Play Strategy Development
POP-UP PLAYSCAPES, IMAGINATIVE MAPPING & PLANNING FOR PLAY!
#ChildFriendlyCities An innovative and playful approach to engaging children and young people in the planning and design of their community space.
OUR OFFER
2017-18
www.thecityofplay.co.uk
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Introduction Our Mission Our Offer Outcomes Policy Context
Introduction... "If we accept that there is more to life than existence, work and everyday functioning, and we acknowledge the role ‘playing’ has in our development as individuals and society, then we must recognise that the well-functioning city must be at once playFULL and playful. We must work together to provide experiences and outcomes that enrich, not only children's lives, but the lives of everyone in our cities."
This document outlines the new 'Play Sufficiency Analysis and Strategy Development' services we offer to the benefit of Children and Young People in Scotland; Services, that will only be made possible through partnership working with Communities, Planning Authorities, Housing Associations and other organisations responsible for the planned change of our built environment. 2018 marks the first Year of Young People in Scotland, providing an opportunity to capitalise on National attention and address many of the issues surrounding children’s freedom to play and live a healthy lifestyle, particularly in reference to their everyday physical environment. Children's freedom to play and roam is under threat in the contemporary world, a loss of many accepted places to play has restricted children's movement to a small number of designated places and the domestic realm. Existing, and an ever growing amount of, research evidence has highlighted the disastrous consequences this is having, and will have, on current and future generations of children. Indeed, the play sector have been lobbying for many years to get the authorities in planning to acknowledge and uphold the Child’s right to play and to have their opinions taken seriously, as enshrined in the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).
In response, The Scottish Government’s Planning and Architecture Division have recently published ‘People, Places and Planning: A Consultation on the Future of the Scottish Planning System’ in which they outline a commitment to consult children and young people on development plans and to encourage local planning authorities to work collaboratively with organisations such as ours to develop and use innovative methods to involve children and young people in planning. Fortunately, The City of Play has already developed tools to do this meaningfully and, importantly, playfully: Drawing on our combined experience in Architecture, Planning and Childhood Play we have prepared a method of ‘Play Sufficiency Analysis and Strategy Development’; a positive offer to Local Authorities, their Community Planning Partnerships and even Housing Associations to collect, collate and exhibit the views and aspirations of local children and young people while delivering ‘point in time’ benefits of active play and learning. In doing so, we can deliver improved, more child-centric, strategies for play provision in public space.
Grant Menzies M.Arch Co-founder & Designer grant.menzies@thecityofplay.co.uk
“ Culture arises and unfolds as play... Now in myth and ritual the great
instinctive forces of civilised life have
their origin: law and order, commerce and profit, craft and art, poetry,
wisdom and science. All are rooted in the primevil soil of play.�
- Johann Huizinga, Homo Ludens (The Playing Man.)
Our Mission... Campaigning for Child-Friendly Cities Affording children's freedom to Play through design. Modern day urban environments are increasingly structured to meet the demands of our ever-busy adult lives. This may provide us some benefits in terms of improved private transport links, and services that are increasingly available to us and when we want them. However, the effect this is having on our mental and physical well-being is increasingly worrying. Paramount to this, is the declining independent freedom of children, and environments that increasingly encourage them to stay indoors, and rely on the help of adults to achieve their own leisure and play activities. For the majority of us, childhood was a time of innocence, playfulness, and reckless abandon, with playing outside the norm. This arguably provided us with the resilience to manage our encounters with the poorly designed urban environments we see today, but what about the current and next generations of children? How does growing up with a largely indoor, supervised, and pressured childhood affect the mental and physical health of our people? At The City of Play, we realise that our current environments are not meeting the rights of children. We see two potential scenarios for the future: 1. We COULD continue to plan with the busy adult in mind, and in the process increase our reliance on motor vehicles; reduce our access to green and natural space; and design according to function rather than the human experience. Alternatively...
