed in 2020 due to the outbreak of COVID-19.
*Police & Crime Commissioner elections will also be taking place in Wales. Did you know that Wales and England share a single jurisdiction but have two legislatures? Something unique in the world.
As if that wasn’t enough elections for one day, there will also be a Senedd Cymru/Welsh Parliament election and a Scottish Parliamentary election. This article will look at the Senedd elections – fellow Trustee, Ann-marie, has written a piece on the Scottish Parliamentary election which you can read here. If you’re unfamiliar, this short video explains the powers of the Senedd.
This year’s Senedd election is nothing short of historic! Thanks to the ‘Senedd Election Act 2020’, 16 and 17 year-olds will be able to vote for the first time as well as an estimated 33,000 foreign nationals gaining the right to vote – this represents the biggest expansion of the franchise since 1969, when suffrage was extended to 18 to 21 year-olds, and will undoubtedly impact on the results of the election.
So, what do the parties say about play and playwork for #Senedd2021?
Whilst a number of parties have progressive manifesto promises for children and young people, only the Wales Green Party and Welsh Liberal Democrats specifically reference “play”, albeit in the context of early years education in both cases. Questions to Plaid Cymru leader, Adam Price, on play, also returned responses linking to education and early years. Despite no mention of it in their manifesto, it could be argued that, as it was a Welsh Labour Government that produced The Children and Families (Wales) Measure 2010, that gave us the Play Sufficiency Duty, and their record in supporting play in recent years, that Labour will likely continue this commitment.
Whatever the party-political make-up of the new Welsh parliament and government next week, a number of organisations have made it clear to all of them what they believe should be done to protect the rights of children in Wales, including their right to play.
First, we look at our national play board, Play Wales, and their manifesto “Wales – a play friendly place”. The headline asks are for the continuation of the Play Sufficiency Duty and for the opportunities for children to play to “increase and improve”. The dominance of the motor vehicle is addressed, with recommendations for default 20mph speed limits in built-up areas and government-mandated guidance for street play projects. Looking at schools, Play Wales propose a mandatory minimum time for “play breaks” within the school day and also ask for consideration, wherever practical, to making outdoor school grounds available for play after school and at weekends. Play Wales also call for a public campaign that not only explains what play is but also communicates the health and wellbeing benefits for children and wider society.
The Children’s Commissioner for Wales’s Manifesto briefly mentions play, asking for “more youth and play services that anyone can use, for free”. However it does go a little further by giving a vision of the future with “free adventure playgrounds all over the country”! This year will see the end of the current Commissioner’s tenure – we hope that the next Commissioner will be just as welcoming to play and playwork as Sally has been.
Clybiau Plant Cymru Kids’ Club appear to be the only organisation making very specific representations on behalf of playworkers. Specifically, they call for: the “continued investment in professionalisation of the sector” via funding, CPD and access to training and qualifications; recognition of playworkers’ influence on children’s lives and the Welsh economy to be “recognised in all government communications and policy decisions”; parity with Early Years workers through an “active and effective sector skills council”; and a call for more initiatives that support fair remuneration for playworkers (e.g. tax-free childcare, the childcare offer and 100% rates relief).
The Play Sufficiency Duty and legislation like the world-first Well-being of Future Generations Act, are indicative of how progressive governments can make a real difference to children and young people’s lives in a meaningful and sustainable way and on a national scale. However, any incoming Welsh Government will still be restricted by the allocation of funding set by the UK Government and by the reservation of powers over aspects of media, health and safety legislation, employment and regulation of charities.
In the coming months, The Playwork Foundation will be revisiting ‘A Manifesto for Play: Policy proposals for children’s play in England’ that was written in partnership with Play England and IPA England ahead of the 2019 UK General Election. Taking into consideration the composition of the new parliaments and governments in Wales and Scotland following national elections, and the shifting of the political map in England as a result of local elections, we hope to present a vision for the future of playwork that can influence and encourage each nation of the UK to not only recognise the profession but utilise our expertise and practice to the benefit of children and young people in every corner of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
If you’re living in Wales and wondering who to vote for, the BBC have put together this guide, or, for those in Scotland and England voting this Thursday, you can find out about all the elections, candidates and parties by visiting https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/
The All Wales Playworkers Forum has been running since 2007. Orginally established by Play Wales to provide a forum for those working in adventure playgrounds it has evolved to meet the needs of the sector. The Playworkers Forum is run by a dedicated steering group of playworkers, for playworkers. In the past a number of regional play associations took it in turns to administer the event with our collective aim being to keep the costs as low as possible, whilst bringing as many playworkers as possible together to share information, network and recharge our batteries. More recently, with the sad closure of the vast majority of the regional associations, Play Wales have taken over administration of the event on behalf of the sector, with the steering group working hard to keep things fresh and exciting for all participants from year to year.
Over the years we have toured around Wales, from as far south as the Gower Peninsula to as far north as Hawarden. We’ve made temporary homes in orchards, willow globes and big tops and generally we have almost always had the weather on our side. Anyone who’s ever attended will be fully aware of how much of a special event it has become in the playwork calendar. As our infrastructure has changed here in Wales, the forum has also been opened up to anyone from across the UK and it has brought playworkers together to share their unique experiences and support each other. The event has always been an overnighter, with participants camping out under the stars and often sat up into the small hours gazing at the glowing embers of our fire and putting the world to rights.
