Penny Wilson

The Play Things come from PlayKX play sessions running in the Kings Cross Development area in London. The sessions use only loose parts and Playworkers and families who come along to play. We ensure that the unadulterated play of the child is at the heart of each session. We are ‘instead of a playground’ with a richer offer, that allows flexibility of space and a variety of affordances. PlayKX is managed by Assemble Studio.

For Every Child

We have pulled together a sample list of Play Things which we know work because we use them in our practice at PlayKX play sessions running in the Kings Cross Development area in London. This list is intended purely as a way of sparking ideas and possibilities. We have looked for Play Things that are free or cheap, have as light an environmental footprint as possible, are domestic or bizarre, and are stunningly beautiful or slightly ominous.

These Play Things can be used alone, with other play equipment, and in spaces where the combination of possibilities become deep and rich and umami. You can use them in any situation at all where you want play to take root. Play Things are suggestions to get you thinking or yourself, that encourage you to be informed by your observations of children playing, looking in Charity shops, scrounging about, and, most of all, spending as little as possible so that you can provide a rich playing environment for Every Child.

Dressing up

Dressing Up gets overlooked and undervalued in play settings. It can be adventurous, creative, risky, hilarious, and beautiful. It allows children to explore who they are and how they look.

Choose clothes and accessories of many different sizes, including grown-up stuff of variable uses (skirts can be capes, dresses, or hats). Look for varieties of colour, texture, and style. Find shiny things and dark things, bags and shoes, lengths of luscious fabric. Shop in charity shops for best results, though donations from school and am-dram societies are always a cornucopia of possibilities.

Accessorizing

We watch hours and hours of play each week. Some- times we understand the narrative in a child’s playing; sometimes it is a complete mystery to us. That’s absolutely fine, of course. It’s not our job to analyse or interpret what we see.

We see objects and dressing up accessories used in loads of different ways. We don’t always understand that either – why does that toddler always search until they find the deconstructed party pom pom? Why does the golden sequined vest cause such separation anxiety at home time?

Objets Trouvés

Many of our most beloved objects have been things we have unex- pectedly found: strings of Christmas beads wriggle beautifully, ribbon can be used for lots of things, eyeliner can be used to draw on the skin. We have noticed that some objects have an archetypal weight that means they keep getting used to recreate fairy stories, ancient or contemporary myths.

Mirrors are vital. We try to get hold of as many acrylic mirrors as possible. It’s great for all of us to see

ourselves dressed up or doing poses or actions. Without mirrors, the only way that a child can see how they look is via an adult-posed photograph (“smile please”). Mirrors give children the chance to see themselves through their own eyes, front and back, and into infinity.

Friends

Play is a great way to be a sociable creature. Left on their own, children playing together don’t seem to be aware of their differences. There is just a broader range of possibilities that comes along with each new player.

Sometimes children need inanimate friends. Since we introduced odd, soft toy creatures to our collection of Play Things, we have found that strong friendships have grown between children and the objects. The children will rush to the chicken with open arms. They will search with infinite care until that have found all four of the badgers. The animals become part of play narratives, role play, fantasy, socio-dramatic play, and all sorts of other things we don’t fully understand because they are private. Sometimes they turn a different sort of object into something to have a conversation with, to care for, or to be cared for by.

Sometimes children just need something for a comedy gold moment – those moments of helpless laughter from a child who has made other children – or even an adult – laugh. Whatever it is that these creatures are doing, we like it. As one beautiful child told me about her creatures, “We talk together. They help me to work things out.”

Oddities

We were surprised to find that the children are drawn to (and reinvent each play day) a big old tangle of wool. Perhaps because it is in neutral colours and has one long strand sticking out. It is almost always a pull- along object – most often it is a dog to be walked.

Pom-poms are a delightfully funny way to throw things at people. We had lovely white ones over the winter, of course they were often snowballs. Wheels are also important. So are axles. Watching things turn and move can be fascinating. It’s quite fun to have off- centre options

May Be Useful

Old style wooden dolly pegs: good for attaching things to other things, and also turning into other beings.

Wooden picture frames: great prop for playing with self-image, and for the child to ‘frame’ the adult. Wooden spoons: can be a tool for storing and carrying, a conductors baton, a drum stick…

Sticks: while they seem to strike terror into the hearts of adults, children invariably use them safely if you show them how (just as with ropes, scissors, knives, water, and climbing). Sticks are great. They can help wave a fabric flag twirling high in the air, they can be a wand, a hurdle, a fishing rod, and all the other things.

Cozy

During the cold weather we bought blankets to wrap up in. We bought pillows for pillow fights.

Almost always we found that these had been snuggled up into little dens to make bedrooms. These were used by children and objects to take real or pretend naps or just make an excuse for comfy restful times.

Quiet options are always massively important options in play settings. The contrast between high energy play and sweetly soft times is important. And every child has different play preferences at different times.

Construction

A gripe with outdoor fixed-play of bent metals is that they are nothing more than a kiddie gym and don’t have affordances for the sorts of brilliant playing we see happening when Play Things are available. The same can be said for some large scale ‘loose parts.’ Used in isolation they are an amazing offer. Used with Play Things a whole new world of stuff becomes possible.

We could work with cardboard boxes, butter knives, and tape all the time. These things never fail.

Deliberately Sourced Stuff

Here are a few of our favourite things:

Coffee sacks: we play with them and use them for storage.

Cable spools: because of wheels and balancing and vases, etc.

Rope and string: two very different things, both absolutely wonderful.

Plastic plant pots: you can put things in them, including your bums or your heads. Mostly they are worn as ‘hearing hats’ because they look silly and change the sound of everything around you.

