This is a story about a myth.

What’s a myth? The thesaurus on my computer lists myth under two headings: legend; falsehood.

Synonyms for ‘legends’ include: fables, fairy stories and sagas.

Synonyms for ‘falsehoods’ include: fiction, illusion, invention, fabrication and untruth.

The myth here is that paedophiles hide in bushes in Tower Hamlet’s parks waiting for children.

The context for this true story is, briefly, that PATH delivers outdoor play projects in Tower Hamlets housing estates and has been working with the local authority’s architects and planners to develop new play spaces. As part of that project I met an intelligent architect who asked to meet me in one of the play spaces that was to be refurbished. She had some questions she wanted to discuss.

‘What kind of equipment do children and young people use and like?’ ‘What would make this space more playful?’ she asked.

I replied, ‘Increasing the amount of greenery would be good. Plant more bushes for hiding in. A mature tree included in the space adds a lot, so can a willow tunnel, grass slopes, and much else. These all create play cues for children to engage with their environment.’

Of course she could see this vision and agreed it sounded playful and environmentally pleasing but for one problem:

The paedophiles hiding in the bushes!

This architect is mainly office based. She does not work with children but does read newspaper stories. She certainly would not want her play space design to result in children being snatched and abused. Who would? She had also been told by a member of the parks department that there were indeed paedophiles in the bushes. ‘Too risky! I just can’t do it,’ she said.

Myth-buster on a mission

I knew that the paedophile in the bushes story was a myth, but a powerful one. To kill this beast of a myth, I thought, I need to have a fact-filled sword. I had to become a myth-buster!

I know the manager of the Community Rangers (the Community Rangers cover all the parks in the borough and would write a report if they had apprehended a dodgy man in the bushes) and asked him to check incident reports going back two years.

So, now I’m on a mission to get some London Borough of Tower Hamlets statistics. First stop, the Community Rangers.

Email from Eleanor Image to Community Rangers, dated 14 September 2009:

As the manager of the Community Rangers, over the past two years, how many reports have there been about paedophiles being in bushes? (These have to be actual situations where they have been moved on or arrested and we can look at how a paedophile is defined once we have actual figures)

Email reply from Community Ranger Manager, dated 18 September 2009

With regards to pedo’s hiding in bushes, I have looked through my incident reports and there aren’t any reports relating to this in the last two years.

He checked all incident reports filed over the last two years and found there had been none. He put me in touch with Sergeant Matthew Smith from the Met police department that deals with sex crimes.

Rather than e-mailing him, I rang him the better to be able to discuss the matter. He was most helpful and thought that the idea that paedophiles hide in the bushes was ridiculous.

We had a long conversation which he was happy to summarise in writing and to talk to others if needed. He told me that they do find masturbators on trains and often at windows, but he didn’t think that it made sense to stop train services or not to let children walk down streets because of this. (We need also to note that public masturbators and ‘flashers’ should not automatically be grouped with paedophiles. Myth-busting requires a respect for key distinctions.)

E-mail from Eleanor Image to Sergeant Mathew Smith, dated 21 October 2009

Dear Matthew

It was really good and refreshing to speak to you last week. It would be brilliant to have it backed up in writing whenever you have the time I would really appreciate it. For me to be able to quote a police sergeant in conversations of fear when people in the community or designers say I shouldn’t be recommending designing in bushes or letting children play in them would really help.

Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me and thanks in advance for your reply.

E-mail from Sergeant Mathew Smith to Eleanor Image, dated October 22nd 2009

Sorry for the delay in replying.

We have over 150 registered sex offenders on this borough a third of whom are in custody.

Only one of these offenders has a conviction for a sexual offence that is connected to hiding in bushes, however this offence was not connected to children.

I am not aware of any highlighted concern, intelligence or evidence that is linked or connected to your plan to construct a children’s maze.

Intrusive and robust supervision of a facility of this kind will assist to deter any likely offenders as it will in any playground etc.

Would you like me to put you in contact with our Crime Prevention officers who are experts in this field and may be able to assist with planning etc?

If any of your partners wish to discuss this matter further then please feel free to supply my contact details and I will be happy to talk to them.

Is this sufficient?

Regards,

Matt.
Matthew Smith – Met police in Tower Hamlets

No individual’s fault, but a shared responsibility

This story doesn’t seek to blame any individual who has passed on a myth- all parties are doing their jobs and responding to information given or passed on to them with the best of motives.

But too many people are scared of things that are not true, that are myths. We hear all sorts of stories as to why children can’t have a more playful environment. We need to keep challenging myths that prevent children playing.

Don’t we all need to forge our own fact-filled swords about this and other issues, dogs and sand-pits for example?

That government – or at least the previous one - and funders now routinely require consultation exercises to be conducted as a condition of grant hardly needs remark. That we – those of us out there actually trying to do something – play the cards we have been dealt as best we can, speaks well of our deftness and conjuring skills. But neither deftness nor adeptness in conjuring is constitutive of an argument or rationale. Fleetness of foot is not a form of justification.

There is no argument to be made against the general proposition that people, young and old, want and must be able to say what they think about matters that affect them. And account must be taken of their views. But left alone those sentiments are too general and platitudinous – offering temporary warmth but little sustenance.

A critique of consultation could limit itself to enumerating offences carried out in its name in respect of particular projects. By way of example: relatively low numbers of involvement; unstable consultee groups – different people turning up at different times; agreements and plans overturned at the project implementation stage by previously non-participating ‘late arrivals’, perhaps a Councillor or local resident with a lately-discovered particular concern.

These types of experiences raise fundamental questions about the legitimacy and authority of consultative processes. These questions are largely ignored or papered over in practice. They are questions to which there is no easy answer. They are ultimately political questions: about how power is distributed; about how and who exercises it and on whose behalf; about how it is held to account.

Critical attention could usefully be directed to consideration of the criteria and objectives that underpin, on the one hand, participative and consultative processes, whether involving children or adults; and on the other, the criteria and objectives underpinning the ends to which consultative and participative¹ processes supposedly aim. Are they beneficially aligned?

The danger is that these processes become self-justifying, such that the purpose of consultation and participation is, simply, to involve people in those processes. If such is the case, consultation and participation is divorced from the substantive aim of searching for something we should be able to call – without embarrassment - ‘good’.

It is said that being involved in consultative and participative processes engenders a sense of ‘ownership’ in the resultant output of those so engaged. These claims are probably overstated. But whether so or not, the proprietorial impulse cannot of itself engender a commitment to exploring ideas about what is good. Consideration of what might constitute the good in any particular circumstance is a distinct endeavour, prompting views that are often hotly contested.

Now institutionalised, consultation and participation cannot, and is not designed to, cope with or stimulate ‘hot contention’. Rather, it acts as a balm, aiming for a consensus – usually in the shortest time possible– but diluted to the lowest level of general acceptability.

A commitment to exploring what might be good, in whatever field of endeavour, would be tantamount to administering an electric shock to the body of accepted ‘participation works’ opinion.