Over the years we’ve been lucky to attract some of the best playwork trainers, speakers and academics and they have all really helped to make the event what it is. We tend to have a blend of theoretical and practical sessions, normally focussed around an emerging or current hot topic. One of the annual highlights is without a doubt the ‘Annual Playwork Games’ hosted by Martin King-Sheard. Two teams of goblins and elves compete in a head to head to find out who will be crowned champions for the year ahead.
This years event was somewhat different from previous years, due to the lockdowns that sadly made meeting in person impossible. Instead, to ensure that we maintained continuity we all came together on 24th June 2020 for an online book club that was organised and facilitated by Play Wales. It was so much of a success that they are now continuing these for free as a monthly professional development opportunity for play and playwork professionals in Wales. Each month they select a freely available online paper, article or other publication relating to play and playwork for you to read and then you can join an hour’s discussion and reflection on the content. All Book Club meetings are held on the Zoom online meeting platform. More information is available here.
In the first book club, participants discussed the Play Wales guidance paper ‘dynamic risk management of common but potentially hazardous play behaviours’. This paper was written by Mike Barclay, Dave Bullough and Simon Bazley. The paper is available for free download here.
The event was facilitated by Martin King-Sheard and Marianne Mannello from Play Wales, who also ran a ‘Q and A’ session with one of the papers authors, Simon Bazley. The successful event was then followed by an online version of the playworker games where contestants competed to find out who would be crowned champions for 2020. It was a close call with competitors racing around their houses to undertake a series of challenges and games. In the end the mighty elves came through victorious once again, just beating the goblins in the last game.
Anyone interested in attending future events should keep an eye out on the Play Wales website as we hope to be back to meeting in person once again in 2021 if local and national restrictions allow.
Adele Cleaver trained as a playworker in Birmingham back in 2010. She calls herself “a nomadic Brummie” who after dabbling in playful adventures and community work in Leeds, London and Birmingham and Ghana, Portugal, Brazil, Uganda and Kenya now resides in Bournemouth on the south coast of England with her 4-year-old daughter and husband.
In November 2019 she started writing her first book which she describes as a part-memoir, part-manifesto on living a life full of play. She writes “accidentally stumbling into playwork was going to be the best voyage I was ever going to embark on”. We asked her a few questions about her playwork journey.
How did you become a playworker?
I think I was born a playworker. It just took me a long time to realise my way of being could also be a profession. My home was like a free play environment; a laidback pair of almost hippies for parents with 4 children, over 12-year age gap each with their respective friends over to play, and a multicultural backdrop beyond our doorstep. My mom was a teacher though openly criticised “the system” and longed for the 6 weeks holidays and my dad worked in Social Inclusion for the NHS so I was brought up to live inclusively, be weary of hierarchy and play freely. I went to the University of Leeds to study International Development because when I was 18 I naively thought I could save the world. I moved back to Birmingham and worked at a local youth project as a Youth Worker where I bumped into Laura Watts one of the radical women who founded Dens of Equality. She worked in the building next door, and took me under her wing because the youth project just wasn’t rebellious enough for me. After a few months of bid-writing and setting up family-led play projects around Birmingham, Laura sent me off to play with Ali Wood and Sue Smith and they turned me into a proper playworker with a capital P and a certificate to prove it.
Are you working on a play project in Bournemouth?
Yes, currently myself; I am my own play priority! The first few years of motherhood and juggling the chaos that a tiny new life brings reminded me that I needed to play more. Playful parents breed playful children so I’ve been prioritising us at home.
But even before motherhood, I took a rest from play when we moved out of London in 2014; not intentionally but because playworker jobs didn’t seem to exist down here. I needed work, couldn’t afford to be fussy so without giving it much thought ditched the play. I was an Autism Support Worker for a few years before I had my daughter and always tried to work more playfully, but there was no real understanding of play in the organisations I worked for. I felt I had become very institutionalised so I contacted The Prince’s Trust and set up a greetings card business with their support to learn new skills and feed my own creativity.
When I was pregnant we very almost moved to Bristol because I knew we could live more playfully there as a new family but I had fallen in love swimming in sea at the end of our road. So we stayed put and have started rooting here. I often described Dorset as a “play desert”. Apart from Fernheath Play as the little oasis, there isn’t much opportunity for playwork here. After I had my daughter I did Admin at a creative youth project locally in Bournemouth. I could see the glaringly obvious gap in the service provision; these young people weren’t accessing community play as children so they were being referred to us through CAMHS because there are no early intervention projects. I couldn’t handle office work so I left and decided to focus on building up Play here.
So now I am setting up, very slowly, a Community Interest Company called Real Playful. I am running a series of Family Nature Play sessions in collaboration with a local community garden this winter. I am super excited that so many families local to Boscombe are interested; all the workshops were fully booked within days. Then my next big job is to source playful people and train them up as playworkers so I am currently completing a very tedious application for employability funding. I’m really just relying on my book to become an international bestseller (any agents reading, please call me!!), I’ll be made a millionaire overnight and voila! I can fund all sorts of magical community play projects here, there and everywhere.
Where is your favourite place to play?
Hmmm, it varies. This year I have really genuinely loved being at home, playing in my PJs, all day with my daughter. Lockdown was good for us in that sense because I am a sociable being, and I like to be out and about, but the unstructured, timeless play got priority over my need to be with people. I thoroughly enjoyed being locked away in our own little adventure playground; it was necessary escapism! But if you’d asked me last year I would have said outdoors in the community. Big outdoor community play, mixed ages, multigenerational, loads of loose parts, street closures of festivals of play, neighbours laughing together, cups of tea being brought out onto the doorstep. I love the big colourful pop up play sessions I used to create with Parks 4 Play in Birmingham. It was physically demanding work, lugging tonnes of resources around Kings Heath park but it was so magical. That’s the sort of play I want to bring to Boscombe.