Keep Your Eyes Open for:

Lengths of drainpipe: for rolling things down, making bridges, supporting beams, or water if there is some nearby.

Buckets: they are great to collect things in and carry around. Adult-sized buckets are a little bit unwieldy and heavy for a child, which is a positive thing. It makes them more appealing. Also, you may want to find some washing line to tie to the handle so that it can be dragged along.

Robust wind-up torches (flashlights): for exploring dens and light through fabric.

Building blocks: made with up-cycled containers, filled to a satisfying – but not crushing – weight with sand (or whatever) and sealed with duct tape.

Making the Sea

In the park where we play there is a constant breeze. This is one of the very best Play Things that we have access to.

Sometimes we tie a huge tarpaulin between two sturdy trees. (We protect the bark of the trees from damage from the rope.) Depending on how we tie it the tarpaulin can be a rippling pool or a surf wave that you can lean into. It can also be a big den or tent shared by families or big groups of children. The noise it makes is amazing.

Be aware that if the winds get strong, the tarp can pick little people up and send them flying, or whip them with flapping edges. An adult nearby is the best way to support this.

Catching the Breeze

Purchasing a pre-used parachute is a good investment. They are designed to do spectacular and powerful things. Again, children will need to have an adult around while they use this.

Children seem to be very used to parachutes, but the ones they have at schools are single thickness and circular. The children and adults will stand around and flap them up and down.

By comparison a heavier parachute is a wild and untamed Beastie when there is a breeze. It is the inside of the belly of a whale, a wall of water, the sky falling in, then rising again. It teases and rages and dances and shelters. It makes small people laugh and stare in awe.

Scaffolding Net

This is the netting that is draped over the outside of buildings when work is being carried out. It comes in many different colours, in huge long rolls. It is strong and delicately translucent and, it is cheap.

When we pack the net away we daisy chain it, like a crochet chain, so that it is fun to pull apart at the next session. The children watch with incredulity as the net expands and expands and becomes a giant filling the space beyond anything they had expected. It can be used to make hammocks, mazes, paths, or a giant thing that follows you or that you can be pulled along on top of.

Strong Stretchy Stuff

In the days when we worked on an adventure play- ground, we were always looking for cheap ways to adapt what we had into what we needed. We started to use Lycra to make swings and hammocks that held onto children who couldn’t hold on to the swings. Tied be- tween trees (higher up than you would expect) it is an adventure to get into and out of. It bounces and swings and holds you close. It is restful and exciting. We have never stopped using Lycra. It is great fun in large quantities.

Textures

I have seen children playing with plastic objects on plastic ground. Often the plastic is designed to look like something from the natural world. Fake wood Wendy houses, fake grown-up dress-up clothes and hats, fake grass. Why do we think it’s ok to lie so blatantly to children, and why do we find it so hard to notice that this lie is being perpetrated?

Find as many textures as you can. We use fake fur out of preference but have had real fur donated to us and some children love the touch of it. Velvet is a luxury with a weighty lavish feeling. Silks and satins are a sensual delight as they slip like water around you. Linens and cottons are cool and refreshing. Use as much variety as possible.

Breathtaking Beauty

To many children a strong element in play is an aesthetic one. I can’t justify this with any formal research, but it was true for me, for many adults I have spoken to, and is evident in what I see in playing children. It is so frequently overlooked in play settings. Somehow mess and scrappiness are given priority over the beautiful and breathtaking.

We have a blue piece of sequined fabric that sends out shards of light. It is a royal cloak, a merperson tail, an ice dress. It is something that children search out upon their arrival, remembering it from last time.

It helps adults warm to the Play Things when they are beautiful, but it is the children who absorb that beauty into their playing.

Something Like Sweet Wrappers

Colour. Vivid, undiluted, dense or translucent colour. A way to colour with light. A thing to give shape to the wind as it flies and twirls. I grew up playing with sheets drying on a washing line in the back garden. Since children seldom get to do that now how do they see what the wind does? How do they feel that?

How does it feel to grab a long length of organza and wrap it around you, or tie it to a long stick and twirl it in the sky? Drape the frame of a den with overlapping colours. Make jellyfish colour bubbles over hot air vents.

How does it feel to run your whole body into a long wisp of fabric as it flies to meet you? It’s the perfect illustration of qualia. “I can feel the red.”

Unbrashing the Landscape.
Or
How to Rewild Play

1 Chelsea Adventure Playground

It sat in the grounds of the Royal Hospital off the Kings Road and near CheyneWalk, an inclusive site where Children with a huge range of needs their siblings and friends were mostly bussed to us from the less wealthy corners of Kensington and Chelsea

In quieter hours, we opened our doors to other visitors from the several very expensive private schools in the area. These children would be marched in strict crocodile formation to play for half an hour or so.

These half hours were some of the most challenging times that the team worked.

The children had no experience of free play.

Their lives were tightly controlled by the constraints and expectations placed upon them by their backgrounds of wealth and privilege.

This was happening in the 80s.
‘ Eat the Rich ‘ t shirts were in vogue.
Thatcher was in her prime and We as a team were inclined to be fairly angry.

We all wanted to think of ourselves as working class. (In my case this was utter piffle.)

But watching those children play, I felt my heart twist.

They were weighed down by what they had to live up to.

I tried a thought experiment, what if I viewed wealth in terms of a disadvantage a disability. These children were not responsible for the wealth, but they were being groomed to be made responsible for it.

That made it easier for me to empathise.

Every child… this was before the UNCRC.. Every child has the right to play.

