Flexible futures: children’s agency on the adventure playground

ABSTRACT

Adventure playgrounds allow for free play – an expression of children’s agency. In England, they have undergone a process of formalisation from the original ‘junk’ playgrounds. Cultural changes such as increased focus on academic performance, childcare, health and safety, and funding pressures have created new challenges. While critiques of change are prevalent in the literature and on the ground, further study is needed to investigate how change on adventure playgrounds affects agency. This research employs environmental analysis, observations, interviews, and creative child-accessible methods on three adventure playgrounds in the south of England, each showing evidence of formalisation. Prevailing theories suggest that flexibility promotes children’s agency. These theories created an interpretive lens for the research findings. Flexibility was found to be a differentiating factor between the playgrounds and corresponded with individual playground’s management approach. The study identified issues of agency associated with a lack of flexibility in management approach, such as parents on the playground, opposition to technology, and questions of playground authenticity. This study argues that flexibility is necessary, not only for children’s expression of agency, but also for the future of adventure playgrounds.

KEYWORDS:

• Adventure playground
• children’s agency
• change
• loose parts
• flexibility
• junkification

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely and rapidly ratified human rights treaty in history. Every country has ratified it apart from the United States which has signified its intent to ratify by signing UNICEF (2017b). Clearly the significance of childhood and the importance of protecting children’s rights is widely acknowledged.

2. Brown first developed his Theory of Compound Flexibility in 1989 Brown (2016) ‘Interview with Professor Fraser Brown – Compound Flexibility.

3. HGAP also bears the distinction of affiliation with Hackney Play Association, which is the only play association in London with a design-build team trained to include children in the design of playground structures Norman (2003a) ‘Introduction,’ in An architecture of play: a survey of London’s adventure playgrounds http://www.play-scapes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Architecture-Of-Play1.pdf .

4. Permission was not given to take photographs at SOAP as this could raise concern with the many parents on site. Instead images of SOAP were obtained from their website.

5. At BLAP, a large portion of the site (indicated with a diagonal hatch in Figures 2–5) was regularly closed to children during the 2017 summer playscheme as staffing levels were unable to meet Ofsted required supervisory standards. This comparison does not exclude the unused area, but it should be noted that the closure significantly reduced children’s access to physical, transient, and affective space types.

6. The sand pit at BLAP was recently added per children’s request. Adults were sceptical that these children (aged 9 and 10) would get much use from a sand pit, but it came to be a popular element on the playground.

7. HGAP recently convinced their insurance provider to support their stance on risk in a legal case instead of settling (Butler, 2016).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sharadan Rorabaugh

Sharadan Rorabaugh is an architect from the United States with an MA in International Architectural Regeneration and Development from Oxford Brookes University. She has studied childhood in relation to the built environment and is also interested in community engagement, vernacular architecture, and craftsmanship.