🎯 Who holds the power to decide how and where children play?
- play4all
- Aug 7
- 2 min read
🎯 Who holds the power to decide how and where children play?
Earlier this week, while researching for an article, I searched for images of people playing ball games in Nigeria. I’d heard about the growing popularity of table tennis there 🏓 and wanted to explore it visually.
📸 The images I found were few but powerful — scenes of play on improvised, makeshift tables in bustling neighbourhoods. They reminded me of a question we were recently asked at our All to Play For: How to Design Child-Friendly Housing panel at The Developer and Festival of Place with Jonny Anstead , Dinah Bornat , Harriet Saddington and Simon Battisti
❓ What do we need to make play more widespread in the UK?
My instinctive response had been: “Take away the choice.” Take away the option for developers, local authorities, and schools to opt out of providing play. 🫸 Push back on societal norms that values profit over what makes people thrive.
But those photos made me reflect more deeply.It’s not just about taking away the choice — it’s about shifting who has the power to choose. ⚖️
🧒🏾 Children express spatial agency — their ability to move through and shape environments — through outdoor play. Yet they are rarely included in decisions about how play spaces are designed: what they look, feel, sound, or even smell like. 🎨👃🏽🔊
👪 Parents, often gatekeepers to children’s access to play, may be consulted in planning processes — but rarely around what collectively matters to support more time, space, and freedom to play.
And children themselves? They are often overlooked, left out, and ignored entirely.
During my doctoral research at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, I repeatedly saw children create acts of joy, creativity, and resistance through play.
Their actions challenged hostile urban environments and amplified the power of social interaction, connection to land 🌱, and ingenuity.
Play and participation are not privileges:🛑 Let’s advocate for governments to stop framing play as a choice.✊🏽 Let’s shift power-support and amplify children and communities’ choices🌍 Let’s make it play possible — for all.
✨ If you’re curious about how we can reimagine play in more equitable, just, regenerative, and culturally rooted ways, one that expands our understandings of the place of play in our society- check out our latest publication on Reimagining Play
Emma Bearman– well done and thank you for the wowee work being done by the
Playful Anywhere team- Leeds is one of the case studies 🙂
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