What happens if they are pressured to behave like a young gentleman, conduct themselves as a little lady, speak properly, study Latin, not knock over antiques…… where is their playhood?

And do we want these children of wealth to grow up play deprived…. and powerful?
Coz look around. That’s what’s happening.

2 France.

There is a tiny picturesque village at the foot of the Black mountains in the south of France where we have made an occasional home.
We were drawn to this village because through each of the three streets of cantilevered houses runs a rill tumbling and spluttering with ice cold water from the mountains.

Every child visiting the village plays with this water. They dip their fingers or toes in it, plough their bare feet upstream feeling the strength of its flow and watching the movement of the water as it slips around them.
They make and race boats down the current.
They raise the dam on the little reservoir and create a mini tsunami wave down the street then lower the dam quickly and watch the stream almost run dry for a few seconds.

The children who live in the village also play constantly with the water in less tentative ways, sending huge sprays kicked or thrown at each other, frozen for a split second in the intense summer light, like a firework.

The people of the village are beyond tolerant of this.
Because many of them grew up doing the exactly same things as children have done there back through the years. It is second nature..

As adults they use the streams for watering the plants, shaking way the table cloth crumbs, making little dams up and down the street to chill rosé bottles, let the dog drink after a walk or cool their heals after cycling in the mountains.

It’s never the same stream twice but it is a constant presence.

If you sit beside it on a hot day to let it refresh you. You wave to every neighbour doing the same. You nod at the children as they play.

We sit either side of the stream each night and natter. Its voice chips in occasionally.
We begin not to be aware of it it as the days of our visit stretch out, but it’s being there draws us all together. It is so much a part of this community that it is almost unseen, the playing that this water brings to every street.
These streams make the village playable.

If it had been designed into the streets of Malmö, it would be a tourist destination

But when we suggested that the village hold a fête de l’eau, as one of the regions visitor attractions in the summer, there was a great deal of forehead slapping… why haven’t we thought of this before?

Play is like a spring that bubbles up within the child. Almon
Play is a river that runs through us all. Battram

3 A Faith Community.

It nestles in the most achingly beautiful valley, tucked away modestly from the roadand the rush. A home to gentle, peaceful, good and kindly group of people.

They are pretty much self sufficient sharing the labours of the farm and woodland maintenance between them all, from the oldest to the youngest. Children wielding axes to chop firewood. Elders passing on their skills to them.

At every little knot and junction in the footpaths between buildings there is a small evidence of play.
Between the communal dining room and the school houses is a beautiful tree with dipping and swooping branches worked shiney by small feet and hands. Little treasures are laid out in the twigs and on the bare earth beneath the tent of its foliage.

We walked the perimeter of the community through deep ancient untouched woods and old old farmland.
She told me how they loved twilight walks here to watch the badgers.
She told me of the children coming here to play and building their own swings from the trees, daming, fording or bridging the streams, making little places of ritual marked with leaves or twigs or flowers laid in exquisite patterns, mandalas.

“ We don’t disturb these things that they leave behind, but we notice them and pay attention to them. It helps us understand their playing.’

Term has just finished.
Behind the school house is a clearing by a wood with a panorama overlooking the surrounding hills.
Here the community have been gathering loose parts for the children to use during their summer holiday . There are pallets and lengths of timber and planks and tyres and pots and pans, rope, fabric.
The trees are filled with climbing children.
There is running water from a hose, lots of mud and fire when they want it.

Here is everything that you could wish for in an urban play setting with the magnificent addition of free access to the surrounding paradise of the country.

These children are play literate and quietly confident. They paid very sweet attention to the adult in Playworker as he shared his ideas for the summers playing, then subtly changed the flow, like they would divert a little stream, and redirected the playing. They decided that in their play, they wanted to rif on the studies that they had shared as a whole school topic, based around castles and the communities within the castles.

So they recreated a banqueting hall, a pottery, ramparts , water and drainage systems, domestic cooking spaces and other such inventions as they felt were necessary they build this community within a community.
They were independent and strong and inventive.
At the end of the scheduled play time, though the children and I barely noticed it, little knots of parents came to gather and watch what they had been doing. They stood respectfully observing the playing, and these quiet observations continued as they headed off for their shared evening meal.

I asked my host, “Why do you place play at the heart of the community as you do? That is so unusual. I have never encountered it before.”
“Well” she replied ” We are a community that is built upon our faith in a creator God. We see play as a beautiful and important part of living a creative life in his image.”

4 Pogo Park
The first time I visited the Elm Street Play Lot I saw no play traces.

I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.
I felt upon me from every direction.
Toody said that the houses around the tired and almost disused park were used for drugs and gun dealing. The crime rates in this ‘’Iron Triangle’ had recently been amongst the highest in the United States of America.

It is only a small triangle, defined by railway tracks and nestled in the shadow of the Chevron oil refinery. Pollution and leaks from Chevron have been dramatic.
The soil is highly polluted.
(Don’t make tea out of the wild fennel that comforts you with its aniseed smell as you brush past it.)
There is nowhere to buy fresh food and no money to buy it with.
But the cornucopias of the farmers markets in Berkeley are only a 15 minute drive. Chez Pannisse and The Edible Schoolyard are only a life chance away.

The community of Richmond are almost all people of colour African Americans or of latinex?origin.

They are the generations that remained after the Rosie The Riveter recruitment drive during World War Two called for called men and women from all corners of the USA to come and build war ships. And they came, escaping from Jim Crow Laws, escaping from poverty and persecution. And after the war, they stayed, not wishing to return home, unsurprisingly enough.

