by David Fox
Summer 2015 Intern
When I was five and growing up in Oakland, my parents would
drive my older brother and me out to Berkeley, California for a weekend
afternoon at Adventure
Playground. It was our favorite place in the world: a half-acre of dirt and
lopsided structures that looked built by children because they had been. I
remember working together with a dozen other five-, six- and seven-year-olds
making the rails for a huge wooden fort that still stands to this day. We—my
brother and I—and the thousands of other kids who have been visiting the park
since 1979 have hammered, nailed, sawed and painted this place into existence
under light supervision.
Was it a little dangerous to give young children these tools
and have them go to work in whatever way they wanted? Yes, and according to Dr.
Stuart Brown of the National Institute for
Play, that’s the point. “It’s really central that kids are able to take
their natural and intense play impulses and act on them,” Dr. Brown said in an interview
with NPR. And while there are only a few playgrounds like this in the
states, adventure playgrounds have been huge in Europe for years now. It all
started in the aftermath of World War II with Lady Marjorie Allen, a landscape
architect who studied children playing in traditional playgrounds. She found
that they would rather play with movable parts, and create their own
structures.
Over the years, Lady Allen’s idea has spread. There’s the The
Land, in Wales, UK, which to the uninitiated eye looks more like a junkyard
than a playground. There are very few parents in the park, and the kids are
free to swing across the creek on an old rope, start fires (under the
supervision of a trained “playworker”) just to see what happens, and whatever
else pops into their heads. There are around 1,000 adventure
playgrounds like The Land throughout Europe, mainly located in Switzerland,
the Netherlands, France, Germany and England. Their popularity shows that these
kids are thoroughly enjoying the chance to explore, build and destroy in
whatever fashion they want.
Fifteen years later, I still vividly remember the days spent
at Adventure Playground as the first time I was totally allowed to follow my
creative urges. I believe that spirit of independence has stayed with me ever
since.
Did You Know?
In the first two years of The Land running, there has not
been any injury worse than the occasional scraped knee.
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