Where do you play outdoors?
Well we don’t have much of a garden except a little front hedge area which is big enough for a mud kitchen and my bicycle. I am not complaining, we live opposite a small charismatic Victorian park and 800m from the beach! 9 miles of glorious sand and a view over to the Purbeck Hills. I’ve always lived in cities and this is the closest I have ever lived to nature; life is good here even though I can only experience vibrant community play in my imagination…. I must remind myself that good things come to those who experience vibrant community play in their imagination!
I still really love going back to Brum and playing in my parent’s overgrown garden when I played as a child. I’m a proper city kid through and through, in terms of my exposure to diversity, multiculturalism and the arts, but I played and played and played in that garden and have a lot of happy memories. For as long as I remember my parents have fixed everything, and kept things ‘just in case they will be useful to fix other things….’ so their garden has always been full of loose parts. It is great, but also kind of a strange time-warp-come-parallel-universe to see my daughter explore freely with all the random stuff I did thirty years earlier.
If you could live in any era, when would you choose?
When people could play and cycle out on the roads without it being dangerous. I joined the Playing Out Activator group at the start of the year, just before lockdown and was so excited to hear of all these communities regularly playing out. And then through lockdown I was campaigning for “Quiet Streets” to be our “legacy of lockdown” in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP Council) but Highways wouldn’t give us permission. It is so frustrating; without much publicity over 30 residents had expressed an interest, around 10 streets had self-organised stewards, signs and safety kits, but the powers-at-be just wouldn’t give the green light. It is so obvious to me that community playfulness is good for everyone; my council don’t use the same glasses I do.
What is your favourite word?
I am a linguist so I have 3! In English “Chaos”. Quelquefois (French for “sometimes”) and Bochechas (“cheeks” in Portuguese).
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Ohhh good question! An author, an artist and an architect. I think I’m almost there. I have just finished my first book, just need to get it published to make me a “real author”. Everyone is an artist, and those with confidence capitalise the A to make them official Artists and I build splendid dens so I guess that makes me an Architect. If I could go back to university I would definitely study urban design, architecture or planning; something to build more community play spaces in cities. Maybe I will go back to university…. Who knows?!
Finally, tell us a little bit about your book.
It is a part-memoir, part-manifesto about prioritising playtime for new parents and gifting our children unstructured family time. I write from my heart about inclusion, playful encounters in playwork settings, my own childhood play, playful parenting in Cuba and Montreal, miscarriage and multiculturalism.
Connect with Adele
therealplayfulmama@gmail.com
Facebook – Real Playful – Pop Up Community Play
Instagram the_real_playful_mama
Twitter @Adeleplayworker
And if you have any connections to the literary world please help her to circulate her proposal!
Jackie Boldon, a new trustee of the Playwork Foundation, describes some of the different ways that organisations in the North East have responded to children’s need and right to play in Newcastle and North Tyneside:
Elswick Lamp Post Play Project
Playworkers from Play in Newcastle ran multiple projects across Newcastle in different school and community venues this summer, funded by the Department of Education’s Fit and Fed initiative through Street Games. In Elswick, the Play in Newcastle playworkers ran an estate based “Lamp Post Play Project”, with games, creative activities, dance and challenges over 7 Wednesdays of the summer holidays. On week one, the playworkers were shocked by the huge amounts of litter and fly-tipping which was seen as a barrier to children’s outdoor play. With a bit of pressure, the Council carried out a “clean up”, which was greatly appreciated by all residents and enabled children living on the estate to play safely outdoors every day. All the children who engaged with the Lamp Post Play project received a backpack with activity cards and play resources to provide them with new play ideas over the summer. (These can be found here)
The children had great fun and parents and grandparents were very appreciative of the Lamp Post Play Project. The playworkers have been asked to set up a year-round kids club. The project was supported by Hawthorn School, West End Schools Trust, Sussed and Able and the West End Children’s Community.
YMCA Lamp Post Play Project
A second Lamp Post Play Project was run by the YMCA in North Tyneside. With BBC Children in Need funding, children who would have attended a school-based after school and holiday club were offered creative play activities on their doorstep. Children were desperate for someone new to talk to and to support their play and parents were very grateful for the respite. The scheme ran for 4 weeks.
As soon as World War Two broke out, YMCAs developed mobile canteens to bring refreshments to the troops. In the same spirit, YMCA North Tyneside is now doing its bit to help bring a little joy to children’s lives during the Covid 19 crisis. During the lockdown, many children have been confined to their homes and denied access to their friends. Even now, it is still difficult for many organisations to open their doors to children to enable them to meet and play. So, in order to combat this, YMCA North Tyneside, funded by Children in Need and inspired by Jackie Bolden has decided to take their play provision to the children’s door steps. Adhering to social distancing requirements, YMCAs play workers, armed with their box of tricks, present themselves at door steps. They then engage children in a range of fun and creative activities. After an hour or so, they then move on to another door step and so on.
‘The response has been fantastic. The children have loved the activities on their doorsteps and it has been heartening to hear them talk about their lock down experiences. Equally, parents have welcomed the play workers presence and have urged them to return’
— Don Irving, Youth and Play Manager YMCA North Tyneside.