Years passed and guns and drugs and deliberately prejudicial policies happened and the community clenched and hardened itself against the world.

Right in the middle of this triangle Toody began to reclaim the park and support the community to re-see itself, starting with play and always, always holding it at the heart of the changes.

Her strategic thinking was flawless.
The dealing houses were bought up and rented out to families.
The park was re-designed to be fit for purpose.
Play pieces were designed and built by the children, teens and adults, all acquiring new skills together.
The neighbourhood staffed the park, deciding on rules that would enhance the playing of their children.
A second park was established, again on a well trodden route through the neighbourhood.
The same process.
Community build, Community staff.
Another project is on track to build a Yellow a Brick Road a playable safe route through the triangle to reach the primary school.
Play will take priority over cars.

Elm Street Play Lot is now lit up with fairy lights in the evenings.
The curtains twitch if any one unknown approaches, but now you are likely to get a smile or a wave.
During the daytime in holidays and weekends and after schools, children and families from round about will spend time there together.

There is food. (There must always be An Abundance Toody says.)
There is kindness and tolerance here.
Disapproval, when appropriate, is signalled with kissed teeth and A Look.
Subtle discipline, but acceptable boundaries are important here.
The children are absorbed in play, the parents are zumbaing away with great style and energy.

Little stories and big sagas are aired here.

A fire killing a family,. A boy volunteer on the playground shot dead at its gates.
Disclosures of abuse.
Tears shed over childhoods without childhood….
these things can seep out now because they can be safely held; by the neighbours; By the railings around the playspace; By the old house that sits in the Play Lot; By referrals to counselling services and welfare; By the community based policing which means that the children are growing up waving to the police who now take care of them in a Mary Poppins rather than a Sporanos way.

This place now changed.
It hold it’s head up.
It is ferocious enough and gentle enough to support play for its children, for itself.
It has Abundance.
Turns out Rosie the Rivetter was right about the people of the Iron Triangle when she said, ‘We can do it.’

5 Baltimore.

I’d watched The Wire.
I couldn’t watch too much at once though.
The naked cynicism and bald prejudice of every aspect of life within the systems of the city made me feel nauseous and trapped.
I could imagine no way for the characters to escape.
No way to be safe and live with pride and dignity and freedom.
No way to live actually.
Occasionally I found myself focussing on the acting and scripts and production values to give myself respite. And I was just watching TV

Now here I was driving through the streets of Baltimore thinking about how what I had seen on the screen would impact on the children I was going to meet.
I had to ask the inevitable question.
“ How do people round here feel about the representation of Baltimore in The Wire?”
Ben has a slow soft way of speaking.
He considers a lot chosing his words with care.
“Well I would say that we encourage people to watch The Wire so that they understand what is going on here.
In every aspect of life here,
every series,
right on the mark.”

Oh fuck. Oh fuck. oh fuck.
I wanted him to say it was an over dramatisation. Exaggerated.

Ben and Courtney were taking me on a tour of the neighbourhoods. We were driving through projects and I kept expecting to see that settee on the grass.

People were hanging round on street corners.

There were heart wrenching murals on walls, making beautiful eloquent calls for peace and justice. Memorialising young men shot on the streets, shot by police, children and mothers shot in playgrounds.

The wood frame houses were crumbling and rotting into evil mockeries of flat packs next to homes, almost more heartbreaking, with makeshift tubs of flowers and faded trim little easy chairs on the scrubbed clean front porch.

Abruptly our car turned off the main road and I found myself in an English village with a duck pond and a little stone bridge with Enid blyton style houses and shiney shiney cars carefully and neatly parked.
The world here was a million miles away from the crumbling homes, the tired shop fronts, the pleading murals and the knots of guys hanging round on corners.
A million miles? Actually a couple of hundred yards.

I am used to a more speckled life of London

But here I was like Alice walking through looking glass land.
With no warning I found myself moving from a black square to a white square at a single stride.

And I was conflicted.
I couldn’t decide which was The Good Place and which The Bad Place.

It’s what I had read about. It’s what I was expecting, the snap finger change from poverty to wealth, private police for safety, to police as a threat, white and black, Privilege and injustice.

I wasn’t prepared for how it felt though.

Courtney and Ben had started a drop in play project in the grounds of a community school on the edges of a ‘white area’ in Baltimore because they noticed that black children were using the open grounds of their nursery as a safe place to hang out on their way home from school. They would stop to play on the little tyre swing hanging from a tree by a slope or mess around on the grass because they could. They were in a white square. The neighbourhood might be racist, but it was safer to hang around here than it was where they had come from or where they were going to.

They made a play sanctuary.
The children, some of them well into their teens, seized the opportunity.

I was there to talk with the team about Playwork.
So I asked about their play memories.
One guy told me about his childhood.

“I worked really really hard to stay safe and clean and keep to the right streets.
But you have to know the word on the streets to know where is safe and where isn’t.
A friend of mine, I said Goodnight to him one evening and he was dead minutes later. It’s not safe. If you are a black kid , you are a suspect. If you’re a black kid the perception is you must be using or dealing or carrying a gun. You must be guilty.

And you have to fit in. There is serious pressure on you from your peers too. There are always folks around who try to tempt you do do a little dealing …
So complicated to stay out of trouble.
No I didn’t play out on the streets or anywhere else for that matter.’

That was me told.
My play memories exercise usually works a treat.
Not here.

