{"id":462,"date":"2017-11-08T11:57:08","date_gmt":"2017-11-08T11:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/alisonstenning\/?p=462"},"modified":"2017-11-08T15:06:10","modified_gmt":"2017-11-08T15:06:10","slug":"potential-space-play-parents-and-streets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/alisonstenning\/potential-space-play-parents-and-streets\/","title":{"rendered":"Potential Space? Play, Parents and Streets"},"content":{"rendered":"

At this week\u2019s Child in the City international seminar<\/a>, I was paying particular attention to thinking about the links between play, space and community in the city, in the context of my developing research on street play and everyday relationships<\/a>\u00a0(see also an earlier blog post here<\/a>). At various points, ideas that connected to the street as a place for play and for relationships emerged and I want to try to pull some of those together here.<\/p>\n

Firstly, for children, as Adrian Voce<\/a> made clear in his introduction, building on the work of Stuart Lester and Wendy Russell<\/a>, play is seen to be a critical space through which they get to know, engage with and become attached to the spaces and relationships of their everyday lives, as they play with the environmental affordances (such as playgrounds and open spaces, but also kerbs, car parks, walls, and so on), and move between their homes and those of their friends. In these ways, play can be seen as a key catalyst for the relationships that develop between children and their homes and communities.<\/p>\n

Secondly, and relatedly, as Ben Tawil and Mike Barclay of Ludicology<\/a> argued, children primarily want to play in the public spaces near their homes, the streets, pavements, walls, car parks; this is their clear preference over other, perhaps even better-equipped, spaces, even just a few dozen metres from their front doors. It seems that children\u2019s is to be in and play in their most proximate spaces, where they can see and meet other local children. We might ask if this preference reflects convenience \u2013 it\u2019s simply easier to play out close to their homes \u2013 or something more profound about familiarity and security, and about making play an embedded part of their everyday lives.<\/p>\n

What these two claims also make me question is, what about adults? How might we think about adults, play and streets? So, we might ask if we can think about how adults play on their streets, or at the very least how they engage in playful activities on their streets, such as chatting, socialising, joking, laughing, and drinking. And if so, do they also have a preference, acknowledged or unacknowledged, for proximity? And if they do, is their preference about convenience or about something else, perhaps echoing their children’s \u2013 and even their own childhood memories of \u2013 hope for engagement, attachment and belonging through play on and around their streets?<\/p>\n

A further theme, raised by architect\u00a0Dinah Bornat<\/a>, is that children are the generators of community. Children\u2019s everyday play can animate streets as they occupy pavements, gardens and driveways, and move between each other\u2019s homes. Children playing out can draw adults out, as they watch, talk to, and care for their children. Where children play, adults meet and communities are potentially created and strengthened. In this sense, we might think about how children\u2019s play creates spaces and relationships in which adults can also be playful. Sukanya Krishnamurthy<\/a> talked about how parents in Eindhoven in the Netherlands wanted services for adults around play spaces \u2013 such as benches, cafes, shelters \u2013 that might enable turning watching children play into a more collective, sociable, even playful experience for adults too.<\/p>\n

Finally, as Ellen Weaver, lawyer and legal researcher, suggested, adults seem to have more confidence in their children playing out when they know that their children know, recognise and relate to other adults as their parents\u2019 friends \u2013 or play-mates \u2013 and therefore might themselves feel confident asking someone else\u2019s parent, or another neighbour, for help if they fall over or lose a ball under a car, for example.<\/p>\n

In all these ways, play seems to work as interaction and integration, for children and adults. Moreover, adults\u2019 and children\u2019s playful relationships appear to be symbiotic, reinforcing each other and reinforcing the potential for residents of all ages to build relationships in their streets. Interestingly, however, during the seminar two playing out activists explicitly stated that they were surprised by the animation and transformation of their communities through street play, that they did not plan for or anticipate these changes. By contrast, I both hoped for and expected this \u2013 it was, for me, an equal goal to that of creating a playful space for my daughter and her friends on the street, in the hope that a playful atmosphere would transform our relationships with each other as neighbours and with the street, that play would be a catalyst for adults to develop greater familiarity with and stronger attachments to their everyday environments and relationships too, and it is this that lies at the heart of my research and of my part in the launch of Play.Meet.Street North Tyneside<\/a> (which is explicitly about playing and<\/strong> meeting).<\/p>\n

In thinking about all of these questions, I’m working with the ideas of Donald Winnicott, a paediatrician and psychoanalyst who was profoundly engaged in ideas about space, play and everyday relationships. Winnicott believed play to be vital for those of all ages, seeing adult play – in art, creativity, humour, conversation – as equally important as children’s play in creating a liveable life. He also saw an innate connection between play and relationships, through the idea of potential space, which he saw as a space between people \u2013 children and adults \u2013 that is playful, safe, trustful, and creative, and, critically, founded on an idea of a relationship to real and imagined others, who can witness, join in, celebrate, remember and enjoy the play and creativity.<\/p>\n

Together these debates raise the following questions for my research:<\/p>\n