‘The doorstep sessions that the YMCA have been running are amazing. The children always look forward to Carlie and Demi from the YMCA arriving. My children are so proud of the various things they make and cant wait to the next time the workers come back. (Mr Roy Oliver…parent)
A comment from one of the children from another family referring to the YMCA workers: –
‘We have interesting chats and they listen to my feelings. They make us laugh and cheer us up…its great
(Sophie aged 10)
Another parent;- Leigh Johnson says‘ My children really looked forward to the YMCA workers coming to see the girls. They sit at the bottom of the front garden and take part in the activities. As well as the company, they chat about the lockdown period and what it has meant to them’
Benwell Playful Lives Project – Newcastle
Children in the Benwell area of Newcastle have been supported by a team of playworkers from the regional charity – Children North East to play outside their own homes over the summer, in family bubbles for 45 minute long free play session. Some children benefitted from as many as 6 sessions over 4 weeks of the school holidays. The children and parents had great fun inventing imaginary games and engaging in all types of play. This pilot project was supported by the Extended Schools Officer from Bridgewater School who coordinated the referral process and was funded through Street Games by the Department of Education. Jackie Boldon from Sussed and Able provided playwork training and advice. See the full story here
The Power of Playful Lives
Three-year-old Lyla is waiting in anticipation for our Playful Lives project workers, Lorna and Paula and student social worker, Lauren, to turn up.
It’s an overcast day but this hasn’t dampened anyone’s enthusiasm. As soon as the team walk through the garden gate, Lyla and her two brothers, Joseph, six and Thomas, five, run up to them shouting suggestions of what to play first.
The boys can’t wait to play tag whilst Lyla, full of bounce, heads for the trampoline with Lauren, It’s a welcome break for their mam, Lisa, who admits she finds keeping three children under six entertained 24/7 a bit of a stretch.
“Playful Lives has been great because the children have had no interaction with anyone other than me,” says Lisa, who is a teaching assistant at a local school.
I love them and they love me but they must be sick of me by now! Just the fact that there’s three extra pairs of hands here today – even for just half an hour to an hour – it’s brilliant.
The family has been shielding since March and the start of the Coronavirus lockdown due to Joseph’s asthma. “We’ve actually only been out three times since the 17 March,” Lisa says.
The last time the Playful Lives team was here, they used old cardboard boxes to make a pirate ship with the children. This session has a loose theme of ‘physical play’ so it’s running round the garden playing tag and hide and seek.
Playful Lives is a new Children North East project and part of Newcastle City Council’s Best Summer Ever, a holiday activity scheme aimed at supporting the city’s five to 18-year-olds during the school holidays. Our charity is working closely with the West End Schools Trust, a charitable educational trust formed by eight primary schools, and other partners to create a multi-agency Children’s Community in this part of the city. There’ll also be an ongoing research element to the work overseen by Newcastle University. Schools like Bridgewater Primary have recommended families who feel they could benefit from the Playful Lives project to engage with our team.
Andrew and Shirley’s family have also enjoyed the project. They have two daughters, Maddison, who’s nine and Tamzin, ten. “This has kept the kids really entertained and they look forward to them coming,” Shirley says.
On the day we visit, it’s tanking down with rain so Andrew has put up a big family tent on ground next to their house. Tamzin, who is being assessed for an attention deficit disorder, loves messy play so Lorna suggests making ‘mud paint’ and Tamzin gets set digging a hole. “We like to demonstrate that it doesn’t have to cost lots of money to keep children occupied and engaged,” Lorna explains.
Whilst Maddison experiments with coloured painting inside the tent, Tamzin makes mud handprints before persuading mam to have her hands and face painted – with mud!
Andrew stands by enjoying the spectacle. “I was into everything like this when I was young – mud fights and making dens with cut grass. The street was full of kids. I don’t think kids get the chance to use their imagination so much any more because they’re so used to the electronic age. So things like Playful Lives is great with people like yourselves coming out and showing that they can get involved.”
Playful Lives worker, Paula, who, along with other Playful Lives staff, benefited from training with a freelance playwork specialist, Jackie Boldon, says the project has been a big hit with families this summer.
Playful Lives has given children the opportunity to engage in different activities together as a family whilst having fun in a safe environment. The interaction with different people – our team members – has had a positive effect on helping the children with their transition back to school and it has decreased isolation for the families by giving them something to look forward to outside of the family home.
Following the success of the first Playwork in Progress online reflective practice session, we’re back with the 2nd session on Monday 31st August, 2 – 3pm.
This is a chance for playworkers from across the UK (and, who knows, beyond!) to come together and share their experiences of playwork in this “new normal”, the barriers you face, and your plans for the future.
(Spaces are limited so please make sure you let us know if you book a place and are subsequently unable to attend).
We recognise that this may not be the most convenient day and time for everyone so we’re planning for future sessions already. To have your say, please complete one of the following surveys:
If you attended the first session please complete this survey.
If you’ve not been able to join us but would like to in the future, please complete this survey.
To keep up with the conversation, please like the public Facebook Page (and follow ‘Playwork in Progress’ on Instagram and Twitter.
This is open to both members and non-members of The Playwork Foundation, so please feel free to share this post with any of your playwork colleagues who may be interested in taking part.
The cautious optimism among play advocates in recent weeks, that the Covid-19 pandemic may lead to a fundamental re-evaluation of what is most important for children, their families, and communities, was given a cold reality check on Sunday, when the UK’s most progressive mainstream newspaper, the Guardian/Observer, dedicated its entire editorial to an 8-point ‘manifesto for children’ without once mentioning their need to play. It is an illustration (again) of how lowly children’s own priorities are within the national debate about what is best for them.