I felt a little like Gulliver having the logic and etiquette of a strange new world explained to him

If parents were worried about you playing out, they weren’t being helicopter parents, they were trying to protect you from death

If children were discouraged from playing out it was because the stakes were too high

There was no freedom of movement, no right to roam or hang out for these children.
No free play, no one to even think about how the lack of play would affect the rest of their lives. The primary concern was that children should be able to have the rest of their lives, for many years to come.

In the sanctuary of Free For All Baltimore, children can play.
In Abundance.
There is food and thoughtfulness and kindness, dignity and as much safety as possible.
Like That Bit in Aliens, Ben and Courtney and people who work along side them have climbed into their armoured exoskeleton and are standing over the children while they play, protecting them from the corruption and the dirt that owns their streets and neighbourhoods.

They have started something.
As Marjory Allen said, ‘The work I have chosen to do will never be finished.
And in the words of Sigourney Weaver as Ripley
“uh oh…. I made a clean spot here. Now I’ve done it. Guess I’ll just have to do the whole thing……

6 Mile End

Eric Street is one of those corners of London where generations of families have lived since before the postwar reconstruction of the east end.
Communities birthed by the Nuns of Nonatus House, in the terraced houses that were considered sub par, and are now massively desirable. They were moved neighbour by neighbour into new glimmering tower blocks and low rise flats. Little individual garden or yard space was replaced by larger communal green areas, or slabby stretches of paving and the cars began to rule the streets.

The Play Association TowerHamlets learned that this delightfully overlooked, shitty forgotten little corner of Mile End was to be redeveloped, and started to work with with the social landlord on ways to regenerate open spaces and the community alongside the major building works.

It’s a long story, but the gist of it goes like this.

At this time a walk down Eric Street was bleak and far from enjoyable. There was scant greenery in sight.
It looked a little like a monochrome perspective drawing with straight lines everywhere.
The blossoming cherries, Virginia creeper and false acacias that had marked out in splats of glorious colour the seasons in Mile End, as surely as a Christmas wreath, had all been removed.
Seasonal variation was now dry grey or wet grey.

The odd patches of grass that remained were enclosed by locked railings, mowed bald, and used as dog toilets. True to the broken window theory, a place that had been a nifty little neighbourhood, became a most excellent setting for drugs dealing and attendant violence with machetes, guns and cars to run people over.

It had become an unpleasant experience, keep your head down and scurry through it quickly. The dental appointment of shortcuts.

The community shut itself in, drew the curtains and turned the telly up. Only going out when they had to.

We secured a £20k grant to build a natural playground from Kerygold, and identified a buzz cut area of fouled grass that we could transform.
The space was on a well used short cut, it was on many doorsteps

Tania, a local resident and force of nature with a genius for common sense and bold kindly speaking out was our hero. She knew everyone, talked to everyone, and pushed me in the small of the back in the right directions.

We had two months to make this transformation, so we acted super quickly, flying in the face of the slow play movement which was our prefered style.

We ran a play sesssion with lots of loose parts and sand and water, fabrics and stuff, and had Playworkers there both to support the children and encourage the adults to watch and see what their kids were actually doing. We made everything about this consultation as home made as possible, we wanted to have the community feel they could look at our rubbishy drawings and feel that they could do just as well.

We asked them about their own play memories, rekindling the excitement and variety of things they had done and feelings they had had.

Eric Street had lost play recently enough to be profoundly nostalgic about it. They mourned it’s passing. Like being away from home, they were play sick, they missed it. And they were on side with this project.

We told them what the budget was and how much play equipment cost and showed them alternatives that would support the children to play in ways that were not dictated by expensive tangles of bent metal. They liked that.

The quick turnaround time created a flurry of activity and interest and unlike the other laborious consultations of the last few years, which had as yet born no fruit and had wasted a playhood in dithering, this time the community could see the stuff they had asked for taking shape every day in front of their doors and their eyes.

There was also a grassroots environmental agenda at work. “We don’t see no birds or bees no more. We want a Bee Road down Eric Street.”

So we created what they asked for, a fruiting plum tree attracted a bird within moments of being planted, there were hills to roll down and climb up, water to play with, although the supply was really only for use in the growing beds in the space beside the gate.
There was native species planting that offered pollen and berries and herbs and flowers to pick and eat and play with. A great change from the municipal mahonia and pyracantha which hurt you and put you off nature.

There were seats and tables and logs to climb and scramble over and a life sized wooden cow, which had been included in the proposed plans only as a stupid thing which every one could reject, but which was universally loved.

This was a playable space, it was somewhere shared and pleasant.
A Playground would have remained largely unused, but this garden had something for everyone. (Except the drugs dealers who were frightened away by the inclusion of the fairy lights in the plum tree. The residents started leaving their curtains open so they could enjoy the twinkling. There was something of of Jane Jacobs at work here, the power of natural surveilance.)

We knew that for children to have a decent play experience, it would have to be enticing for everyone. Everyone would have to feel welcomed and welcoming.

This tiny garden changed the whole of the open space and community development on the estate. It did it by maintaining a focus on play and understanding that the community longed for play, they wanted to rewild it.
The street naturally became a play Street with drivers defering to children chalking in the car parks and little children running up and down the pavements in fancy dress without an adult in sight, but being watched from every kitchen window along the street. And there are birds and bees and outward facing people, and there was a cow, really truly, there was….

7 playkx

The development area of Kings Cross has cost about £4bn and it looks like it.

It’s home to Google and every other big prestigious, snazzy, high class bit of stuff you can imagine.
The old yards designed as trains sheds or fuel or goods houses, have been exfoliated and buffed and slicked and now have a post industrial, faux-shabby, chic.

