KOMPAN

"The childhood street"

 

To belong somewhere is a fundamental human need and especially important to our children: they have a need to achieve a place in the world and the local environment they have only recently begun to get to know. They are very keen to make their local environment their own – that is, if they are allowed to conquer it. As parents it is our duty to allow them to do so. It is also our duty to create a local environment in which our children can move around safely. Children conquer the world on foot, not from the back seat of a car or the rear seat of a bicycle.


The UN convention's article 31 states that all children have the right to play. And we know that play is a necessary part of our children's physical, cognitive and emotional, social and creative development.  Through free play with peers in the playground, children learn to recognise their own talents, limits and possibilities and those of others.


In the old days this was generally acknowledged but today the achieving of basic physical and social skills as a challenge for schools throughout the world. Children no longer bring an inherent parcel of life skills with them as they start school. Many have stunted development  of elementary abilities – e.g. 25% of Danish children starting school need  extra training of motor skills often due to lack of movement in the early years. This leads to problems later such as obesity, high blood pressure and lack of fitness in quite young children.


Furthermore, many children lack fundamental knowledge of the world: a chicken is something bought frozen from the supermarket and they wouldn’t know the name of the neighbouring street. Free play on a good outdoor playground near to home is an important starting point for understanding the basic ways of the world. And understanding is a fundamental prerequisite for taking on the joint ownership which is so important for citizenship.


In a number of European countries, the insight into this correlation has meant that guidelines have been put in place as to how far away the nearest playground should be sited.  One example is the UK Six Acre Standard which sets the recommended playing space per 1000 of the population. The standards are as follows:


The Local Area of Play (LAP) should be within 100m or a one minute walk by pavement or foot path from local housing. The play area should offer basic play facilities primarily for accompanied local children under the age of six.
 
The Local Equipped Area for Play (LEAP) should be within 400m or 5 minutes walk by pavement or foot path from local housing. The play area should offer at least five different pieces of play equipment and primarily be aimed at accompanied children between the ages of four and eight. The Neighbourhood Equipped Areas for Play (NEAP) should be within 1000m or 15 minutes walk by pavement or foot path from local housing. The play area should offer no less than eight different pieces of play equipment and primarily be aimed at unaccompanied children between the ages of eight and fourteen from the local housing area.


In many ways there is a long road ahead of us before we can reach such a standard generally in Europe and the same is true of the UK, but in the UK there is a focus on this work: The Lottery Fund (the equivalent of the football pool fund in Denmark) have recently earmarked £155 million (just under DKK1.7 billion) for local play area projects over the next three years.


In many European countries, local authorities are currently cutting back on play area budgets. Existing play areas are cancelled as they do not fulfil current safety standards. In many towns and cities park areas are used for museum extensions or other buildings. Finally there are the old worn-out play areas which only appeal to the local hooligans, everyone else feels unsafe in using them.


All of this means that private initiatives within play areas are most welcome. Within park areas, it is already quite common that some of the best play areas in the country are on private land: in zoos, stately houses open to the public and such places, but it costs money  and requires transport to access them. Many of the really good local play areas are near social housing and this is a welcome development.  Local authority housing play areas are not only of benefit to local children, allowing them the possibility of outdoor play close to home, a foundation for basic abilities in childhood – and the rest of their lives. They also provide a place to go for "back garden children" from the local residential areas who often have no common play area.


As adults it is very much our responsibility to ensure that our children feel at home and secure in their local area. A very obvious way of fulfilling this obligation is through the creation of child friendly communal areas for which children feel they have ownership. Very few things can gather together children from different roads and streets, across age groups and other differences, in the way a good, safe, fun and challenging play area  can do it.


More information:
www.ipaworld.org  - International Play Association, IPA, a Non-Governmental Organisation which advices UNICEF on questions related to children's right to play and which focuses on children's right to play internationally

The Six Acre Standard, National Playing Fields Association, NPFA, United Kingdom 2001, www.npfa.co.uk

By Jeanette Fich Jespersen, cand.mag., leader of the KOMPAN Institute

Copyright KOMPAN A/S