At the start of the lockdown nobody was too surprised, in the circumstances, that the government’s response to an open letter from more than 40 play researchers, practitioners, and advocates asking for ‘clear advice’ about outdoor play, merely reiterated that we all must ‘focus on preventing the spread of Covid-19 (and) protecting the most vulnerable in society’. When the government’s only other stated priority was ‘offering support to those impacted by social-distancing, including companies and employees’, it was clear that the sudden constraints on space and opportunity for children to play was not going to be even a secondary issue for ministers.
‘There is little evidence that children’s profound need to play has received any more consideration. How lowly their own priorities are within the national debate about what is best for them’.
Now, as we move towards a substantial easing of the lockdown, these fears are born out. Children’s profound need to play has received little or no consideration from the government.
Researchers concerned
Some eminent researchers, including the ‘Play First’ alliance, have expressed serious concerns about the effect that a lack of play opportunities is having on children’s mental health, and called on the government to ease lockdown ‘in a way that provides all children with the time and opportunity to play with peers, in and outside of school … even while social distancing measures remain in place’. Others have specifically called for a nationwide plan to repurpose residential streets for play during lockdown and beyond.
The four national UK play organisations have endorsed a report from the Play Safety Forum calling for the government’s approach to be ‘urgently reviewed’ on the basis that the current policy ‘completely ignores’ the benefits of outdoor play to children (especially at a time of stress and uncertainty), while the risks of infection are ‘very low’.
Strong words
These are strong words, and necessarily so. The government in Westminster has indeed ignored children’s play as a policy issue ever since it first came to power on 2010, in spite of long recognising it as such. Having abandoned the Play Strategy for England, it believes local authorities should make their own policies for play, but has starved them of the cash that most of them would need to do anything meaningful, at the same time as deregulating both planning and childcare in ways that relegate children’s play to the status of an optional extra.
‘For children the overwhelming priority is playing with their friends’.
Now, however, would be the moment to think again. Millions of parents, teachers and children are stressed, tired and seriously unhappy after a full term-and-a-half trying to keep up with the curriculum via variable on-line platforms and ad hoc home-schooling, without receiving any of the ‘softer’ benefits of being part of the school community. For children this overwhelmingly means playing with their friends.
The government has announced a ‘Covid catch-up’ package for primary and secondary schools to support children returning to school in September to recover lost ground, and has also said that providers running holiday clubs and activities for children over the summer holiday will be able to open ‘if the science allows’ (although the guidance on this seems to be delayed). The relative importance attached to these two measures? £1 billion is allocated to the former, zero to the latter, which is conceived primarily as a service to parents – who will no doubt have to cover the cost themselves. For many, many children – the same children for whom the £1b catch-up fund is designed – this will mean summer play schemes are unaffordable. In turn, many independent providers will be unable to operate – which puts an additional pressure on schools, just as they need the mother of all breaks.
A play recovery fund
The answer is obvious. A discreet ‘play recovery’ fund should be established, in consultation with the play and playwork sectors, to enable non-school based holiday play schemes to be offered free of charge in the areas that will need them most. And the government should also talk to Playing Out, its network of street play activators, and the growing number of local authorities who now support temporary street closures for play, to consider an expanded national programme of street play sessions over the summer.
Some will think such an idea cavalier: that children’s outdoor play is simply too random and chaotic to observe any kind of public health protocols, even with the distancing requirements relaxed. But even if the Play Safety Forum’s persuasive risk-benefit assessment is disregarded, the government should know that the playwork field is highly professional, and always resourceful. Whatever the safety measures might need to be, no one will be better at engaging with children to follow them than playworkers.
Playwork responds to the crisis
For a field seriously depleted after 10 years of austerity, deregulation, and (in England) policy neglect, the field rallied well to respond to the crisis – in spite of some of its fundamental tenets seeming completely untenable in a public health emergency that demands distance, isolation, and regimentation. Playwork practitioners and advocates have offered timely guidance on how to sustain play opportunities through the lockdown, including playing at home. Adventure playgrounds have reached out to offer relational space and support to communities whose physical playgrounds were closed, and some practitioners have given new meaning to the term face-to-face playwork by taking it to the online platforms with which we are all now so familiar.
Play England and the great playwork theorist, Bob Hughes, have set out some wise words and good practical advice on ‘Play after Lockdown’. But first, in this time of national crisis, with families desperately needing a break before a return to the new normal – many of them unable to go away because of increased job insecurity or unemployment – the country needs the play sector to step up and do what it does best: give our kids space and support to have a good time. From within the billions that this terrible pandemic has cost the economy, is a few million for a well-deserved and badly needed Summer of Play, too much to expect? At the very least, the Observer should include it in its manifesto.
General Public’s Oral Histories has launched part one of it’s Let Us Play project, an investigation of the ‘state of play’ today. Initially this involves the collation of an archive of material to capture the Birmingham adventure playground movement of the 1960-1980’s (funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund).
This will be followed by a wider ‘live period’ of events and exhibitions in 2021/22. This has been initiated through an Arts Council R&D grant. This has seen the development of a new piece of moving image work, a Sparkbrook adventure playground digital trail/app, mapping of play in the city from the 1960’s through to the present day, collaborations with academics at UoB and developing a series of creative play weeks/exhibitions in close proximity to the old playground sites.