The Heatherwick roof spanning the two wings of Coal Drops Yard, looks like some gigantic stone bird, a Roc, that has, in an achingly cool act of casual opportunism, delicately settled to roost.
The developer asked Assemble Studio to build a fixed playground in the largest of open spaces on the site.

Assemble, who some would consider to out-cool a Heatherwick roof, looked at the space and said, No.
They pointed out that a playground is actually a very poor play offer. That it is used by a small demographic for a small amount of time and that it fills up empty space which otherwise could be used for a huge variety of purposes by a huge number of people.

By way of an alternative they suggested employing a team of Playworkers and loose parts with a Playwork presence on site for the majority of each week.
The developer agreed.
This was a bold decision that would never have happened in this place with a voluntary sector play organisation. But being under the aegis of Assemble lent the right credentials and kudos enough to be acceptable.

That’s how Playkx began.

We provided fre Free play, open to everyone for a full day for six days a week for the first six months, then this was halved.
Still three full days is a lot of playing time… glass half full.

We wanted to look beautiful.
We wanted a flexible, adaptable, universally accessible play kit and a ferocious aesthetic and wit.
We wanted a glorious and robust play offer for children that would attract and please the eye of their parents, be photogenic and hold its own with Heatherwick et al.
We wanted a team of experienced, committed and passionate Playworkers working to a play ethos supported by the Playwork Principles.

Our model needed a clear fresh focus.

Most of us had worked in adventure playgrounds where parents were often excluded or made unwelcome. Yet Playworkers on these sites constantly moaned about how nobody understood them or the importance of play… talk about shooting your self in the foot.

There are are, generally speaking, only three categories of people who give a dam about play and actively seek it out.
One is Playworkers, obviously.
Two is children, even more obviously.
And three is parents of young children who see for themselves the wonders that happen during their child’s playing. This is glaringly obvious.

We decided to welcome the adults every bit as much as we welcome and respect the children.
We chat with them so they can ask all the questions that they need to; so they know that it’s ok just to watch and enjoy the playing, dipping in and out of it as needed, understanding how important it is to their childhood have control of what they are up to, remembering their own playing and finding ways to get as much of it into their child’s life as possible.

Here in King’s Cross, we play with children of the rich and famous, the wealthy, the well off, the comfortable, the ok, the budgeting, the struggling and those who are at their wits end, all at the same time.
We have children of families from families across the world, we have people of many faiths and of none, of a range abilities, different orientations and identifications.
This is the most diverse community that we have ever worked with.

We dot our playing in many locations around the development.
We work wherever people are.
The parents, the children and the Playworkers occupy space in this privatly owned place that is so perfect that it looks like an architects model. We animate it together.
We have filled up parks in the summer with picnicking, partying lingerers; explored the jewel box world of mirrors in Gasholderpark; filled to overflowing the east wing of Coal Drops Yard (though we did have a problem with a Rapunzel plait lowered over the balcony which unfortunately dangled in front of the Paul Smith shop frontage. )
We have played in front of an exhibition of covers from The Face magazine, by the fountains of a paved square and alongside a perfectly manicured and equisitely manufactured hand-made craft and artisanal food market.

In front of Central St Martins, the playing of the children mingles with the flocks of exotic-bird-like fashion students, the studious chin stroking spacial practices students, the quirky performance artists and the somewhat intense fine artists.

They all are excited by what the children are doing and see parallels their own practice. Especially interesting are the architecture students who have been given a starter project to design a playground.
They want to understand how play works

To each of them we ask,
“Where do you think your creativity comes from?
Children have the genius of play which is the root of creativity.
What follows in adult life is a sequel to that playing.
It was because of your own genius childhood playing that you are here.
Read Playwork theory. Observe and reflect.
And consider how the structure of the whole of the built environment impacts upon children. Consider for a moment why you don’t see children playing in public places all the time. Why is this project so very unusual?

We will be working with the Central Saint Martins Lethaby Gallery on their Turner prize winners retrospective starting tomorrow.

We will be playing beside the gallery and giving out Turnip prizes to every child who wants one. Photos and film of this playing will be shared by the Lethaby Gallery

The work that will be in Turner Prize exhibition is the sequel to what those amazing artists did as playing children.

And Assemble, as their contribution, are screening their film, The Voice of Children and a new piece of footage of us playing in the park in the summer.

So remember,
Every child, has the right to play.
A playable environment is a better than a zoned area of play equipment.
Take play to where people are
Support all adults to support play
Play builds bridges, it is social glue.
Remember to boldly advocate for play,
To claim the time and space for it because children cannot do that for themselves

Remember that Play is where creativity comes from.
Without it, the landscape is bleak and grey and all straight lines.

Finally publishing my ‘graphic novel’ on Winnicott (2.5MB PDF here)…  

Catch ‘em doing Something Right.
Some thoughts on Social Behaviour.

To many of us who have tried to understand the organisational twists and turns of attitudes to play in public spaces, we are often frustrated and bewildered by the fact that almost all conversations take as their default setting the perspective of Anti-Social-Behaviour (ASB.)
Wearied by this constant conflict of agenda, we have decided that perhaps it is time to embrace the ASB rhetoric and use it to examine what is seldom mentioned, but which underpins the agenda, that is, Social Behaviour.

