(At)tending to rhizomes: How researching neighbourhood play with children can affect and be affected by policy and practice in transcalar ways in the context of the Welsh Government’s Play Sufficiency Duty

Wendy Russell; Ben Tawil; Mike Barclay

doi:10.15448/1984-7289.2023.1.42098

Authors

Wendy Russell University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, England. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5028-6428
Ben Tawil Ludicology, Froncysyllte, Wrexham, Wales. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6823-5293
Mike Barclay Ludicology, Froncysyllte, Wrexham, Wales. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7940-5494

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-7289.2023.1.42098

Keywords:

Children’s play, Public space, Participation, Rhizomes

Abstract

The authors draw on their experiences of researching the Welsh Government’s Play Sufficiency Duty to discuss how the conditions for the Duty itself, its implementation and for children to play out in their neighbourhoods develop in rhizomatic ways that can be both planned and unexpected. Looking at examples of neighbourhood research with children, they suggest four dimensions of children’s participation (as the capacity to aff ect and be affected): first, seeing playing itself as a mode of participation in the production of public space; second, through participation in research and influencing planning and design at a hyperlocal level; third, through the ways such research affects researchers and others; and fourth, how the stories that emerge from the research spread in rhizomatic ways that affect policy and practice at multiple intra-related scales.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

Wendy Russell, University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, England.

PhD on the Dialectics of Playwork from the University of Gloucestershire, in Gloucester, England; Masters in Education in Human Relations from Nottingham University, England.

Ben Tawil, Ludicology, Froncysyllte, Wrexham, Wales.

Master of Science by Research from Leeds Becket University, in Leeds, England.

Mike Barclay, Ludicology, Froncysyllte, Wrexham, Wales.

Postgraduate study in Play and Playwork at the University of Gloucestershire, in Gloucester, England.

References

Bodén, Linnea. 2021. On, to, with, for, by: ethics and children in research. Children’s Geographies. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2021.1891405.

Burchardt, Jeremy. 2020. Far away and close to home: children’s toponyms and imagined geographies, c. 1870-1950. Journal of Historical Geography 69: 68-79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2020.05.005.

Carroll, Penelope, Octavia Calder-Dawe, Karen Witten, and Lanuola Asiasiga. 2018. A prefigurative politics of play in public places: children claim their democratic right to the city through play. Space and Culture 22 (3): 294-307. https://doi.org/10.1177/1206331218797546.

Dallimore, David. 2019. ‘I learn new things and climb trees’: what children say about play in wales. Cardiff: Play Wales.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 1988[2004]. A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. London: Continuum.

Factor, June. 2004. Tree stumps, manhole covers and rubbish tins: the invisible play-lines of a primary school playground. Childhood 11 (2): 142-54. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0907568204043049.

Freeman, Claire. 2019. Twenty-five years of children’s geographies: a planner’s perspective. Children’s Geographies 18 (1): 110-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2019.1598547.

Gill, Tim. 2021. Urban playground: how child-friendly planning and design can save cities. London: Riba.

Harker, Christopher. 2005. Playing and affective time-spaces. Children’s Geographies 3 (1): 47-62. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733280500037182.

Hart, Roger. 1979. Children’s experience of place. New York: Irvington.

Horton, John, and Peter Kraftl. 2017. Three playgrounds: researching the multiple geographies of children’s outdoor play. Environment and Planning A 50 (1): 214-35. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0308518X17735324.

Ingold, Tim. 2007. Lines: A brief history. Abingdon: Routledge.

Jans, Marc. 2004. Children as citizens: towards a contemporary notion of child participation. Childhood 11 (1): 27-44. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0907568204040182.

Kyttä, Marketta, Melody Oliver, Erika Ikeda, Ehsan Ahmadi, Ichiro Omiya and Tiina Laatikainen. 2018. Children as urbanites: mapping the affordances and behavior settings of urban environments for finnish and japanese children. Children’s Geographies 16 (3): 319-32. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2018.1453923.

Lefebvre, Henri. (1969) 1996. Writings on cities. Oxford: Blackwell.

Lefebvre, Henri. (1970) 2003. The urban revolution. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press.

Lester, Stuart. 2013. Rethinking children’s participation in democratic processes: a right to play. In Youth engagement: the civic-political lives of children and youth. Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, 16, edited by Sandi Kawecka Nenga and Jesica K. Taft. 21-43. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing.

Lester, Stuart. 2020. Everyday playfulness: a new approach to children’s play and adult responses to it. London: Jessica Kingsley.

Lester, Stuart, and Wendy Russell. 2008. Play for a change: play, policy and practice – A review of contemporary perspectives. London: National Children’s Bureau.

Lester, Stuart, and Wendy Russell. 2013. Leopard skin wellies, a top hat and a vacuum cleaner hose: an analysis of Wales’ play sufficiency assessment duty. Cardiff: Play Wales.

Massey, Doreen. 2005. For Space. London: Sage.

Massumi, Brian. 2002. Parables for the virtual. Durham: Duke University Press.

Mayes, Eve. 2019. The mis/uses of ‘voice’ in (post) qualitative research with children and young people: histories, politics and ethics. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 32 (10): 1191-1209. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2019.1659438.

Pyyry, Noora. 2015. ‘Sensing with’ photography and ‘thinking with’ photographs in research into teenage girls’ hanging out. Children’s Geographies 13 (2): 149-63. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2013.828453.

Pyyry, Noora. 2016. Participation by being: teenage girls hanging out at the shopping mall as dwelling with the world. emotion, Space and Society 18: 9-16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2016.01.006.

Russell, Wendy. 2020. Children’s right to the good city. Urban Design 156: 16-8.

Russell, Wendy, Mike Barclay, Ben Tawil, and Charlotte Derry. 2020. Making it possible to do play sufficiency: exploring the conditions that support local authorities to secure sufficient opportunities for children in Wales to play. Cardiff: Play Wales.

Tawil, Ben, and Mike Barclay. 2020. Play sufficiency as an organising principle of community development. In Community development for social change, edited by Dave Beck, and Rod Purcell. Abingdon: Routledge.