PLACES for PLAY: Exhibition

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PLACES for PLAY: Ailments and Remedies

Introduction

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This Photo Exhibition demonstrates that beautiful, stimulating, tranquil and enjoyable places for play can and are being created. Places for play include everywhere that children can (or should be able to) play: designated play spaces; pre-schools and schools; out of school facilities; and shared public spaces, whether the streets or parks or general open space.

This editorial highlights key issues that affect how play is understood and provided for in the UK. It covers a number of issues which have a profound impact on the way we think about and provide places for play. We have captured these ideas under the following headings:

We are also pleased to have an interesting comment from Paul Collings of Timberplay about how "the constraints placed within tenders often prevent the design of good play areas..."

The Exhibition is not to be understood as a set of exemplars demonstrating 'good practice', to be copied and then transferred to other locations. Rather, the Exhibition - images and text together - aims to illuminate general principles, values and understandings that are widely applicable but which come to life in diverse ways in different locations. How could it be otherwise when we are so firmly of the view that places for play must be expressive of an individual sense of place, part of the wider, local environment?

We recognise that the current Exhibition has few examples from the UK. We are also conscious that older children are not well represented. In the coming months, with your help, we hope to address these weaknesses. But for the present, the Exhibition's task is to show what can be done and to present good examples where we have found them.

The Exhibition represents phase two of our work on Places for Play (Phase One being the Places for Play booklet by Sandra Melville for PLAYLINK that we urge you to purchase).

This Exhibition also marks a general PLAYLINK/Free Play Network commitment to work both strategically - nationally and local authority-wide - and 'on the ground' with local schemes and in local areas.

We recognise that pictures and words are not enough; ideas need to be worked through in particular situations, responding to local conditions. Our aim is to make this Exhibition more than simply a showcase for pictures and text. It is, for us, the foundation for creating more opportunities for face to face dialogue and encounter with you, who can help affect change.

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