But first, what do we understand by ASB?
We are well used to the association of ( young) people with Anti-Social-Behaviour.
There are many stories about the need for landlords and Local Authorities to take action to mitigate against excessive behaviours by a minority which make life intolerable for a majority.
The list below is by no means comprehensive, drugs dealing, for example, is missing. However it gives the general flavour of what we generally share as an understanding of Anti-Social-Behaviour.
‘In 2003 the Anti-Social Behaviour Act amended the original Act and introduced further sanctions such as Child Curfews and Dispersal Orders.
The following list sets out what behaviour the UK police classify as anti-social:[5]
Substance misuse such as glue sniffing
Drinking alcohol on the streets
Problems related to animals such as not properly restraining animals in public places
Begging
Prostitution related activity such as curb crawling and loitering
Abandoned vehicles that may or may not be stolen
Vehicle nuisance such as “cruises” – revving car engines, racing, wheel spinning and horn sounding.
Noise coming from business or industry
Noise coming from alarms
Noise coming from pubs and clubs
Environmental damage such as graffiti and littering
Inappropriate use of fireworks
Inappropriate use of public space such as disputes among neighbours, rowdy or inconsiderate behaviour
General drunken behaviour (which is rowdy or inconsiderate)
Hoax calls to the emergency services
Pubs or clubs serving alcohol after hours
Malicious communication
Hate incidents where abuse involves race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age or disability
Firearms incidents such as use of an imitation weapon.’

We can be fairly certain that most of us would find the behaviour above unpleasant to be around. A righteous NIMBI-ism has us folding our arms and nodding with approval as the Police metaphorically put finger and thumb to the ear of the offensive and cart them away for a sound drubbing that will surly make them see the error of their ways. ‘Straighten up and fly right’ (as quoted in Piranha 1)
We like it when we have the moral high ground. It is easier to pick off our targets successfully from up there. And if we are The Righteous, we feel somewhat more worthy and pious than the sinners. We are the privileged who can sit in judgement and sort the the goats from the sheep.
I met with a gentleman who told me an anecdote about him walking through his small town centre and seeing a group of hooded youth larking about in a boisterous and uncontrolled manner. He, like the rest of the pedestrians swerved to avoid them as they threw snowballs and were generally noisy and big in the way that only a rambunctious group of teen age boys an be.
It was at this point that he recognised his son as one of the boys and the rest of them as his group of friends. Children he had known from their earliest years. They were playing in the snow, relaxed, happy and confident, absorbed in their playfulness and not intending or committing harm to anyone.

Now for the Social
However worthy this ASB agenda is , it has done some-thing to our perception of shared space and time which skews our world view.
I am reminded of a TV advertising campaign for the guardian a few years back. A young guy is filmed rushing towards an older white man.
As the picture unfolds we realise he is not attacking, but saving the gentleman from a catastrophe that he was unaware of.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3bfO1rE7Yg&noredirect=1

A brief Google search for ‘Social Behaviour’ turned up very few pieces that were not prefixed by the ‘A’ word. However there was some interesting writing from Homans.
‘George Caspar Homans (1910-1989) is widely regarded as the father of social exchange theory. ‘
‘In sociology, “behavior” itself means an animal-like activity devoid of social meaning or social context, in contrast to “social behavior” which has both. In a sociological hierarchy, social behavior is followed by social actions, which is directed at other people and is designed to induce a response. Further along this ascending scale are social interaction and social relation. In conclusion, social behavior is a process of communicating.
In Playwork terms, we would refer to this as Play Cues and Responses leading to a Play Flow. ‘A process of communicating’ indeed.

‘Henderson believed that the subject of interest in sociology—be that a society, a community, or a group—is best conceptualized as a social system. 
Examining small groups
George C. Homans’s great conviction was that sociology begin its analysis from the observed behaviour of individuals, and not from roles, structures, institutions, and other abstractions. This is not to say that the latter are not real only that they are created by individuals. For Homans, explaining how individuals create and maintain social structures requires taking into account the given conditions that influence individuals’ behaviour: their stimuli, rewards, and punishments. Once created, social structures exert back effects on the behaviour of their makers (Homans 1987: ix). At bottom, “both the structures and their back effects consist of the behaviour of individuals” (Homans 1984: 354), and therefore individualistic as well as structural sociology must consider the principles of behavioural psychology.’

In what could be seen as a nifty parallel to the list of ASB quoted above, Homan defines Social behaviour.

‘ George C. Homans’s five propositions of elementary social behaviour are as follows:
If in the past the occurrence of a particular stimulus-situation has been the occasion on which a man’s activity has been rewarded, then the more similar the present stimulus-situation is to the past one, the more likely he is to emit the activity, or some similar activity, now (Homans: 1961: 53).
The more often within a given period of time a man’s activity rewards the activity of another, the more often the other will emit the activity (Homans 1961: 54).
The more valuable to a man a unit of the activity another gives him, the more often he will emit activity rewarded by the activity of the other (Homans 1961: 55). (“Value” here refers to the degree of reinforcement that is received from a unit of another’s activity. “Cost” refers to the value obtainable through an alternate activity which is foregone in emitting the present activity. Profit=Reward – Cost.)
The more often a man has in the recent past received a rewarding activity from another, the less valuable any further unit of that activity becomes to him (Homans 1961: 55).
The more to a man’s disadvantage the rule of distributive justice fails of realization, the more likely he is to display the emotional behaviour we call anger (Homans 1961:75).’

I suppose we could categorise this as positive re-enforcement offering people something to live up to VS the unreasonable enforcement of flawed justice, antagonising people into an angry response. (‘Well, if I am going to get punished for something I haven’t done when I am trying to be good, then I might just as well be bad.’)

Ken Blanchard coined the phrase, “catch them doing something right.” He was thinking about human management structures within industry and the power of positive recognition in personal motivation .