Penny Wilson tells the story of how her innovative public space play project in London’s famous Kings Cross development has moved on-line … without losing any of its ‘crazy flavour’
Playkx was designed as a play offer in the Kings Cross development area that was not a built play environment. Instead of timber or steel structures there is a team of experienced and skilled playworkers, and a vast collection of loose parts; playthings to be used in any way that children need. There are dressing up clothes, masks nets, ropes fabrics, blocks, animal creatures, artificial plants and flowers, all of which can be used for dressing up, the construction of a den, sociodramatic playing of the creation of wild and wonderful fantasy worlds. Nothing is fixed. Everything is flexible.
We were quite careful in those days of another age, to clean and wash and launder and disinfect on a regular basis. The whole-head pigeon mask could be worn by 20 or 30 people a day. Nobody batted an eyelid. The Imagination Playground blocks were chewed by many teething people, handled by hundreds of children and adults from families from all over the world who had never met before and never would again. We cuddled and tickled and tagged and lifted up and swung around children…. these are things of a faraway time. How unthinkable they seem now.
Visitors
We counted our visitors, adults and children alike. Each day our numbers increased. In the winter, when we had access to a large covered space, our highest head count was about 650 people a day. Outdoors in the parks, numbers were harder to gauge. Families spent the day, often when they expected to visit for only 20 minutes or so. They would bring picnics and birthday parties and meet up with friends and the grown-ups would behave as if they were beside the sea, lounging back, relaxing together and keeping an eye on the children as they got on with their own playing.
We made a point of saying hello to the adults and making sure everyone had enough water, watching their playing children with them, listening to them, marvelling at the unfolding play. Very often they hadn’t stepped back to watch this before. It was an easy step, which they made themselves, to an understanding that what they were seeing was important and seemed magical and that if they as adults interfered with it, the spell could easily be broken. So yes. We counted both children and adults in our numbers. When we gave out stickers, we gave them also to grown ups … ‘after all the children wouldn’t be here without you!’
The adults became advocates for the free playing of their children … that’s how you build change.
Unlike a great many play projects, our funder agreed to pay us for our work to continue throughout the period of isolation. The deal was that we continue to provide a play experience and some online resource, which, just like our play sessions, would be free to use and ‘have the same crazy flavour as the PlayKX we have come to know.’ This was far from being a hardship to us. In fact, I suspect that it has proved to be not only a financial lifeline, but a sanity clause.
Going live
So within days of the closing of our solid world play provision PlayKX went live with a zoom presence. It was, I suppose, an obvious solution. We have 5000 Instagram supporters, most of whom are families who have used our playtimes. A fair percentage of those families are regular visitors, who live or work in the King’s Cross area. Most others visit us from around London. Some from much further afield.
Somehow we ended up being slightly ahead of the game and had worked out that the changes that were coming were going to turn our play world upside down. We had also managed to work out a few ways to continue. Some of our plans fell by the wayside, some may be used in later phases of our life with isolation. However we spent a few days working out how to use this new Zoom thing, and were ready to start offering online play sessions without missing a single scheduled time slot for our project delivery. We were seamless. So we sat, like swans, trying to reinvent the way in which we delivered our playwork. Calm and carefree on the surface, head and shoulders serene and elegant, gliding like the proverbial swan, with the frantic panic and uncertainty out of the sight of the camera.
We have limited technology in our homes, working from iPads or lap tops; the bigger gatherings possible through Zoom and other platforms, were beyond us at first, and to be honest, being limited to nine busy play-filled windows on a screen was challenging enough. It is surprisingly exhausting.
We agreed on some basic safeguarding measures. Participation to a play session is by parental request and booking through messages on our Instagram account. Then individual invitations are sent to those parents. No one can join a play session without an invitation, unless we are hacked. In case of this happening the host closes down the whole session immediately. We sometimes message parents to check in that everything is ok after session if the child seemed out of sorts, or to tell them how brilliant … or to say “thank you”.
Tips for parents
We hide anything in our homes that can identify our location or personal things we do not want to share. We advise parents to be mindful of this too. Parents are given a few hints about how to make it easier for the child to participate:
Put your child’s name in the tag in the bottom corner of the screen so we all know who we are playing alongside.
Don’t have private phone conversations during the Zoom call.
Don’t have music playing as it is distracting to the sound balance and priorities for quieter children’s play.
Try not to urge the child to play – let them watch and they can grow into it if they choose.
We make sure that we have a 10 minute, 5 minute and 2 minute countdown to the end of the session and a clear and deliberate greeting and leave taking wave. A small ritual, but it helps.
We agreed that the online work would be grounded in the Playwork Principles, of course. But children were bemused by seeing familiar faces stuttering and freezing in separate little boxes like so many Max Headrooms. So, in truth were we. We had to devise new ways of presenting play to enable us all to get beyond the screen.
It was obvious that we needed to be more obvious, a more exaggerated version of our usual playing selves. Yet it was also clear that less is more. The cartoon exaggerations that are needed to communicate to children on screens that falter and sound that is delayed, can be overwhelming and crudely crafted, lending even the most accomplished and subtle of playwork practitioners the gaucherie of a 70s Saturday morning children’s TV host.
We thought about muting participant screens, but the ability to unmute by the children and the process that they would have to go through to recognise that they wanted to make a deliberate spoken contribution seemed untenable. Instead we prefer to play almost silently ourselves responding to cues.
