The 7-year-old John Playfair stands with two discarded gutters at a sand hill where a water tap comes out. After a pause, he manages to arrange the two gutters in such a way that the water flows neatly off the hill. He then takes a spade to dig a canal. The boy is so busy with his water management that he doesn’t notice that the other kids have started their lunch, sandwiches and chunks of watermelon just down the road in the Hackney Marsh Adventure Playground.
“Do you like my channel?” John inquires when he looks around satisfied after his efforts. He gets compliments from Angela Day, the playground supervisor of this wild playground in east London. About a hundred children play here every day, sandwiched between the canalized Lea River, a group of gallery flats and Victorian terraced houses that quickly cost more than a million pounds. She points to the shovel little John used in his digging. ‘You see’, says Day, ‘that is not a plastic shovel, but a real one, which is also used by adults. Children are fine with real tools. Through harm and shame they become wise.’
There are in The Adventure, as this fifty-year-old playground is affectionately known. plenty of places to get wise this way. The watchtower that is difficult to climb, for example, alias the Clubhouse, The stone oven in which pizzas can be baked. Or the brambles where urban foxes live that sometimes appear after the kids have barbecued. In any other playground the nettles would be removed, but not in this wilderness.
Underneath lies the rubble of workers’ houses that were destroyed by German bombs during the Second World War. Day: “Sometimes we dig as archaeologists, and we come across everything from forks to Victorian coins.”
tensions
“I think the way they handle risk is the biggest asset of this playground,” says Julian Kirby, who comes to pick up Jasmine around 5:00 PM. His 10-year-old daughter says she had a great time with the zip line. ‘Parents tend to be too protective, to intervene too much. That is understandable, but not always good for children.’ The 47-year-old employee of environmental organization Friends of the Earth points to the high fence that surrounds The Adventure. “That’s not meant to keep children in, they can just get out, but to keep parents out.”
The idea of banning parents was born during the pandemic. ‘Due to a lack of entertainment, the playground had turned into a meeting place for coffee-drinking mom and dad’, says Day, ‘and that had mainly negative effects. Tensions arose between parents and between children. Playing went much better without parents around. Children started to solve problems on their own and started to behave more relaxed, more sociable too. They felt free, away from the parental gaze. If there are problems, or accidents, they can always contact me or one of my colleagues.’
Day, 50, grew up in south-west London at a time when children considered the environment they lived in as one big playground. ‘We were sometimes out and about for hours after school, on an adventure, only to come home tired and hungry.’ In today’s information age, more awareness has arisen for ‘Stranger Danger’, unknown danger.
Shocking child murders have been widely reported in the tabloids, so the fear is well in it. Taking pictures in playgrounds is not done. Municipalities are laying rubber tiles under the climbing frames for fear of ‘no win no fee’ claims. This development has been rapid in the United Kingdom.
Helicopter Parent
The helicopter parent came in, a concerned parent who physically or virtually circles his or her child(ren). The exaggerated attention to health and safety has led to a counter reaction, to the idea of free-range children. For example, the British brothers Conn and Hal Iggulden published in 2008 The Dangerous Book for Boys, a handbook that explains, among other things, how to build a tree house, how to tie knots and how to find your way without the help of Google Maps. Around the same time, Tom Hodgkinson, publisher of the magazine, wrote: The Idlera pamphlet about the well-intentioned ‘neglecting’ of children.
The phenomenon of ‘adventure playground’ fits in with this counter-reaction. ‘But it is also the first time municipalities tend to make cutbacks,’ says Day. ‘Fortunately, our district does not do that. In addition, we receive support from third parties. Because the Olympics were held nearby, we received money from the organization to build towers and walkways. The Sport England foundation gives us money for a football field. The old field had turned into a sandbox after a Bulgarian boy who was an extremely good gymnast built all kinds of makeshift gymnastics equipment to do somersaults. It was a huge success with the kids. Not a blade of grass was left.’
‘Do-it-yourself’ is encouraged. The playground is full of discarded items. ‘That bathtub over there’, Day points out, ‘that comes from a renovated rented house. Those chairs? The are from a school. Those wheelchairs were donated by a hospital. One of our favorite things is that plastic water wave, which was used on a movie set. The kids call it a ‘dinodrol’.’ Day, who has worked as a municipal official at the playground for 14 years, points to a shed used by a local water sports club to store surfboards. ‘In return, our playground children can paddle along the canal for free.’
Hot potatoes
The lunches that the children receive come from the education budget. “That’s thanks to Marcus Rashford, the footballer who fought for free school meals during holidays.” When serving, the playground employees are assisted by Shane, a 15-year-old boy who has been coming to the playground for ten years. ‘This feels like my backyard’, says the somewhat introverted student. What does he like to do most? ‘Everything. Playing hide and seek, climbing, and painting in the clubhouse.’ Outdoor play takes place here all year round. “When it’s cold, Angela gives us hot, foil-wrapped potatoes.”
“Angela is a godsend,” says Catherine Kemp, a 69-year-old grandmother who is standing by the gate to pick up a grandchild. ‘My brothers and sisters have played here, my children, now my grandchildren and later my great-grandchildren’. She says she grew up in an Irish immigrant family, a family of eleven children in a three-room flat. “It was a poor neighbourhood. Due to the invasion of twiggies (yuppies, red.) is part of getting richer, but there are still plenty of kids growing up here under difficult circumstances. Small, cold houses, domestic violence sometimes. For these children, this playground is the safest place imaginable.’