Such a commitment implies a need to ask questions about, for example, the relationship of quantity to quality – just because a majority want something, or use it a lot, is it good? – about the democratic process, about the dangers (and benefits?) of a consumerist ethos, about the status and authority of knowledge and opinion generally.

Whatever dispensation may come to bear under the new coalition government, the previous administration’s interest in consultative/participative processes was, from the perspective of this article, primarily a form of managerialism, offering local people an illusion of substantive choice-making.

Too many consultative and participative processes have about them a sense of ritual, of ceremonies being enacted. They are essentially performances, as in a masque, with but a tenuous connection to the substantive choices that will be made, and which will leave their mark upon the world.

14 July 2010

¹ It is understood that ‘consultation’ and ‘participation’ are terms that carrying different meanings to the extent that it can be argued that the former is but a tokenistic nod at the latter. But that is a discussion for another day.

I met Liz one March afternoon for a tour of developments she has overseen on local area and to discuss her views on how urban design can inform the creation of play and other opportunities in deprived areas.

Genesis: how help isn’t

In 1987 Liz watched her young daughter narrowly avoid landing in a pile of broken glass at the base of a slide in her local park. Spurred on by her husband, “Don’t moan to me about it – start a campaign” Liz recruited two local mothers to research the state of local play facilities. The results formed the basis of a research report that was then submitted to the local authority.

The report was well-received by the Council, and they put massive amounts of money into play, but they wouldn’t talk to us about what made good play provision! So, the net effect was they bought lots of play equipment, but despite the money, they didn’t really improve the play areas.

This experience of ‘official’ intervention leading to a less than desired result was echoed in Liz’s previous experience working for Shelter Housing Aid.

We were trying to house families and then we realised that homeless families were being housed in these tower blocks. It was better than what they had before, but it still wasn’t right for them…

These experiences fed into Liz’s decision to reinvent herself some ten years ago and led to the opportunity for her to work with the NDC.

I did an MA in Urban Design at Oxford Brookes University. Urban design is an understanding of what makes places work effectively for people. I did the MA at the time of the ‘Urban Renaissance’. Everyone was talking about the new: designing new housing estates, new roads and so on. But what was fascinating to me was making existing places work, retrofitting and how you make quality, urban places – place that work for people.

Spa Fields, Before, 2005

Spa Fields, After, 2009

In 2004, Liz became the Public Space Co-ordinator for EC1 NDC in LB Islington: a community-led partnership of residents, public sector service providers, voluntary and community organisations and businesses, and one of thirty-nine NDC partnerships across England to have received government funding over a ten-year period.

The central aim of NDCs – which followed on from their shorter-lived predecessors, the Social Regeneration Budgets - is to kick-start the ‘turn around’ of multiply-deprived neighbourhoods.

NDC captured my interest in bringing all aspects of design together. The central priority is to work holistically and directly with local communities.

Beyond the Home Zone

People talk a lot about ‘home zones’ [the idea of sharing road space between drivers and residents, with the aim of making residential spaces places for people, not just for traffic] and about making streets for play, but for me, the top priority is making all estates home zones
so that all areas in estates become safe.

Part of this work is to say that cars can still come into these areas but they should come in respectfully, more slowly, so that if kids are playing on their scooters or if mums are chatting, it’s better and safer. Overall, it’s about making a connection between the roads, the parks and the estates.

Wenlake Estate, Before, 2007

Wenlake blossom, After, 2009

This holistic approach – which emphasises careful design and highlights the aesthetically pleasing as functional in its own right - challenges the more conventional and popularly-practiced ‘piecemeal’ interventions that Liz believes can be damaging to local communities, and which often work in direct opposition to the regeneration agenda. These are typified, Liz believes,
by inadequate planning, and by ad hoc replacement, or identi-kit play areas being ‘dumped’ into estates.

A lack of consideration for the overall context or environment leads to the unnecessary duplication of facilities and the increased erosion of a sense of community, as residents are implicitly encouraged to stay in their own – frequently un-used – public areas.

Liz points out that this has been particularly evident in the development of local play opportunities.

I was stimulated to develop a play policy in the first instance, because the local school was asking for money for a playground, residents were asking for play areas in a local park, and the estates were asking for play areas on the estates all within a few yards of each other! I said,
‘Well, we can’t put essentially the same things so close to one another, so we need to think about what we are trying to achieve overall.’

Working holistically is central to this, so we’re never taking one aspect of an area on its own.

Radnor Street Gardens Entrance, 2009

To illustrate, Liz takes me to a redeveloped park, Radnor Street Gardens, a spacious and welcoming environment that functions as a space for all ages and uses.

[Before] this was never used by children; it was used by dog-walkers and was a dog’s toilet littered with faeces. It had no other uses at all. There was almost no visibility from one end to the other.

Radnor Street Gardens, After, 2008

The NDC funded the introduction of landscaping and planting into the park, creating an open, greener, safer–feeling space. Grass, boulders, open spaces, planting creates a peaceful ambience. Such play equipment that there is fits in with the overall rationale of the designed landscape. Even in the quiet of a darkening afternoon, the space feels welcoming and safe. A fenced ball court, or ‘kickabout area’, was introduced adjacent to the local adventure playground at the park entrance, and several boys are making happy use of this area as we pass.

‘Shared’ as criterion and rationale

[The park] is heavily used now. We introduced a tripartite agreement on shared usage of the kickabout area, between the youth club, the local adventure playground and the park, which has worked out very well. There is a sense now that the area links in to all the estates, whereas before it was completely separate. Now this park is used by people of all ages: by residents, the local primary school, the adventure playground and the youth club.

Ping pong, ball court in background

The NDC has spent money on a range of improvements: removing black tarmac from estate through-roads; planting and landscaping; improving entrances and access points and introducing landscape features, such as water and allotments. The creation of informal play and sport opportunities were part of a wider approach to outdoor space that aimed to create linkages and continuities between different spaces within a shared public realm. These improvements highlight the natural aesthetics of the estates, which, under such careful attention, emerge from their previous neglect as pleasing places and spaces.

Chadworth House, After, 2008

People look at the buildings now and say, ‘Oh! They’re lovely!’Before, no one even noticed them. And this is as important as the play areas. Play isn’t just about play areas, it’s about good environments and that’s what we’re trying to create here…space for people to use informally and imaginatively.

The holistic approach requires co-ordinating a wide range of different interests, needs and opinions. Liz has encountered a range of challenges, including that of consultation.

From the beginning the NDC was ‘resident-led’. But there was no distinction made between understanding residents’ needs and putting residents in the driving seat. This lack of distinction causes all sorts of problems and faction forming.

Beware, consultation about

Consultation is a hostage to fortune if it’s not used properly. A lot of consultation is done on the basis that you ask people what they want and then you bring in a designer and tell them to do it. And it usually doesn’t work! Partly because what people say they want can’t be delivered; and partly because no process is in place to expand the horizons of possibility of those consulted.

It’s important for designers to work closely with residents: find out what they like and what they don’t like; use that to try to address their needs; then, produce proposals based on those needs, making it clear how that links in with what residents said they wanted. Finally, deliver it!

