‘It’s fun in the legs’: children’s dwelling in garden trampolines

ABSTRACT

Physical activity is critical for children’s current and future health status. Understanding how children’s everyday outdoor environments encourage movement could help progress the health-environment debate. In response to this, and adopting a theoretical focus upon dwelling, skills and the haptic engagement, this qualitative case study explores 25 Danish 10–11-year-old children’s everyday use of garden trampolines. Three principal methods of data generation were employed in the fieldwork: photo-elicited interviews, group interviews and participant observation at children’s important outdoor places. Findings suggest that garden trampolines are important everyday outdoor places for children that – among other things – can spark a vigorous physical movement in abundantly meaningful and joyful ways. Further, findings indicate that trampolines are places of inexhaustible movement opportunities, which operate through haptic sensations, feelings of skilfulness and attunement, expansions of the range of motions available to the body, and interactions between children. Implications for future research and design are highlighted.

KEYWORDS:

• Children
• physical activity
• garden trampolines
• haptic
• skills
• outdoor play

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Jan Arvidsen http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5352-3567

Notes

1 Ingold also uses the terms wayfaring and inhabitation in some of his work (Ingold 2011a). In this paper, the terms dwelling and inhabitation are used interchangeably.

2 Relating to the sense of touch in all of its forms, including e.g. kinaesthetic, vestibular, cutaneous and force feedback.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Nordea-fonden [grant number 02-2014-0387] and The Danish Outdoor Council [grant number 102288]. Jenny Veitch is supported by an Australian National Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellowship (ID 101928).