Clockwise from far left Katie Scwab’s design ethos focuses around building environments that foster open-ended play, are non-directional and that use sensory learning and child-led approaches
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specifically about play, in FX 2015, the situation was deemed pretty awful for urban children. Sadly, it might be worse now, especially with local authorities having spent the last decade selling off much needed school recreation grounds to compensate for other funding cuts. Furthermore, two years of playgrounds being intermittently declared off limits, during pandemic lockdowns, have had as yet uncalculated impacts. But all of this will have contributed to an escalating child obesity issue. According to London environmental and sports charity, Bankside Open Spaces Trust, a third of London children attend schools with less than 10 sq m of open space per pupil, the minimum area recommended by the UK’s Department for Education.
educator who wrote a book called The Tactile Workshops.
Says Schwab: ‘His idea was that you’d be surrounded by different materials – hard, soft, scratchy, hot, cold.
So in the space at Collective, there’s a structure you can weave with, there’s a magnetic board, there’s holes to look through, spaces to climb through and crawl through. I used different materials from cork and timber to lino, and different composite materials that would normally be used in interiors and
construction. They were on these shelves and could be taken off to make these tactile boards or arrangements on the floor. ‘The show was open to everyone. There was a focus on thinking about an engaging environment for children and young people. A lot of the feedback we got was also from adults, who were excited to be in a space where they could touch materials, move things around and construct a space. Traditionally with galleries that’s not the case.’
However, children (and their carers) are nothing if not inventive, and one common response to lockdowns was families remaking their streets, taking advantage of the reduction in traffic and the more everyday presence of home-working parents to allow children a little more freedom. Tim Gill, author of the book ‘Urban Playground: How Child Friendly Planning and Design can Save Cities’, is a huge fan of play and exploration spilling out of the designated playground and into the public realm. I ask him if he feels the momentum to reclaim local streets in 2020-21 has made any difference. He says: ‘What’s happened is that the kind of idealism and appetite for change that was around for a few months, during the pandemic – that feeling of “oh, so this is what streets can do” - has collided up against the political challenges of getting people to think differently about space and to think differently about streets.’ He references some gains made with low traffic neighbourhood initiatives and the closing-off of certain residential streets, which were then affected by noisy pushback from determined motorists. ‘Tey’ve not completely run out of steam, but the pace of change has slowed and some of the political appetite for change has gone.’
Gill is feeling positive, however, about a new ISO standard around play spaces that encourages play designers and managers to be less risk averse. He says: ‘What it says is they should be explicit in weighing up the risks against the benefits of the features or elements. In the past, it was absolutely
SALLY JUPP PHOTOGRAPHY
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