Adrian Voce - Play England

ePolitix.com speaks to Adrian Voce, director at Play England, about the Draft National Play Strategy and more funding for outdoor play.

Question: Can you tell us a bit about Play England?

Adrian Voce: Play England is part of the National Children's Bureau. We have nine regional offices supporting play development and play provision across all of England's local authority areas.

From our central hub in London we undertake research, policy, communications and influencing activities; all aimed at making the case and winning support for our aim: that all children and young people have regular, free opportunities to play in their local neighbourhoods, freedom to access and enjoy more child-friendly environments, and to follow their own social and cultural lives in their own way as real stakeholders in the public realm. 

We are supported by the Big Lottery Fund and have an integral role it's Children's Play initiative. Prior to our lottery grant, which has transformed the way that we work, we were known as the Children's Play Council. A council of member organisations – regional, local and other national play organisations – still meets as the Play England Council, giving us advice and helping to build consensus on our policy aims.

Engagement with member organisations is still a vitally important part of our structure, allowing us to legitimately claim to speak for the play sector.

Question: Recent reports have focused on children’s safety online, indicating that fewer children are pursuing outdoor leisure activities, why do think this is?

Adrian Voce: Traffic, commerce and a general design on our public realm that takes little account of children, other than as consumers in the making, has made the outdoor world less and less accessible to them. Fear of predators and bullying; increased demands on their structured time; society's ambivalent attitude to young people, especially in public, all add to the modern phenomenon of the 'battery reared' child.

Question: Why is it important to encourage young people to play more?

Adrian Voce: We don't! Children are naturally active, naturally playful. They just need the time, permission and the right space. Research on children's play reveals it to be a deeply instinctive, near irresistible urge.

Playing increases children's adaptability and resilience. Their appetite for new and challenging experiences, their inquisitiveness and quest for a sense of danger within a playful, make-believe world allows children the full range of emotional expression, to fully experience themselves, their limits and their potential, socially and creatively, as well as physically.

In other words, this simple expression of childhood contributes enormously to children growing up as responsive, self-aware, resilient young people.

Question: How can communities benefit from increased levels of outdoor play?

Adrian Voce: There is a lot of evidence that play-friendly neighbourhoods bring benefits to the wider community, promoting social cohesion and greater ownership of shared space. More children playing in the street where they live is also good for the community and good for the environment, as well as being good for children.

Question: Last year, in his role as Minister for Children’s Play, David Lammy MP said that finding space for children to play was one of the biggest challenges for the public realm. Do we live in a society that would rather not see children playing outside?

Adrian Voce: We do appear to have very ambivalent attitudes to children, and especially young people in public. I think there has been a terrible demonisation of children and young people in the media: not helped by the quasi-judicial response to what is often a consequence of children and young people simply finding their natural youthful energy at odds with a social and physical environment that does not cater for them and often victimises them (for example, electronic 'mosquitoes').

The 'Asbo generation' are no different from any other generation of young people except that there is more traffic, more commerce, less space and more pressure on them as consumers and adults-to-be. And of course, there is now this fast track route for them into the criminal justice system for non-criminal acts.

David Lammy's piece – calling for planning and community policies to truly reflect the needs of children and young people – was a breath of fresh air and quite influential, I suspect, in what is now happening.

Question: The government is due to publish the Draft National Play Strategy on April 3, 2008, what changes do you hope to see as a result of this strategy paper?

Adrian Voce: The strategy will aim for 'children, young people and their families to take an active role in the development of local play spaces; and that play places are attractive, welcoming, engaging and accessible for all local children and young people, including disabled children, children of both genders, and children from minority groups in the community'.

Among the proposals announced today will be:
• a new play indicator in the National Indicator Set for local authorities
• statutory guidance for Children's Trusts and Directors of Children's Services setting out their role as champions of children's environmental wellbeing
• guidance for planners on play within housing and open space developments.

The proposed steps should put children at the heart of their communities – not rhetorically, but physically, out playing where they belong.

In so doing, the government has finally come good on the full scope of Every Child Matters, recognising that children's enjoyment of play and their freedom and safety as stakeholders in public space is as important as any outcome.

What is needed now is cross-party support for a sustained commitment to the measures proposed and a positive response from local government – led by Children's Services but with a co-ordinated effort from environment, planning, housing, traffic and open space departments.

The proposed strategy is a massive step towards England again becoming a more child-friendly country. For it and the funding to have the impact they need, local authorities must now make play the priority that it has always been for children.

Question: In April 2008, the government will announce 15 local authorities that will become pathfinders for play and receive funding to improve play facilities in their region, how will these local authorities and their populations benefit from this scheme?

Adrian Voce: I think they have now decided to award 20 authorities Pathfinder status. They will each get more than £2m to develop local play spaces and build a new staffed adventure playground in the area of greatest need.

Of course, it should be of enormous benefit to people living in the pathfinder areas, which will need to embed an approach to child-friendly space within the plans and frameworks for their communities. The pathfinders will be flagship local authorities, setting an example of the benefits bringing play into the community can have on the regeneration of an area and for the people living there.

Question: Will more specifically designed play areas actually encourage children to play more, or have social attitudes, and access to other entertainment forms, changed so much that state-of-the art facilities will do little to attract children back outside?

Adrian Voce: Play is so natural to children, that they will play anywhere. But time and again, they tell us they prefer to play outside. But it is true that the quality of the play area, or the state of any facility is only as good as children's access to it (and, by the way, we hope this new funding, with its focus on developing good practice, will get us away from play areas being conceived first and foremost as blank spaces to fill with equipment).

We'd like it to reshape the common perception of what a playground is and to offer children playful (or 'playable') landscapes: spaces that they can love, where equipment, if at all, is only complementary to a wider concept of place.

Question: Are there enough play facilities for disabled children?

Adrian Voce: No, there aren't enough play facilities for everyone. Play areas need to be designed with all children in mind, not exclusive to one particular group – but that does mean thinking about the range of differences.

In equipment terms, disability is often equated with wheelchair users but only two per cent of disabled children use wheelchairs. The real barrier to fully including disabled children, in play provision as in the public realm generally, is cultural, social and attitudinal.

As a sector, we need to work to combat negative perceptions of disability: to challenge what disability is. Play provision is an ideal setting to do that, as playing is a universal need and impulse; and its form is completely right for each individual child playing.

Good play provision should (and does, where we get it right) dissolve distinctions between disabled and non-disabled children. Children playing in a responsive play environment with trained playworkers are in fact all enabled.

Question: Do you have any final messages for ePolitix.com readers?

Adrian Voce: Join the debate! Play England will be co-ordinating a comprehensive response to the play strategy consultation; see www.playengland.org.uk for further information. But also, if you have a view on these issues, let your political representatives know. The ideas need cross-party support, locally and nationally.