Working together with residents, the council and organisations here – all of which have completely different agendas - is about trying to get different people to listen to each other, to compromise, in order to make sure that everyone isn’t disappointed. It’s very hard to come up with something that everyone agrees to.

Liz acknowledges there have been compromises. The introduction of a sandpit in one of the estates’ gardens was heavily resisted by the local housing management organisation and caretaker. Door covers were placed over the sandpit which have in practiced proved problematic.

One of the things done – and it isn’t completely finished and we’ve got to sort it out - was putting in a sand pit The plan were approved by the local authority but after installation the sand pit was opposed by those responsible for its management.

This surprised me since the Government endorsed guide ‘Design for Play’ seemed anxious to dispel myths and unwarranted resistance to the use of sand in play areas. Where was the problem?

Maintenance. This estate is managed by a tenants’ management organisation and the caretaker won’t maintain it. So, under those doors is the sand pit. The doors were something people wanted to cover the sandpit so you wouldn’t get trouble with cats and dogs. And what we would actually like to do –and the estate is going to be balloted and have no idea how it will go – is take that out, extend the sandpit and put in some boulders, so the sand pit will be that whole area, which I think will be fabulous. I think it’s highly unlikely that the residents will go for that, but it will be balloted as an option. Because the sandpit doesn’t work at the moment, it doesn’t work for opening and closing, the caretaker won’t look after it – big problems!!

I’ve shown pictures of the many other sites that it [sand] works in, but there is this firm idea that there will be problems with needles and dog mess. Although a lot of the mothers would love it, they’re just a small proportion of the whole.

Persuading people of the benefits of unfamiliar ideas and developments can be a challenge.

Attend to actual local cultures, not cultures as you would wish them to be

There’s not a culture of mums with toddlers using the garden for play, but there’s an expectation that there should be a play area. The play policy’s central recommendation –based partly on interviews with parents at the children’s centre, particularly mothers – was: start with the parks. Mums said that if they want to play with their little ones, they go the park, they won’t go out on the estate.

So designing spaces to fit children is incredibly hard and it’s really led me to question very heavily how you provide effectively for play on estates; the age group for which play facilities on estates are most appropriate is the 5-10 year olds who can play on their own close to home if parents feel that their estate is safe.

Creative use of public space, 2009

Quick wins, long losses

Liz also notes Government’s tendency to create programmes with relatively large funding streams and then push for fast results from its programmes. This not only in NDC, but also Play Pathfinder and Playbuilder.

One of the problems with NDC is exactly the same as with Playbuilder and Pathfinder – and when will they learn? The pressure was on NDC’s, right from day one, to spend money. But if you don’t plan – and plan effectively – you just go on making the same mistakes. Some play areas were put in instantly by NDC because it was seen as a quick win; they either just put back what was there before without asking ‘Why did it fail?’, or they put stuff in quickly that didn’t work.

In such circumstances, key issues that massively affect the quality of play opportunities get sidelined or ignored.

Money isn’t the answer. It doesn’t solve the problem unless you’ve done the thinking. One of the things I feel really passionately about, that came out of the play policy, is: don’t ever put play areas on an estate without an overall plan. Design the estate, first and foremost, to be a safe environment for children.

We see the benefit of this approach firsthand as we walk in the Wenlake Estate. We see some boys, aged about 12 years. One is on a bike, cycling in a figure of eight between two planting areas as he and his friends chat to each other. Liz is clearly delighted.

That’s exactly what we want to be seeing, kids playing together and in their own way.

She believes that the urban design approach can make a real difference to the lives of local people in the estates.

When I started here, I heard all the time that ‘everywhere is bleak – the streets are bleak, the parks are bleak, the estate is bleak.’ I spoke to a woman here who said that for years she had been suffering from depression and she stayed at home and didn’t want to go out. Now, she feels this [improvements on the estate] has given her a lift. She sees children playing out here, whereas before they never did.

Gambier House, 2009.
Improvements incorporating allotments

The spaces Liz has shown me on the Wenlake, Gambier and Chadworth estates are inspiring examples of what happens when the design of space moves away from prescriptive, identikit solutions and begins to be informed by the underlying character of existing spaces, leading to mindful design solutions that can be interpreted, used and enjoyed in different ways by communities, regardless of age or ability.

You never used to see people out and about

Liz smiles, as we head back to her office,

So that’s what we’ve tried to create – places where people can be, out and about.

ENDNOTE
Liz is currently working with PLAYLINK undertaking a review of a residential development that is a source of concern to the RSL responsible for its management.

‘Risk-benefit assessment is a suitable and sufficient risk assessment that brings together an analysis of both risk and benefits’

‘There is no legal requirement to eliminate or minimise risk, even where children are concerned.’
Managing Risk in Play Provision: implementation guide

Preamble

The form, with its introductory notes below, aim to assist play providers undertake risk-benefit assessments as recommended in ‘Managing Risk in Play Provision: implementation guide’. Its substantive purpose is, of course, to prompt and support a more mature, reasoned and reasonable attitude to risk in play. By which we mean, of course, that risk is an inevitable and necessary part of play. As PLAYLINK’s play policy makes clear:

Play providers fail in their responsibility if they do not create opportunities that allow children to explore and experience themselves and their world through the medium of play. This is done by offering children opportunities to take acceptable risks (that is, to freely undertake actions and involve themselves in situations that push against the boundaries of their own capacities) in environments that are challenging and stimulating. This process fosters the development of skills and is broadly educative in that it allows children to learn through experience what cannot be taught, what they have to find out for themselves.

PLAYLINK’s play policy, adopted by numerous local authorities, has been the subject of legal opinion.

This attempt to devise a risk-benefit form is prompted by, on the one hand, PLAYLINK’s need to undertake such assessments in respect of its own design work; and on the other, PLAYLINK’s work and contact with play providers wrestling with the implications, and practical consequences, of moving to this form of assessment. Many readers of this note will be aware that PLAYLINK has for many years worked with play providers, landscape architects, health and safety officers and others whose decisions have an impact on play provision to promote and value beneficial risk-taking in play. That work continues.

Risk-benefit Assessment Form

Over the past few years I have been constructing some playscapes over a period of time, up to two and a half years, and looking at the rewards that come from using this process. The results are shown as a spider chart to give an overview of my findings and to show that this can be a holistic approach to playscape design.

The recent publication ‘Design for Play, A guide to creating successful play spaces’³, sets 10 strong principles for the design of a successful play space, which if followed will benefit any new playscape. What it does not do (like many books and publications before) is give a framework of how these changes are to be made in the present system of delivery, where (fast) contractors come in for a short time and then leave. Some horizon forecasting may have pushed the results further, for example, there was very little about climate change, (young people find it hard to play in full sun with no shade, or when thirsty), and areas such as carbon and other waste emissions.