Backdrop
We needed to think very carefully about our personal backdrop, about camera angles, how we used sound and movement, our scale close to and away from the screen, how we could use the loose parts we had at our disposal to respond to, and offer, play cues. Just as we would in our previous play settings we take a cue or part of the environment and incorporate it into play. When the screen stops moving we maybe follow this up by playing that we are frozen ourselves for a second or so, like ‘grandmothers footsteps’. If a child wants to go into space, we can judder the screens during take-off and roll and twist them or turn upside down when we become weightless.
One boy started a session by telling us he had invented a machine with two buttons, one makes things bigger and the other one makes things smaller. We found that this could be true if we moved away from our cameras or pushed our faces close to them. He could control this.
Sometimes it is easier for children to play when our faces are flat on to the screen like the traditional newsreader talking head. Sometimes it is easier to use an external camera and have a profile shot of playworker faces, it can feel both intense and exhausting to have a huge face peering at you as you play.
Agile
It may be fun for an agile playworker to do handstands or have their feet on view on-screen. Frequently this will be in response to an acrobatic display from a child. Though sometimes it will not be. Animals (toys) objects and faces can turn sideways or dangle upside down. Again with an external camera playworkers and children can be upside down for an entire session.
Other children enjoy a camera turned on the screen so that all of the players can be seen at once repeating into infinity. You can log in from more than once device and have multiple versions of your playing self, turning the sound off prevents the sci-fi sound effects cause by the looping of microphones, or you can play with this eerie echoing. Jake is a musician and can make lovely twangling noises on keyboards or guitar – the children sometimes just enjoy the sound but on other days we make beautiful music from many homes, it sounds randomly ethereal.
We just discovered that hide-and-seek lends itself surprisingly well to this medium, (just make sure that one person is nominated to seek, otherwise, just as in the solid world, it can become tedious.)
Another playworker … will keep a quiet watch – being calm, and keeping a still, peaceful, window in the screen. This seems to help keep things grounded.
Some play sessions are run with one playworker. These tend to be calmer quieter times and are great for children who don’t care to be too rambunctious. Most of our play times are run by a three person team. We have worked out that it is good to have one playworker in narrator mode, bringing in play cues and making links between the players verbally. Another playworker will do this same work visually and the third will keep a quiet watch being calm and keeping a still peaceful window in the screen which seems to help keep things grounded.
Practical
From a practical point of view, we find it more important than ever to have a reflective practice time before and after the face-to-face work, in exactly the same way as would happen in an adventure play setting or a busy play session. Everyone sees different things and there is a huge need to compare notes and learn to hone our craft with the benefit of hindsight.
Sessions run for 40 minutes, initially this was because it was the length of a free zoom meeting, but it turns out that this is just the right length of time for adults and children to be able to focus. Any shorter and the ending feels abrupt. And longer and it peters out uncomfortably.
We are experimenting with themes at the moment, running fairly loose topics like Space, Magic and Pirates which can go almost anywhere that the children want, or can be ignored or abandoned easily. It seems to be helpful to families preparing for these sessions to have props and ideas and stories to hand. These are frequently very improvised but could not be more successful if they had been the most expensive bespoke pieces of kit in the world. The playwork team learned a lot from observing this. In our anxiety and performance nerviness we had had a tendency to over-prepare some quite lavish backdrops and supplies of loose parts. We soon decided that this was way too heavily interventionist and went back to things being a bit rubbish and homemade and delightfully improvised.
with the right support children quickly saw each other playing in their own homes and picked up on what the others were doing
It soon became obvious that with the right support children quickly saw each other playing in their own homes and picked up on what the others were doing, the things they were playing with, or the gist of their play using household objects, rushing away to find their translation of the loose part to join in the experience together. So on our very first play session all of the children had found a blue block of some sort to show us. (Many of the families nickname the project as The Blue Blocks because of the Imagination Playground Blocks we use.)
Dens spring out of nothing, rockets or boats transform from settees. Children crawl in and out of identical laundry baskets in homes miles away. They make each other laugh. We pour cups of tea from real or imagined empty tea pots in to real or imagined cups through our computers. We throw pom-poms or balloons to each other, eat snacks and sumptuous invisible banquets. We fall asleep and wake each other up, scare each other or tickle, blow kisses, find butterfly wings to wear, research what a gekko looks like from our bookshelves for someone who absolutely needs to know it at that very moment. We can all be rabbits. We can talk about cheering together on Thursday evenings. We can listen as a soft toy whispers into the screen that they wish that they could go out to the playground.
Taking control
My cat comes and sits in front of the screen, and within seconds children are holding their own cats, usually soft toys … but not always.
Whilst some of the play we see is concerned with demonstrating an inventory of possessions or taking control by becoming Elsa from Frozen or becoming a creature with magical powers, most of the play narratives are about escaping, into space, onto a ship or a train, about children making their own worlds so that they can make it all right again. Miniature townscapes, dens or houses that can be as they should be, or as they were before. They are making their own Narnian gateways for us all to travel into other worlds where we can play together again.
At the end of a long days boat building and fishing on another planet we had travelled to on a spaceship, we all rested our oars and sails and admired the fishes we had caught and with a minute to go until the end of the session, one child wistfully sang ‘Row Row Row your boat’ to us all. It is probably the only time I have ever found that song heart wrenchingly beautiful.
We have noticed that the older children who have used our Kings Cross sessions have been far more comfortable in playing with their friends across screens than the younger ones. They are able to process the screen image of a play mate and work out the logistics of this play medium to get to the nub of the matter. With littler children it is a more confusing and rather more tenuous process. Our Zoom users are by and large from this younger age group of our community. This in itself is strange territory to us.