2.We change our focus to see children as both the present and future of our environments: taking into account their playful needs, and prioritising their ability to navigate and connect with their environments independently of adult intervention. This approach will provide great societal and economic benefits for all. As the esteemed Enrique Peñalosa(Mayor of Bogota, Colombia) contends: “Children are a kind of indicator species. If we can build a successful city for children, we will have a successful city for all people” Children have an inherent human right to participate in and enjoy their environments. This need not be an arduous process, but simply requires us to look again at our urban environment and think: ‘What does this do for, and say about our children?’ We propose that all cities in Scotland (and across the world!) commit to becoming child friendly under UNICEF’s Child Friendly Cities initiative. Our credentials in architecture, planning, research, and community engagement make us ideal partners in guiding communities towards the rights and needs of children. We therefore offer our services to help make this happen. We hope that you will join with us in promoting the child friendly city approach
Our Offer... Play Sufficiency Analysis & Strategy Development Providing Creative, Considered Play Solutions... The current norm of providing for children’s play is to instigate playgrounds and assume that these can compensate for a largely non-child friendly environment. Not only do playgrounds tend towards unimaginative and highly risk-averse design, but children can also suffer from their poor placement and vandalism. This arguably stems from a lack of critical awareness of what children of different age groups and interests might require from their environment. In essence: “ there is a need for holistic design solutions that look not only within, but between and beyond, what is currently acknowledged or zoned as places for play.” - Grant Menzies and Prof. John H McKendrick (Play-FULL and Playful Cities, 2016)
A play sufficiency approach means providing children and whole communities with sufficient play opportunities in terms of both quantity and quality. At The City of Play, we believe this is best addressed by creating more playful, childfriendly environments. Our assessment and design works at the local scale to suggest simple design interventions that go beyond the playground-only approach to children’s play. This approach delivers cost-efficient outcomes and has wide ranging benefits for the whole community. Further, children and young people have a significant and particularly relevant contribution to make to deciding the future of our places. As such,we actively involve children in the assessment process, recognising that they too are experts in their local environment, and in their own play. In doing so, we can produce a 'childcentric' view of the local environment to act as a basis for decisions moving forward.
Outlined below is the approach we take to assessing and designing local play sufficiency:
PLAY SUFFICIENCY ANALYSIS APPROACH 1. Undertake and independent analysis of the selected neighbourhood in relation to its affordance for play, and freedom of independent movement, documenting opportunities and both potential real and perceived barriers to play. 2. Creatively engage the local residents via unique and exciting ‘Pop-Up Playscapes’ to further analyse the freedom of play and independent movement in the neighbourhood and community; documenting observations, play habits, and community concerns/fears. 3. Specifically engage children via local schools to produce Child-Centric, Imaginative Experience Maps of their local environment. 4. Produce an outcome and evaluation report and/or exhibit to clients and community consultation. 5. Produce an advisory play improvement strategy or masterplan, design briefs for specific locations and/or concept designs. 6. Work collaboratively with client to confirm an acceptable development plan. 7. Produce outcomes for community consultation and refinement. 8. Work collaboratively with client to organise the procurement of design services and oversee the development of the project.
Article 12 (the right to an opinion and for it to be listened to and taken seriously) of the UN CRC, highlights that children have a right to be consulted on the quality of their everyday environments and that they can contribute to the planning authorities development plans. Below, we describe some of the tools - as noted above - that we use to do this on your behalf:
Pop-Up Playscapes... Test Unit and Consultation Hub Pop-Up Playscapes is a creative mobile play service that uses a portable kit to temporarily transform and re-purpose public spaces as a viable place to play; encouraging children and families to be social, active and creative outside of their homes. The kit - designed and created specifically by The City of Play with funding from Creative Scotland - is intended to encourage creative, risky and autonomous play in the child’s everyday environments prompting a move from standardised and designated play provision to a more holistic, play-full and playful solution. Our vibrant aesthetic and the novel features of our temporary urban infrastructure create a recognisable brand synonymous with the injection of ‘fun!’ into the urban realm. As a focal point of attention, Pop-Up Playscapes is an ideal Hub for Community Consultation. Discussions will focus on the Child-Friendliness of the local area - a quality that can be measured in the affordances of both play and a child’s independent movement – and attitudes towards play in the respective test unit’s context.