‘Contrast this to the Broken Window syndrome (Wikipedia.) ‘The broken windows theory was first introduced by social scientists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, in an article titled “Broken Windows” and which appeared in the March 1982 edition of The Atlantic Monthly.[1] The title comes from the following example:
Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it’s unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside. Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars.’

If we perpetuate a climate in which suspicion and fear is the default setting, then we are building an environment where the ‘broken window’ of negative judgement establishes the condition of human relationship. One of judgement rather than communication.

Is there an argument to be made that ill informed enforcement , poor policing and needlessly authoritarian and opaque regulations can cause Anti-Social Behaviour?

I know of one officer whose job title is Anti-social Behaviour Development Officer. How clear can a pre-determined agenda be?

Rose Tinted Spectacles or Gritty Realism?

Do we see a group of children chalking on the pavement as a traditional and harmless play activity? Do we see it as ‘Encouraging older children to feel that graffiti is permissible.’

Sitting in a housing office I hear an officer describing a young man in shockingly negative ways. Looking out of the window during this monologue, I see the same young man helping an elder along the street with her heavy shopping.

Walking past a stairwell on a rainy winter afternoon a group of young people are huddled. They are smoking cigarettes. A beautiful double rainbow arcs above the estate. I pause to look at it. The kids say, ‘We were just talking about that. Isn’t it lovely?’

The parents of group of children are delivered notices calling them to meet with the landlord and the police. They are told that there has been a complaint. About them. They are not shown the complaint. They are accused of gathering in large groups outside the estate shop and the youth club, of smoking in stairwells, playing football an using and using and dealing drugs. There is no evidence provided for these allegations.
They are told that they will be expected to sign an Appropriate Behaviour Contract, ABC. If they do not comply with the ABC then they will be given an ASBO and their family home tenancy / lease may be withdrawn.
The children are not invited to bring representation. They are not given a chance to prove that the allegations are unfounded.

The fact is that we have entered a sort of twilight zone where ‘The Authorities’ can decide what is Anti Social behaviour but do not feel beholden to share this definition. They have the unchallenged power to punish and yet there is no fixed or agreed penalty system. Infractions of the unspecified rules can result in curfews, dispersal order zones, the threat of the termination of tenancy/leasehold for the family home.

Positive behaviours are unseen and certainly unrewarded.

What is social behaviour?

There is no understanding of the role that (young) people play in fostering the safety of the community by spending time on the streets, of looking at the bridging role that they have between the children and the adults, of their energy, friendship, enthusiasm and optimism.

Residents may be discouraged from arranging communal gatherings in the shared gardens that they have created, from having even the most restrained of garden parties, for those of them that have gardens. They are not permitted to grow climbing plants up their Walls, to have flowering tubs and window boxes, from hanging flags outside their homes.
Of course ball games and by implication, playing, is prohibited by the posting of signs that carry no legal clout whatsoever.
Developers can argue that as new build flats have balconies, no common ground is necessary. Despite the Guidance provided by the Mayor of London, this argument still takes precedence.

So what constitutes Social behaviour?

Playing out in the community allows children get to know each other beyond the differences of culture, faith, race. They will mingle and bond with family groupings around them. A culture of shared responsibility and care for the youngsters of the community develops rapidly, with many eyes protecting and nurturing them. Gathering around this play focus, parents and grandparents, kinship groups and extended families will share a vision of playability and join in, finding their own playfulness in shared events for special occasions, learning about members of their neighbourhood who need extra help and support, sharing child minding, making sure that elders are looked out for, sharing food and shelter when that is needed. They will meet each others basic needs.

There is a strong case to be made for the ASB staff employed by landlords, Police and Community Police Officers, to be trained to see the positive aspects of community behaviour. They could be Social Behaviour Officers. Understanding how to ‘catch them doing something right.’

Much of the difficulty with the understanding of the workings of a community comes from a misreading of the Secure By Design, SBD guidelines issued by the Association of Chief Police Officers, ACPO. Reading the SBD guidelines one senses that people live in constant high levels of fear of The Other. The basic premise of the guidelines is to eliminate crime and Anti-social Behaviour. Life in a war zone rather than a village. If one re writes these guidelines substituting ‘play and playability’ for ‘crime and Anti-social behaviour’, we find that the documents read with a very different tenor. Yes, there should be easy way-finding, there should be good quality open spaces for all sections of the community to use, yes there should be good sight lines so that the whole community can keep an eye out for each there well being. The whole community should be able to live and play together. Take a look at the document and re read it for yourself with these changes in mind. http://www.securedbydesign.com/pdfs/SBD-principles.pdf

Playworkers have long joked that the people who interrupt and annihilate the play process are being anti social. We understand that play is at the root of human sociability, whatever the age of the players, it is essential to meaningful social cohesion. We argue , therefore, those who interrupt this play process should be issued with ASBOs.

Is this a radical suggestion? Possibly. And more than one thing can be true at any one time. Sociability can be viewed as inconvenient by those who desire a predictable ordered environment. The more we try to control people’s free choice, the greater the rebellion that that control inspires. The lighter the touch and the greater the recognition of the value of a strong community, the more likely that community is to positive behaviour.

There is a fable. The wind and the sun were arguing about which of them was the stronger. They saw a traveller making his way along the road beneath them and agreed to settle their dispute by showing which of them could get the traveller t o lose his cloak. The wind went first. He blew and blew and tried to rip the cloak from the shoulders of the traveller. The harder he blew, the tighter the traveller grasped his cloak to his body. Then is was the turn of the sun. She shined down on the traveller as he walked, gently she grew stronger and stronger and the traveller let the cloak slip from his hold and enjoyed her warmth.

Penny Wilson
May 4th 2012

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