Three playgrounds: Researching the multiple geographies of children’s outdoor play

Abstract

This paper argues for more careful, combinative approaches to children’s outdoor play that can better apprehend the social-material, political and spatial constitution of children’s play with/in diverse urban communities. Much extant scholarship on play starts either from macro-scale generalisations about the ‘state’ of children’s play, or from micro-scale analyses of the performances, materialities and feelings that constitute play. Our approach in this paper is to both combine these approaches and, more significantly, to focus elsewhere. Drawing on a large-scale, multi-method study of children’s outdoor play in three London communities, we start our analyses with three ostensibly similar, and geographically-proximate playgrounds. Through detailed attention to children’s narratives about these playgrounds, we assert the value of a comparative approach that demonstrates how the three playgrounds articulated both overlapping and strikingly divergent social-political processes in each community. Children’s narratives ranged from humorous and affirmative accounts of relaxation, fun, friendship and wildfowl, to haunting urban myths that make manifest community anxieties about ‘strangers’, sexual violence and intravenous drug use, to troubling, stinging critiques of how playgrounds evinced longstanding concerns about social-political marginalisation. The paper opens out a number of important avenues for future scholarship on play, specifically, and for research in children’s geographies and childhood studies more generally. In particular, it emphasises the value of a comparative approach to outdoor play that pays detailed attention to the enduring role of myths and rumours in the co-constitution of playspaces with, in and as the social-political lives of communities.

(Re)thinking (re)connection: Young people, “natures” and the water–energy–food nexus in São Paulo State, Brazil

“…Simultaneously, geographers have been at the forefront of attempts to unpick normative discourses of childhoods-natureswhether through critiques of rural or wilderness imaginaries associated with children (Jones, 2000), of the biopoliticisation of children's "natures" through the psy-disciplines (Kraftl, 2015), or through newmaterialist scholarship that has, increasingly, sought to witness the multiple, dynamic ways in which childhoods and non-human natures are co-constituted, co-mingling, intra-active (Kraftl, 2013b;Taylor et al, 2013). Resonating with wider work on natures in Geography (e.g., Hinchliffe, 2007), these accounts critique the particular, circumscribed, value-ladenand predominantly Eurocentricconstructs of nature which are often uncritically reified in normative discourses of childhoods-natures (Horton & Kraftl, 2017, 2018.…”

Walking with preschool‐aged children to explore their local wellbeing affordances

“…This near‐silence contrasts with work on older children for whom there is a well‐developed body of research on their experiences of urban environments and their rights to the city (Chawla, 2001; Christensen et al, 2018; Freeman & Tranter, 2011). Several studies, for example, have considered primary school children's activity spaces after school (Ergler, Kearns, & Witten, 2013c; Holloway & Pimlott‐Wilson, 2018; Karsten & Felder, 2015) and children's use of public open spaces and playgrounds (Hand et al, 2018; Horton & Kraftl, 2018; Karsten, 2003; Sargisson & McLean, 2013) and examined how they move around in their cities (Babb et al, 2017; Freeman & Quigg, 2009; Kullman, 2010; Mikkelsen & Christensen, 2009).…”

“…These examples show that children's neighbourhoods and the activities they undertake evoke emotional attachment and joy but happen within the wider constraints of regulated and gendered childhoods (for example, safety concerns and child‐designated play areas; see also Ekman Ladru & Gustafson, 2018; Horton & Kraftl, 2018; Osgood & Robinson, 2019). Their play activities and narrations about being with friends and family were accompanied with smiles, laughter, or happy screams such as when going down the slide or going high on the swings or seesaw.…”

“…Similarly, playgrounds and parks can be arenas for potential dangers, although they still signify fun and happy places (Freeman, 2017; Horton & Kraftl, 2018). Participants remembered when they hurt themselves—for example, by going down a slide forwards, backwards, or in other experimental postures.…”

Children’s Involvement in Research—A Review and Comparison with Service User Involvement in Health and Social Care

“…As part of this, children are now generally acknowledged as competent social actors, with experiences, understandings and ideas of their own (Christensen and James 2008;Kellett et al 2004;O'Kane 2008;Prout 2005;Wyness 2015), as subjects rather than objects (Kellett 2005;Horgan 2017) and as 'experts' in their own lives (Clark and Statham 2005). Consequently, it has been argued that they should be consulted on matters of importance to them and, within research, this has been reflected in the growing participation and involvement of children in a wide range of disciplines, including education (Dalli and Te One 2012;Devine 2002), development (Crivello et al 2009), migration studies (Sime and Fox 2015;Tyrell 2001), human geography (Barker and Weller 2003;Horton and Kraftl 2018) and health and social care (Bergström et al 2010;Vis et al 2011).…”