It is our responsibility as playworkers to catch these nuances, as fragile as wisps of smoke, and hold them tenderly for an extra second or two. Treasure them and keep them safe, precious, and attended to.
However it is obvious that the 3-5 year olds frequently have younger siblings or are only children. They are not experiencing play with other children, their contact coming largely through structured on line classes and spotting rainbows in windows during their permitted daily ‘exercise’ to remind them that other children exist.
We feel that this isolation may have a dramatic impact on them both now, and afterwards but we cannot anticipate how it will manifest itself. Similarly we have had children explain the Coronavirus to us. They talk about germs on other people, on things and on themselves. What will this intrusion of this invisible danger alive on bodies, in the air between people, on food and front door handles and toys have upon them? How will this knowledge and the behaviours it necessitates affect the growing of their growing brains?
Psychological effects
As a team we have thought a lot about what sort of psychological effects this may have for children. Will they be able to Rough and Tumble together in future, playing with all feelings of pretend and real conflict and resolution that this has always carried in the past and ignore the real fear of the touch of skin on skin?
One major drawback of playing on Zoom is that children do not get to choose the time that they are ready to play. We have been very aware that until recently most children only used screens to star in a conversation to grandparents or far flung family and friends. Now, in our shared play times, they are expected to move through the screen and into the imagined world within the real world of another home. The intellectual leap is huge and we as playworkers find it challenging. However if they can have the luxury of support through a reticent start, they will be able to figure it out and get down to the business of play, somehow. The draw of it is so very strong, it seems to override most other agendas. Skilling up parents is vital if children are to reach that goal.
We know that many of the families we play with are in flats with no outdoor space or even balconies. The poor soundproofing of those flats is an issue that crops up time and time again. Jumping with enthusiasm is charming for us to see but can unleash a torrent of abuse from Mr Heckles (F.R.I.E.N.D.S.) downstairs. This eventually gets passed on to the child in some way or another, either from furious and frustrated parents or sweet kindly requests for the child to step lightly. Imagine, you are locked up in your flat in isolation, your world is confusing and the outside is somehow dangerous and you have to keep quiet on top of everything else. We have to be aware of these agendas too. We avoid games that include jumping about or setting up saucepan percussions.
The children have made all of us cry with laughter. They are witty and clever and funny, and considerate of all of us. They seem to know that by being funny they are making things better. It is within their power to do this when they play.
We have played with children and families we have got to know very well from the solid world of Kings Cross. Other families have built a play relationship with us for the first time. Some of them settled into our oddness immediately, some take a little while to acclimatise and others find it doesn’t suit them. That’s all ok.
We have played with families in South Africa, Hong Kong, Turkey and California. All of them are facing the same frustrations. We have drawn pictures and maps together, told each other stories. We have caught together the wisps of important moments.
Oh, and the children have made all of us cry with laughter. They are witty and clever and funny and considerate of all of us. They seem to know that by being funny they are making things better. It is within their power to do this when they play.
Today, in a quiet moment, T showed me what he had built from his wooden building blocks. He has, of course, prepared a den, but it was the small wooden palace that he wanted to show me.
“I live high up in the roof. Here are Mummy and Baby and Daddy has a work room down here. There is a garden with a playground right outside and here is Penny’s House, Jake’s House and Sioned’s house. Of course we don’t all really live together in the same place but we do here.”
Early this year The Playwork Foundation launched a new series of seminars around the UK, about the Play Cycle, taken from Gordon Sturrock and Perry Else’s now-famous Colorado Paper – The playground as Therapeutic Space: Playwork as Healing.
The Play Cycle helps us better understand children’s playing and the ways in which they communicate and behave when they are playing. In turn this understanding also informs our own reflective response and helps us gauge whether or not any intervention from us – and at what level – might be needed. Play cues, play returns, play frames, and adulteration are now part of the everyday language of most playworkers and there is always room for further reflection on how these affect our practice.
Sturrock and Else’s iconic Play Cycle
Opportunity
The seminars were also designed as an opportunity to meet with more playwork members and potential members and talk through the issues affecting them where they are. And then coronavirus began to rapidly spread across the world and our lives have all changed…
BUT, we did manage to run one of these seminars in early March, before the UK went into lockdown. We had a great day in Leicester, at Goldhill Adventure Playground, with 33 playworkers, from other adventure playgrounds, play centres, and play organisations all over Leicester.
We spent the morning looking at the Play Cycle in action, and at risk-benefit assessment. We also shared lots of anecdotes and stories, and after a plentiful lunch provided by Goldhill, we worked together in the afternoon doing SWOT analyses on play provision in Leicester – unpacking what the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats were for different organisations and what we could, therefore, learn from each other; what we might do to capitalise on the identified opportunities; and how we might support each other across the sector, as well as in Leicester itself.
Mutual commitment
It was wonderful to meet so many playworkers we didn’t know and feel that instant rapport, recognition of a mutual commitment to children’s rights, and shared appreciation of the power of play.
Thank you Leicester for your enthusiasm and participation and thank you Goldhill (who recently were shortlisted for the Front-line Playwork Award at the National Playwork Conference in Eastbourne) for hosting such a valuable day. More of these seminars have been planned and as soon as we are able, we will be rolling them out in Torbay, Sheffield, Wrexham, Evesham, and more. Watch this space!
Ali Wood and Karen Benjamin
If you would like to host a Playwork Foundation seminar, and publicise it locally where you are, please contact:aliwood@blueyonder.co.uk
The Playwork Foundation 