From a design and architectural view, an Adventure Playground has a unique quality in that the structural playscape is never finished. Some parts may only last for minutes, others up to 30 years. So this is the slowest build of any playscape. Sadly this is rarely written into the running of an Adventure Playground, and has become a marginalised characteristic, which is under threat in many areas, with private corporations or charity groups taking on the role of building. With only around 98 London Adventure Playgrounds and three or four more in the pipeline, the greatest contact young people have with playscapes are the thousands of ‘fixed’ play areas, and of empty school playgrounds.

Can Slow Design be taken elsewhere?

Here is an example of slow design in a school; this is not the only example but one that shows the strength of a Slow Design process.

During the tender for Stephen Hawking School, a school for young people with profound and multiple learning difficulties, some with complex medical needs, this slow design was made clear and all parties were happy with this approach.

After a consultation period with workshops and observations, designs were given to the school and broken down into 6 build phases, spread over two years. At the end of each build, the playscape was playable in and had finished units/areas for users. After each phase a play worker was brought in to aid the staff and young people in the different usage of the play equipment e.g., 10 people can get on the roundabout, not just two at a time. After a few weeks additional visits were set up at playtime to evaluate the play value of the playscape and obtain feedback from staff and pupils, plus from school therapists. The feedback informed the next build phase (unless it could be rectified then and there) to increase the play value of the playscape still further, this resulting in decreasing the size of the indoor sandpit to add a ball pool next to it, adding more hooks and giving advice about growing plants.

At the end of the build period the school has a playscape, (or ‘garden’ as the staff call it), which is bespoke in its design and meets the needs of the users. There was time for everyone to have some input into the design process, with an outcome that meets the needs of the school now and in the future, due to the inbuilt flexibility of the final design.

To carry this idea through to the never finished or the constantly changing playscape, the annual maintenance budget has been increased to allow a new small element to be added yearly. This I hope will keep their playscape a dynamic place for the young people and the staff who play there, in contrast to the “dis-play” (taking the play out of an area) or KFC (kit, fenced and carpeted) playgrounds we see everywhere else.

The Slow Design of this playscape has given the school a place that reflects the needs and wishes of young people and staff, a playscape which has been designed from a play and individual viewpoint, and not the “ready made” of the mass produced, which give so few play opportunities. I now try in all the playscapes I deliver, to place as much Slow Design into the process as possible; this not only gives the best playscapes, but also allows for me to have a positive meaningful connection to the space which is built.

¹ Toffler, Alvin, ‘Future Shock’ Bantam Books, 1970
² Virilio, Paul, ‘Open Sky’, Verso, 1997
³ ‘Design for Play: A guide to creating successful play spaces’, DCMS, 2008

Clarification Note by the authors of Design for Play and Managing Risk in Play Provision

Common sense can and must inform judgements about what constitutes acceptable risk levels in play.

Click here to view the entire article as published in Green Places.

http://www.green-places.co.uk/

Speakers

Kathleen Marshall, Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People

David Ball, Professor at Middlesex University’s Centre for Decision Analysis and Risk Management

Harry Harbottle, co-author of the guide to the European standard for the safety of playground equipment.

Sue Gutteridge, former manager of Stirling Council play areas and now a PLAYLINK Associate.

Bernard Spiegal, PLAYLINK’s Principal, Chairman.

Chairman’s opening remarks

In his introductory remarks, Bernard set out PLAYLINK’s aspirations for the conference. They were to:

• explain the legal position so far as risk and play is concerned
• distinguish between value-based judgments and technical information
• clarify the role, status and utility of ‘Guidance’, whether from Government, the Health and Safety Executive, or organisations with particular interests
• counter prevailing myths and misperceptions about health and safety ‘requirements’, for example, the utility and role of industry play equipment standards (EN Standards)
• examine what is meant by play safety ‘experts’ and ‘expertise’ - who has it, what is its knowledge content?
• articulate the rationale underpinning risk-benefit assessment
• show and practice a risk-benefit assessment on various play features on a Stirling play area
• liberate play providers so that they feel better able to make informed, local, experience-based judgments about ‘acceptable’ levels of risk in play.

As conference speakers went on to demonstrate, there are in fact no legal impediments to creating challenging, beautiful play places. There is, rather,a culture of self-generated impositions and confusions that the Risk It! conference aims to counter.

‘Playing it safe’

Kathleen Marshall, Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People

Kathleen placed the conference issues in the wider frame of Scottish childhood in general. She described how the policy priorities for her term of office – now coming to a close - had been based, as had been promised, on wide scale consultation with children and young people about their concerns.

From the consultation, the important concept of proportionate risk had emerged. Kathleen spoke vividly and passionately about the particular threat to ‘looked after’ children and young people in a society that seems to be becoming obsessively and excessively pre-occupied with ‘safety’ to the detriment of the exercise of both ordinary common sense and professional judgement.

Kathleen’s highlighting of ideas about proportionate risk, common-sense, and the role of judgment neatly adumbrated the more detailed examination of these ideas by the main speakers.

‘Risk and play, a return to reason’

David Ball, Professor at Middlesex University’s Centre for Decision Analysis and Risk Management

David discussed risk and play under six broad themes:

• the ‘clash of cultures’: contrasting concepts of risk epitomised by, on the one hand, an industry-based view, and on the other, a sociological-based view;
• the shortcomings of an industry-based view when applied to the public realm - for example, when applied to parks and play spaces;
• that play is enmeshed in the conflicting interests of the Health and Safety Executive, industry standard setters, insurers, inspectors, the legal system and single issue campaign groups;
• what is play safety expertise? And who has it? Here the distinction was drawn between essentially technical considerations – for example, can a walkway take the weight of ‘x’ number of children? – and value-based judgments such as, should children be allowed to climb, say, trees?
• how to move from risk assessment to risk-benefit assessment;
• consideration of ‘where next’ for play.

In what follows, David offered a rounded account of the pros and cons, the scope and limitations of the various pressures and interests that bear down on play. It was not a question of identifying villains or casting particular interests as enemies. Rather, the necessary and urgent task was to understand, and take account of, the variety of objectives and values of individual agencies and interests; to notice that these were not always compatible with, and were sometimes opposed to, the aims and objectives of those committed – and under an obligation- to create rich and varied play opportunities.

David highlighted contrasting views about risk:

an industry-based view of risk - with its faith in management systems, its belief that safety is paramount, that risk should as far as possible be eliminated - results in play spaces rendered notionally ‘safe’ by engineering or factory style solutions such as barriers, gates, fences, safety surfaces, age segregation. This way of thinking has as its motif segregation and surveillance.

a sociological-based view of risk – starts in having faith in people, their capacity to choose and make judgments. This view sees children’s development as paramount and understands that children need risk in order to develop healthily and happily. Here risk is beneficial, for it stretches and strengthens children’s capacity to understand and engage with the world. This approach underpins more holistic, less prescriptive approaches to play space.

The industry-based view has held sway for several decades, and while there has been massive expenditure on the barriers, gates, fences and impact absorbing surfacing that this approach has engendered, this has had no significant observable effect in reducing risk and injuries. David concludes that while an industry-based approach might work in factories, it is inappropriate when applied to public places where human behaviour – infinitely variable and unpredictable - must be accommodated.

