Charlotte Derry, Play and Cultural Consultant, Voluntary Lead for the Playful Places Network and Director for Messing about in Museums CPD
Providing opportunities for fun and giving children permission to play is more important than ever right now. I believe that creating the best possible conditions for play should be every museum worker’s top priority.
Unquestionably, a focus on safe re-opening and long-term planning is needed to keep our cultural spaces alive. But while we want museums to carry on, we also want kids in them!
I would contend that the way to get there faster, is to embrace, head-on, the concerns we might have about encouraging play inside our buildings and in our outside environments.
According to Russell and Stenning: “Play is an essential activity. It is fundamental to children’s wellbeing, resilience, and development; and it is mostly how they exercise.”
And it’s not just the players that benefit when children play, it’s the spectators who can revel in the joy and noise. A playful environment is a better, healthier place to work, and to be.
There is a danger that museums could become more regimented and controlling of children’s movements as we take on the constraints of social distancing. But don’t we want to keep the joy in being out and exploring together? At Chester Zoo, the team have built play into their plans for reopening.
Charlotte Smith, Head of Conservation Education and Engagement, explains: “We already have a vision for play and for high-quality family visits, and we did not want to compromise it, while also wanting to maintain social distancing and safety. It has meant we have had to be more creative and playful with our pre-visit information and in the ways we direct people through the zoo in playful ways.”
At Ty Pawb in Wrexham, the Art Gallery hasn’t reopened yet but is situated within a building with communal eating places and market shops. Jo Marsh, Creative Director, wanted to ensure the artful and playful work she had been developing for their biggest audience, children and families, continued to serve them whilst also keeping movements through the building safe.
Jo said: “I wanted to use artful playful interventions to make the space feel welcoming…it just makes the space feel nice and makes the one-way system through the centre more enjoyable. We’ve worked with Ludicology to help us make the one-way system feel playful and called it Stryd Pawb (Everybody’s street). Inspired by street play, we have installed giant floor roadway graphics and mocked up road signs that say, ‘Ty Pawb welcomes children and their playful nature’. In my mind, I’m always visualising children moving in a childlike way, and planning around that.”
Play and recreation is how children stay well, and if we acknowledge play is beneficial, then we should facilitate it. In Everyday Playfulness, Stuart Lester writes: “Children have a right to navigate to health-enabling resources and adults have an ethical response-ability to support this.”
Now feels like the time for museums to become ‘response-able’. We have been on the steepest learning curve in ‘live’ risk assessment that we, as a workforce, have probably ever undergone. Not only have we had to adapt quickly, we have been overcoming obstacles of conflicting guidance and changing directives. If we can make these efforts with COVID-19, I think we can do the same with play.
In the UK Play Safety Forum’s recent COVID-19 and Children’s Play Report, it said: “Eliminating risk isn’t possible. Life isn’t like that. But even if it were possible, eliminating risk would be a mistake, because the costs of doing this would be too high…”
Adults have a tendency to control how and when children move and play according to what they feel is socially acceptable in any given environment. And our cultural spaces have sent these messages of reverence and ‘look, don’t touch’ over decades of museum-going. It’s hard for families, and for us, to un-learn these tendencies. Perhaps we should be asking ourselves, what are we prioritising here? A sturdy display case, or the wellbeing gained through joyful communal activity?
COVID-19 aside, children’s right to play is a matter of spatial justice. In the words of Mike Greenaway, Director of Play Wales: “Play should not continue to be ghettoised and fenced to specific areas but all public space, whether dedicated or not, green field or brown field should be perceived as children’s legitimate play space.”
Now is the time to take on board that play is how children experience the world, and how they stay well. And if play is children’s disposition, then if we want children to use our museums and our services, we need to value and accept play too.
With thanks to Jo Marsh, Charlotte Smith and Mike Greenaway for their contributions and time.