Image Credit: Pop-Up Parks Our 'Pop-Up' model has been replicated and adapted, with permission, from Pop-Up Parks, London.
Imaginative Mapping... Child-Centric Local Area Analysis Imaginative Mapping - similar processes are also known as Experiential Mapping - is participative process where children and young people can think critically about their local neighbourhoods and creatively express and document their opinions for consideration. The process, which involves physically exploring the local area, will record emotions, reactions to sensory stimulus, locations of collective or individual importance, and affordances for play and imaginative interpretation. The collated outcomes of our activities should form a large child-centric, illustrative plan (map) documenting their thoughts, opinions and insights of a place that is culturally and emotionally significant to them. The workshop is also designed to deliver experiences and outcomes relating to the Curriculum for Excellence; aiding children to become Successful learners, Confident individuals, Responsible citizens and Effective contributors. Specific CfE E's &O’s include: • • • • • • •
HWB 1-01a / HWB 2-01a HWB 1-09a / HWB 2-09a HWB 1-10a / HWB 2-10a HWB 1-13a / HWB 2-13a HWB 1-16a / HWB 2-16a HWB 1-18a / HWB 2-18a HWB 1-19a / HWB 2-19a
• • • • • • •
HWB 1-25a LIT 1-02a / LIT 2-02a LIT 1-09a / LIT 2-09a / LIT 2-10a EXA 1-01a / EXA 2-01a EXA 1-05a / EXA 2-05a EXA 1-06a / EXA 2-06a MTH 1-17a
• • • • • • •
MTH 2-17d SOC 1-07a SOC 1-08a / SOC 2-08b SOC 2-09a SOC 2-10a SOC 1-14a SOC 1-16a / SOC 2-16a
As the above process shows, we take great pride and value in working collaboratively with our clients. Our credentials in architecture, planning, research, and engagement make us ideal partners in improving the environmental experience of children, and we believe that this has long-lasting benefits environmentally, socially, and economically. We look forward to working with you in the future.
Actions & Outcomes Logic Model Situation / Need
Actions Play Sufficiency Analysis
With increasing reports in the decline of play and its detrimental effects on children’s learning and development it is clear that the responsibility of reducing barriers to play has to extend beyond dedicated play practitioners, childcare centres, and parents. We must create more opportunities for children to play and ensure that their rights to play and to participate are upheld, particularly in planning and urban design, where they have so long gone under appreciated. Our built environment for the most part is not Child-Friendly, perpetuating - if not instigating - the social, health and educational problems we are witnessing today.
Glossary of Terms: 1.
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There are acknowledged to be 16 different play types (Bob Hughes, ‘A playworker’s Taxonomy of Play Types’ ) which provide playworkers, managers and trainers with a common language for describing play. Free Play is defined as self-motivated and self-directed, that is children control the content and intent of their own play. Free Play is vitally important for cognitive, emotional and social development but Free Play time has been dramatically restricted in modern generations of children. As decreed by the UNCRC Article 12 and echoed by the Scottish Governments Consultation on the Future of the Scottish Planning System. 'Play-Full' in that there are plentiful opportunities for all and 'Playful' in that our communities are inviting, challenging and creatively engaging: Finnish Academic Marketta Kytta's Conceptual Framework for Child-Friendliness characterises child-friendliness in terms of (i) the experiences on offer in a neighbourhood and (ii) children’s ability to access those experiences.
Output Measurement
Our Outcomes
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National Outcomes *
Pop-Up Parks: Test Unit & Consultation Hub
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No. of Children engaged Average Time spent Active Play Types Witnessed 1 Parents/ Carers Engaged
Children are physically, cognitively and socially active outside of their homes
Imaginative Mapping
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Opinions Polled No. of Participants Engaged Physical Output Documented
Children have opportunities to develop their creative and problem solving skills
Our young people are successful learners, confident individuals, effective contributors and responsible citizens
Play Strategy Consultation
1. Client Feedback steps taken to implement strategy
Children have increased opportunities for 'self-directed' free play 2
We live longer, healthier lives
Children have increased resilience and self confidence.