David then discussed the legal background to and requirements on providers regarding the safety of public play areas, drawing on Stevenson v Glasgow Corporation (1908), the Occupiers’ Liability Acts (1957 and 1984), the Compensation Act (2006) and the Health and Safety at Work etc Act (1974). From this material he drew out the underlying (and immensely sensible) approach that rests on the reasonable practicability of any measures taken, an approach that requires the balancing of the magnitude of the risk and the possible seriousness of the consequences of an accident against the difficulty and expense and any other disadvantage of taking a precaution.

It’s this ‘any other disadvantage’ that is of such importance for making judgments about risk in play. For in play, risk is beneficial; it is the absence of risk, or the automatic minimising of risk-taking opportunities,that creates disadvantage for children and young people. That disadvantage is the hindering of their healthy and happy development.

The practical application of this thinking underscores why it is essential to move from ‘risk assessment’ to ‘risk-benefit assessment.’

David pointed to the increasing mismatch between the traditional approaches to standards, inspections and risk assessments and the kinds of non–prescriptive and dynamic public play spaces that we now aspire to. He predicted the diminishing relevance of engineering-style standards and the inspections that are base don compliance with them, and the need for new kinds of assessors who know about children’s needs and behaviour and the benefits and risks of play.

A key element in David’s presentation was a dissection of what constitutes expertise so far as judgments about play and risk are concerned, and who has it. Here the role of independent health and safety inspections was discussed. Part of that dissection was to distinguish between:

1. a straightforward check that a particular piece of play equipment, specifically manufactured according to industry play equipment standards, met those standards (this was termed a technical inspection)
2. and risk-benefit assessment. In passing it was noted that where equipment made no claim to be compliant with the industry standard, inspecting it against that standard was futile, and in practice misleading.

In sharp contrast to technical inspection, risk-benefit assessment is not simply a technical matter, but a value-based exercise critically dependant on, for example, a view about children’s capacities, their resilience, along with the play providers’ own policy on the role of risk in play and their overall objectives for children’s wider well-being (including health). The historic – and continuing – danger is that the two distinct exercises are understood as one and the same thing. It by no means follows that competence in technical inspection is the same as competence in risk-benefit assessment.

Before turning to ask who has, or who could develop, expertise in risk-benefit assessment, David briefly outlined the prerequisites for implementing fully the risk-benefit approach. These are:

• a formally agreed play policy that makes explicit the overall objectives of the provider in making available play opportunities for children, including the need for risk in play as a benefit to children and the formal obligation of the play provider to create risk-taking opportunities
• the monitoring of provision in use
• review and reflection on experience.

In closing, David asked the audience, ‘who then is competent, or can become competent, to make risk-benefit assessments? ’

David’s answer:

‘It is you who are in this room.

You who know, or should know, your own provision, your own policy objectives, and the varied and local circumstances of each of your local play areas.

‘The responsibility for risk-benefit assessment is yours, and is not something which can be delegated to some external ‘expert’ who is unversed in local needs and circumstances, and has no more than a snapshot view of a play setting.

‘This does not rule out the utility of getting some temporary support if required, but generally there should be no problem in play providers implementing risk-benefit assessment for themselves’.

‘Remember it’s about children playing’

Sue Gutteridge, former manager of Stirling Council play areas and now a PLAYLINK Associate

Sue began her presentation by reflecting on the dire state of UK public play areas, a state she attributes to the weakening authority, resources and skills of council parks departments and their equivalents and the parallel growth and increasing globalisation of the playground equipment market. And alongside this, the adherence to standardisation, regulation, control and stasis that is the very antithesis of play.

In this context, Sue posed the question ‘What’s the point of public play areas?’ She suggested that when well designed and well maintained they can form an important element of a spectrum of play opportunities and can be of value to parents, carers and communities as well as to children themselves. However, to redeem them we need to put what we know about children and play at the centre of our thinking about them so that technical considerations support and serve children’s play rather than obliterate it.

Sue considered how this might happen by looking both at rediscovering what we already know, and also at how, practically, this knowledge can be applied to the design and maintenance of public play areas.

In ‘rediscovering what we already know’, Sue referred to people’s knowledge and memories of their own and their children’s play and on how this kind of ‘common knowledge’ has consciously informed the values and principles underlying the marvellous public play spaces of, for example, Copenhagen and Freiburg and the school grounds of Berlin.

In thinking about the translation of what we know about children’s play to the practical design and maintenance of public play areas, she made the following suggestions, all amply illustrated to demonstrate how they would improve play experiences and opportunities:

• take down the fences;
• get rid of rubber impact absorbent surfacing;
• stop the dominance of manufactured play equipment;
• introduce planting and mowing schemes;
• most important of all: say good bye to the ‘make it bomb proof’ school of maintenance. Replace it with on-going ‘developmental maintenance’ based on a commitment to changing and changeable features that allow and encourage children’s control over their own play and add to the beauty of a site.

‘The revised BSEN: opportunity or threat?’

Harry Harbottle, co-author of the guide to the European standard for the safety of playground equipment

Playground equipment and surfacing standards (BS EN 1176: 2008) applies to permanently installed public play area equipment and surfacing only.These standards have recently been revised. Harry looked at whether the revised standards incorporate the idea of benefits of risk as well as notions of risk reduction. He also reflected on the scope and application of the standard in relation to play areas that consist of more than collections of equipment.

In his presentation Harry covered the following topics:

• local authority duties with regard to public play areas;
• the concept of BS EN 1176 as just one of a number of tools that people responsible for public play areas should be using;
• the degree to which the revised BS EN 1176 incorporates notions of risk benefit;
• the necessity for, and thinking behind, risk-benefit assessment.

He described local authority duties with regard to public play areas as including the need to exercise reasonable care and to carry out a suitable and sufficient risk assessment .

There is no requirement to follow BS EN standards, and a local authority will certainly be at risk if it only follows these standards.

Harry deplored the over–reliance on standards, and the concomitant failure to exercise common sense and judgment. Not only that, it his view that many technical inspections of certificated equipment:

• are, on the one hand, simply superfluous
• whilst, on the other hand, surprisingly, key elements of equipment that should be tested, are not.

Items that should be tested, but generally are not, include: crossbars, foundations covered by wetpour, testing the static strength of single masted equipment, and the stopping performance of cableways. The reason: they require two people, they involve working at height, they involve too much time, trouble and cost etc.

Harry understands BS EN standards as ‘just one tool in the tool box’. Of equal importance are observation, guidance from other agencies, expert opinion, research and local knowledge, conditions and requirements.

All of this is the result of poor understanding and operation of the standards, not necessarily a fault in the standards themselves. And Harry sees in the serevised standards a growing acknowledgement of the benefit of risk.

This is made explicit in the latest version of the introduction to the standards which includes the following statements.

“Risk-taking is an essential feature of play provision….. Play provision should aim at managing the balance between the need to offer risk and the need to keep children safe from serious harm.

“In play provision exposure to some degree of risk may be of benefit because it satisfies a basic human need and gives children the chance to learn about risk and consequences in a controlled environment.” EN 1176:2008 Introduction

The benefits of risk are present too in a discussion about surfacing, as in:

“Grass is a low cost, readily available and environmentally friendly surface that is liked by children… it can… enhance opportunities for incidental and unstructured play.”

The need to consider benefits also informs comment on some types of equipment, such as cantilever tyre swings and multiple contact swings, where the standards allude to the importance of exercising judgment in balancing risk against play value and enjoyment.

Harry welcomes a wider risk-benefit assessment approach that takes into account the context, surroundings, changing and changeable features of public playspaces. Such an approach, integral to which is the exercise of judgment, will assist providers to strike a balance between offering children risk-taking opportunities, and the need to manage the level of risk so that children are not exposed to unacceptable risks of death or permanently disabling injury.

Informal appraisal of Risk It! conference by PLAYLINK

This is a brief summary of our response to the conference.

Prior to the conference, whilst we had no doubts about the expected quality of the individual presentations, because what happens on the day has an unpredictable element, there was always the concern that the different contributions might not form a cohesive and coherent whole. Obviously, we knew in quite some detail the thinking and broad positions of the key speakers, but this alone could not guarantee a conference content that would be, in the words of one delegate’s post-conference comment, ‘coherent and persuasive’.

In the event, I think perhaps to our own and the speakers’ surprise, the day was indeed coherent and persuasive. If I was asked to sum up the conference’s key points whilst standing on one leg – this an aid to brevity –this would be it:

• to value people’s experience and capacity to make common-sense judgments about risk levels
• to help counter the lazy, uncritical acceptance of Standards, Guidance, the opinions of external experts, as though these had the force of law.

Having said that, the conference material would benefit from a little refining, mainly in terms of how it is introduced, and how it is summarised at its conclusion. This of course is the Chairman’s role. He has been apprised once again of his responsibilities.

Spreading the word

PLAYLINK and the speakers agreed that the Risk It! conference should be taken around the UK, preferably in collaboration with local authorities and other organisations. As with this conference, we would aim for delegates to do a risk-benefit assessment supported by the speakers and PLAYLINK.

Please use the link below to forward your comments and we will get back to you to discuss some of the ideas we have in mind.

Bernard Spiegal
PLAYLINK
8 April 2009

Risk-benefit assessment
Play policy
Play equipment

Fulfilment of this adult responsibility necessarily requires a lively sense of what children and young people need, want and enjoy, along with an alertness to the political dimension of children and young people’s right to play. Rights that can be secured and enforced only by adults.

The quality that adults need to deploy is judgment. And judgment about children and young people’s play wants and needs is founded on:

• Observation – observing how children and young people play, and want to play, in all its variety.
• Informal conversations with children and young people.
• Personal memories of oneself as a child.

Taken together, the three elements, contribute to adults capacity to interpret and come to a judgement about what a play space might look like in a particular location. The approach we have taken in Stirling, is based on these understandings. However, our actual methodology is necessarily flexible and responsive to circumstances. Wishing to learn what we could from children, without abdicating our adult client or designer responsibilities we began to form a programme of engagement called the “Roving Reporters”.

What we wanted to do:

• Gain knowledge and information about changes which could be made possible through redesign, minor alteration or changed maintenance (therefore the engagement focuses on sites which have funding).
• Try to identify which aspects of a play space encourage or discourage children’s engagement (on physical, social, intellectual, emotional, and imaginative levels) for children playing with others or alone.
• Achieve the connect between the research/engagement/evaluation process and the design.
• Charge the designer with the responsibility to properly research the potential as well as re-evaluate after the site was “completed” – something which designers/architects rarely do.
• Avoid a predetermination of the focus of the “investigation” but allow evidence to be demonstrated through play and use.
• Devise a process that was informed by our beliefs rather than a pseudo-neutral process or even worse, informed by oppositional beliefs.

Seeking a process which was easily accessed by children and applicable to a variety of situations we were aware of the temptation to seek reassurance or “objectivity” in a formal and “concrete” approach involving large sample groups, questionnaires, the promiscuous deployment of post its, tick boxes and “tool kits”. In addition to this “overfishing” we also felt these structures to be neither sympathetic to the way children communicate, nor to the (by definition) “informality” of play. For example, trying to say that ”the monkey bars are too hard to get off as the step down is in the wrong place”, doesn’t easily fit into a tick box approach.

We had previously found that some of the most useful comments and insights made by children happen spontaneously. For example, at Balmaha Play Landscape in Stirlingshire a fallen tree was brought on site for play, and a bark pit was being excavated. Children playing on site that day requested that excavation material was modelled into a defensive barrier and lookout/vantage point to curve around trees which they had adopted as their den. Seeing how this might work the designer incorporated the ideas into the design which has resulted in a successful intervention that remains popular with many children using the play area. However, we were clear that it’s not to say that all children’s suggestions would work and the responsibility of the designer is to consider the merit of the idea and its impact on the rest of the space and users over the longevity of the feature.

And so the Roving Reporter process was devised to be simple and informal, involving two/three visits by the designer to a site with a group of children and their friends. (Appendix A shows range of issues/features that were included as a framework for the observation). The children’s role is to play and the researcher/designer’s role is to observe, discuss and record the quality of play taking place and the opportunities to remove constraints or support play aspirations.

The “Interpreter”

Although some may claim that this type of engagement allows too much opportunity for “subjective” adult interpretation, we would argue that it is important for the designer/researcher to be forming and adapting a point of view in a way that also allows the closest understanding of what the children are expressing, and about what truly engages them. We find that when parents of the children are present in a supporting role, they can also add very useful context to children’s comments regarding likes and dislikes and tease out the children’s meaning through prompts, and often provide information about what engages them in other environments. So we began to be less afraid of using our judgement to “make sense” of what we were finding.

An illuminating example came after observing a 7 year old boy playing with the sand and water offer on one site. His play had lasted for nearly two hours and had involved a myriad of experiments and creations as well as complex social interactions. Then just before leaving he had a couple of rides on the aerial cableway. “What did you enjoy at the play area?” we asked. “The flying fox” (cableway) came the reply.
Are we wrong to make our own judgment about the most engaging play that day? Was his answer not just easier or perhaps what he thought was expected?

This is not to say that our own beliefs are not challenged (often painfully) by the children.
With no predetermined aims other than the creation of better play opportunities (and not representing an equipment manufacturer) we can be more open to supporting children’s endlessly creative aspirations.

An example of this occurred during a Roving Report expedition at Beechwood Park, Stirling. We (as client and designer) had assumed that an ancient, large scale metal multi-play structure offering little or no challenge should be removed as part of the ensuing refurbishment. However the children being observed persistently used the unit as the venue or “film set” for elaborate games of star wars. The connecting bridges lent themselves to light sabre battles and the spiral ladders became the vortex which the defeated warriors fell into.