We live in well-designed, sustainable places where we are able to access the amenities and services we need.
Children are empowered to influence decisions that affect their lives Children and Young Peoples views and opinions are taken seriously by authorities 3 Adults better understand the true value of play Children have greater access to quality, creatively engaging and challenging environments for play Communities are more 'PlayFull and Playful' 4 The built environment is more Child-Friendly 5
Our children have the best start in life and are ready to succeed
We value and enjoy our built and natural environment and protect it and enhance it for future generations We have tackled the significant inequalities in Scottish society Our public services are high quality, continually improving, efficient and responsive to local people’s needs
Policy Context... Policy, Legislation, and Children’s play in Scotland: Children’s play, their rights, and health and well-being are all important policy concerns of the Scottish government and local authorities throughout this country. With our in-depth policy understanding, play intelligence, and design expertise, The City of Play is well-placed to help meet these public sector aims, and we take children’s play very seriously! The legislative and policy landscape for children’s play in Scotland is primarily made up of: • The Children and Young People Act 2014 • The National Play Strategy • The Early Years Framework Combined, these measures see children’s play as a vital aspect of growing up; a tool to be used to further other governmental aims, but also as a right in and of itself. In addition to this, local authorities produce their own play strategies which generally include actions related to the built environment. The idea is for these to link with other services that can help facilitate children’s play, such as planning, housing, and transport. Whilst the current evidence suggests that making links between these wider services and children’s play has not always been easy, there is a commitment in design guidance at a national level in Creating Places, and Designing Streets to make places inclusive for all people, including appropriate play space for children (this goes beyond simply planning playgrounds).
• The Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014. This aims to make Scotland ‘the best place to grow up’ and incorporates a duty for ministers and public bodies to give due regard to children’s rights (including article 31 – the right to play) and seek ways to further their implementation where appropriate. As of 2015, this means that all relevant policy and legislation should also undergo a Children’s Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessment (CRWIA). For the assessment, rights are defined as those listed in the UNCRC, whilst Wellbeing has an official Scottish Government definition, and incorporates principles, referred to by the acronym SHANAARI, insuring children are: Safe; Healthy; Achieving; Nurtured; Active; Respected; Responsible; Included;
• The National Play Strategy- led by the Scottish Government with Play Scotland (the national play charity) a key player in organisation, facilitation and delivery. This strategy prioritises play, seeing it as both important for individual children and society as a whole–socially, environmentally, and economically. It sets priorities for improving play opportunities into various categories, with ‘play in the community’ a vital element.
Indeed, play is an increasingly important topic of conversation when considering ‘place’, and to recognise this the Scottish government, NHS Health Scotland, and Architecture and Design Scotland recently created a ‘Place Standard Tool’. This tool is proposed to be used to guide community consultation to talk about what ‘makes a place’, and how it could be improved. Play and recreation is a component of this, and there is increasing drive to use this as a standardised guide in engagement with all communities. The coming together of policy at a national and local level on children and the environment means that public bodies should be supporting all approaches that make environments more inclusive for children. At The City of Play the types of urban innovation required are our speciality, and we know that this type of work is needed now more than ever to support, and even go beyond what legislation and policy is pushing for.
The Scottish government wants to make Scotland the best place to grow up, and we couldn’t agree more! Let’s make all cities a City of Play.
• The Early Years Framework, and what was the Early Years Collaborative. This set play as one of seven ‘key changes’ to help children from all circumstances reach their potential and have healthy, fulfilled lives. It worked across Community Planning Partnerships to look at improving service delivery and partnerships at the local level through a mixture of evidence based projects, and local innovation. As of October 2016, The Early Years Collaborative has become part of the wider collaborative: The Children and Young People Improvement Programme, which aims to ally the work of the Scottish Government on early years with closing the educational attainment gap between children from the richest and poorest backgrounds. Children’s play continues to play an important role here.
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The City of Play: URBAN INNOVATION BY DESIGN.