This particular observation gave us some further material: following discussion with the children we drew out their aspirations for even better “film sets” resulting in their creation of jenga brick models to illustrate modifications, greater height, more challenging bridges and interesting ditches and “rivers”. Although some of these modifications are now in the plans for the refurbishments the wider idea of providing a film setting/context for certain types of play is firmly rooted in the designer’s bank of ideas and other current schemes. This was a tipping point for us in reviewing the process and examining its usefulness. Whereas initially we had hoped/expected to inform a particular design or site, we now realised that there were “too many” aspirations to be achieved on one site but they were spilling over and informing interventions across the many sites being developed.

We also realised that the star wars games had been provoked by the mini light sabres the children had brought with them on the first visit so we took care to examine the value of the planned interventions for other uses/users and found that they would contribute to numerous different “imaginings”. However, what we observe children doing is likely to be infinitely variable, dependent on friendship groups, weather, mood (even where a play offer is overwhelmingly prescriptive, children can be counted on to use/misuse it to stimulate variety). And so again the adult/client/designer must use judgement to determine which intervention will support the greatest engagement or the greatest variety of opportunity as well as the quick wins or ‘tweaks’ that can maximise value.

The children’s role

Achieving the balance between “playing” and “reporting” by the children initially caused us some concern. We certainly wanted to listen and discuss with the children but also wanted the opportunity to observe play that was “as natural as possible”. Latterly we are less distracted by this issue as it became very clear that some children were determined that nothing would distract them from their play anyway, and others donned the role of reporter with a frenzy that would impress the tabloid press! Again this would vary each visit and whilst avoiding certain distractions we concluded that there was also no such thing as “natural play” but only play in any given (and ever changing) context.

Similarly we have learned to avoid soliciting opinions of what is “good” or “bad” in favour of discussion of what can or can’t be achieved.

The scope of the spaces

Although the Roving Reports were yielding a rich trawl of design ideas, easy tweaks and changes to maintenance regimes, we were also discovering that our design approach of maximising the play landscape context was achieving as much, if not more than we had hoped: the provision of sand especially where combined with water enticed children of different ages to play in sustained and diverse ways; we found a greatly increased vigour of movement and imaginative play on sites where equipment is well integrated into the landscape context; the creation of diverse spaces with substantial tree planting creating den areas and special places that changed with the seasons and yielded loose parts/props for play; the creation of a sense of place with locally relevant and bespoke features was connecting with users of all ages. Similarly we discovered that just because a play area is used (often termed “well used”), the play experience for the children is not necessarily a satisfying one, and it was only through observation and discussion we grew increasingly able to discriminate in this way.

In parallel we were increasingly researching the wider play possibilities when drawing together a design brief for new schemes, in order to complement rather than repeat existing opportunity. The joy and fascination of discovering children playing in woods, streams, creating self-built bike tracks, unexpected kick-about areas, dens and bases, is reassuring in these days of reduced children’s mobility and increasing lack of accessible open spaces. Now, thirsty to learn the maximum about the features, prompts and subtle nuances that make these favoured spaces work, the Roving Reporter model is the tangible backbone which supports our approach, keeps children at the centre of the process and often provides the very necessary “evidence” to steer a steady course when the consultation rollercoaster pushes and pulls us away from our goals.

Appendix A

Although not a checklist, it is useful to consider the impact of a wide range of features on the dynamics of a space. However, these factors won’t necessarily arise in the observation of children playing, and may be more relevant to the designers own considerations and judgment.

Features to look at:

• Boundaries and access: feelings of security; dog supervision issues; access for children with range of needs.
• Aspect/geographical location: ease of access for unaccompanied children; proximity of other points of interest eg shops, toilets, other playable space; nature of adjacent space/streets.
• Pathways: pedestrian through routes, infrastructure, children’s own routes/meaningful journeys.
• Play and Comments Associated with Equipment and Landscaping: this included any aspect that could be played with eg mounds, sand, boulders, slack space, as well as more formal equipment.
• Other kinds of play/use: observed eg chasing or hiding games using the whole space, games made up by the children).
• Opportunity for ongoing risk and challenge; opportunity for older children.
• Opportunity for children with particular needs.
• Surfaces/materials - water, sand, grit, bark, gravel and ‘natural’ loose materials like leaves, twigs, stones; to identify range and variety and to judge playability.
• Planting and mowing: trees, shrubs, different lengths of grass, flowers; assessing its play value as well as aesthetic value.
• Adults: how they are accommodated in their watching/scaffolding/active interaction.
• Formal/informal seating.
• General condition and maintenance.

Judi Legg, Playspace Designer, PLAYLINK Associate
Sue Gutteridge, former Head of Stirling Council Play Services, PLAYLINK Associate

In this, the first of two articles, Sue Gutteridge and Judi Legg, jointly responsible for the commended play areas and playable spaces in Stirling, and now, happily, PLAYLINK Associates, discuss consultation with children and young people. In the second article, to be published here in January, they will offer a practical example of an approach to learning from and about children and their play.

‘Every father knows the loathed park and playground in the unmoving air of Sunday morning (every mother knows it Friday evening, Tuesday afternoon – every other time), the slides and see-saws and climbing frames like a pictogram of inanity.’ Martin Amis, The Information

There’s a lot wrong with public play areas in the UK. Whether we’re talking about the graffitti ridden, litter strewn ‘Dogshit Park’ of Martin Amis’ novel The Information, or the identikit smart new shiny metal primary coloured rubber surfaced enclosures – examples of both can be seen everywhere – children’s engagement with them is short-lived.

Research repeatedly tells us what we already know, and also remember from our own childhoods, that such places – unsurprisingly – are not where children most like to play; and observing children at play on them we see the superficial and restricted nature of the play opportunities they offer. It is the failure to put knowledge of children’s play at the centre of the design and management of public play areas that is responsible for this state of affairs.

Over the last five years or so, increasing amounts of mainly capital funding has become available for public play areas, at least in England, through the Big Lottery and the Pathfinder and Playbuilder programmes. For these funders of public play areas, as well as for local authorities commissioning and providing them, it has become axiomatic that ‘consultation’ with the world and her dog is an essential part of the process of achieving good play areas, the implication being that the failure to do this in the past is the cause of the dire play areas that we have. The importance of including children in this process, who are not infrequently styled ‘the experts’ in play, is emphasised – and it’s not just ‘consultation’ we’re talking about, it’s their ‘involvement’ in ‘planning, designing and managing public space’ ( see UK Government’s ‘Fair Play’ consultation paper)

The result of a consultation: a playground in the UK

Inflated and unrealistic

At the same time public play areas have somehow worked their way into our consciousness and into public policy as vehicles for inflated and unrealistic aspirations. We expect them to regenerate poor neighbourhoods, lower crime rates, create a sense of community. This has contributed to ever more complicated and demanding processes of ‘consultation’, ‘involvement’, ‘engagement’, ‘empowerment’ etc generating their own armies of professional consulters, involvers , engagers and empowerers. And all the time, we get further and further away from the real and much simpler question: how to make nice places and look after them properly.

Many of those trying to make nice places find that ‘friends of’ groups can be anything but, that ‘consultation’ can operate as a reactionary and obstructive force and that the most elaborate processes of consultation and involvement, whether with children or adults, may feel and be irrelevant to the process of creating good public play areas.

In this article we will expand on our belief that while knowledge of children and children’s play is central to the design and management of good public play space, consultation with children (or adults) as it’s usually understood and carried out not only contributes nothing to creating good play spaces, but can also be detrimental to it. In our next article, we will look at more meaningful ways of learning about children’s play and involving children in the process of creating good play areas.

As pointed out in the September 2008 Green Spaces article, ‘Consultation: don’t ask?’, much consultation about public play areas treats people as consumers, asking about their ‘wants’ and ‘choices’ rather than as trustees of public assets with a responsibility to think about people other than themselves, and about the future as well as the present. This approach is equally problematical when applied to children and is a result of the void at the heart of much of the thinking about play and play space. ‘Consultation’ – whether with adults or children – is used as a substitute for the point of view that adults should but don’t have about what constitutes a good play space. The absence of an informed point of view creates a void filled by the wares and marketing techniques of playground equipment manufacturers, along with the newly spawned professions and specialisms of consulters, engagers and participation facilitators. Play areas become in fact, and in the minds of both providers, consulters, and users, nothing but fenced collections of manufactured playground equipment on rubber surfacing.

When play areas are ‘procured’ by tendering to various play equipment manufacturers the nature of this process is particularly obvious. However, even when a professional play area designer is commissioned, the designer alone is powerless in the absence of a strong client with a clear brief. The client as well as the designer needs to have a ‘point of view’ and to care enough about it to be able to share and defend it.

So, what about ‘asking the children’?

So in this context, how do children get consulted? They may be asked to write, draw or indicate with stickers what they ‘like’ or ‘don’t like’ about an actual or proposed play area. There will be an inevitable tendency to focus on ‘things’ rather than ‘experiences’ and on the more obvious and superficially exciting elements of provision. They may be asked to envisage, using similar means, their ‘ideal’ play area, where their limited experience – limited both by their age and the existing poverty of provision – will prompt them to want what already know.

Methods will often be based implicitly or explicitly on a concept of play areas as collections of equipment. A particularly telling example of this occurred as part of the ‘Fair Play’ government consultation on play in summer 2008 which included a ‘fun, interactive website which gives the children the chance to design their own play space using playground favourites such as see-saws and round-a-bouts mixed with more modern structures such as wooden climbing walls.’

Asking children direct questions about what they ’like best’ or ‘enjoy most’ in a play space is not necessarily going to tell you what actually engaged them most. Our own experience appears to confirm this:

Matthew, aged eight, was observed for two hours at a play area. On arrival he went straight to the flying fox, where he played for ten minutes. The rest of the time was spent transferring water (in crisp packets) from a paddling pool to a sand play area where he built dams and channels. Asked as he was leaving what he’d liked best about the play area, he cast his eye around and said ‘the flying fox’ – a more obvious visual feature of the space, and an experience much easier for him to articulate.

While methods of consultation may vary, and drawing, model making computer games and so on are more engaging activities than filling in questionnaires, they fall down in the same way – they have no meaningful relationship to the design process if it exists and are irrelevant if, as is more usual, it doesn’t. Either way, they have no discernible effect on outcome. They are therefore tokenistic and in that sense damaging to children in terms of the lessons they will actually be learning from these experiences.

Informing knowledge

So how do we ensure that knowledge of children’s play informs design?

While developing, and having a play strategy and adopting design principles can help shape a client’s intent and help defend a design ethos from attack by those consulted, the quality and usefulness of these documents still depends on the client’s robust determination to prioritise and champion the type of play provision that has observed high play value.

Just as importantly the designer and client must also commit to spending time developing an understanding of what engages, what remains interesting to, children after repeated visits, and what offers the best opportunities for many different and interesting kinds of play. But note here that many designers never visit a space again once completed. They don’t take the time to watch and learn from the children themselves. And many clients, if they evaluate space at all, do it only from a superficial ‘how many visits’ perspective, or simplistic questionnaires about notional ‘levels’ of enjoyment.

Neither necessary nor sufficient

The result of no consultation: a playground in Copenhagen

Two straightforward facts need to be honestly faced: there are many woeful playgrounds procured as the result of ‘consultation’ with children; and there are examples of outstanding play environments that have been created without such consulation..

Helle Nebelong, at the time chief landscape architect for Copenhagen, did not consult children when she designed Valby Park and The Garden of Senses. However, Helle does have a very strong understanding of children’s needs and a clear vision of what is required. She emphasises the significance of unpredictability and the role of the child’s imagination saying:

‘I am convinced that standardised playgrounds are dangerous. When the distance between all the rings in a climbing net or a ladder is exactly the same, the child has no need to concentrate on where to put his feet. Standardisation is dangerous because play becomes simplified and the child does not have to worry about his movements. The lesson cannot be carried over to all the knobbly and asymmetrical forms with which one is confronted throughout life… If everything is not the same and predictable, a child’s fantasy is sharpened……everything should not be explained, demystified beforehand’.

Susan Humphries, Head of Coombes Infant School in Berkshire, has over a period of 30 years created inspiring grounds. This was achieved not through discussions with children but through continual observation of the children at play outdoors and the development of informed conclusions about what it is the children need to be “nourished” in a very broad sense. Discussions with children of course take place with the aim of maximising the learning and participation of the children – this is not the same aim as doing it to inform the design brief.

The design for the beautiful and successful Princess Diana play area at Kensington Gardens in London was the result of the strong brief from the client and the effective and continuing collaboration between client and designer. While information and concepts were shared informally and discussed with children using the play area that already existed on the proposed site, there was no expectation that the children themselves could, or should, provide those concepts. The concepts and ideas were already in the minds of the client and the designer

These examples illustrate some key points:

• Consultation is not necessary for good design
• What is necessary for good design is an understanding of children and play
• Useful discussion may take place, but it depends on the presentation and sharing of an informed point of view

It is both courteous to share ideas and satisfying to know you are taking people along with you – however the fact that this may be important in its own way, is not the same as saying it is a requirement for achieving good play provision.The relationship between the client and the designer, and the ‘ownership’ of the project by both are key factors. It can help if the client and designer are the same person. Helle Nebelong was to all intents and purposes both client and designer for Valby Park and the Garden of the Senses. In the case of Coombes Infant School, there was no professional design input, but rather organic and continually evolving development. Susan Humphries (the client) maintained a coherent and holistic concept of the grounds and personally managed and oversaw the physical changes – in that sense she was the designer. At Kensington Gardens, the client drew up and was committed to a very strong brief that expressly precluded a ‘traditional’ equipment based approach, and was actively involved throughout the design process.

So how can clients and designers acquire the knowledge about children and play that they need, and how can involving children help the design process? In the next article we go into some detail of a programme of engagement with children –‘Roving Reporters’ - that was designed for this purpose and carried out in Stirling over several years (and continues).The key point, one upon which it is useful to end, is that the two authors here (as client and designer) made a commitment to observing children at play outdoors to discover how they can be provided for in public play areas. Observing, reflecting, informal conversation, and interpreting all these. In other words, fulfilling one’s responsibility as an adult.