It is easy to get nostalgic when someone mentions playing outside: hazy memories of summers spent kicking a ball in the street, calling for your friend across the road to join you, the illicit thrill of knock-and-run.
But nostalgia may soon be all we have: it’s an incontrovertible fact that British children occupy an ever-shrinking slice of public space, and their time playing out in our streets has been slashed. A 2016 Sustrans study showed that children are playing outside for an average of just over four hours a week – half that of their parents’ generation. And most of this play happens in parks, with adults hovering nearby.
The sight of a child using his or her own street as a playground is increasingly rare, thanks in part to neighbours annoyed at noise, but also because of fears over traffic and knife crime. But not everyone is happy to allow our streets to become game-free zones. We spoke to the adults fighting for children’s right to play.
The campaigner
Sarina Da Silva, 39, London
Da Silva and her neighbours made headlines when they helped to bring down the wall that was segregating play spaces on their estate in south London. The developers of the Lilian Baylis Old School complex in Lambeth, south London, had originally kept children in the social-housing flats out of the larger grassed play area that was available to families in the privately owned homes. Things have changed, she says. “I looked down from my balcony yesterday and saw some kids playing chase,” she says. “It was lovely to see.”
Da Silva fought so hard for the children to be able to use the playgrounds because she doesn’t want them playing anywhere else. “I fear them getting home from school … traffic, crime, everything.” This is a far cry from Da Silva’s own childhood games. “I grew up not far from here. I remember playing out until the age of nine. My parents would shout out of the window when it was time to come home.”
“Rounders was a big favourite,” she recalls. “There were drainpipes, and we would slide down all the way from the fourth floor. I can’t even imagine letting my children do that.”
Da Silva believes this era of independent play is already lost. “Boys play football – but apart from that, no. The idea of my 12-year-old daughter playing rounders …” She laughs. “She wouldn’t think to do it. If they haven’t done it from a young age, they haven’t had that experience.”
On the estate, there are still rows about children playing, with many neighbours saying that they find it disruptive and noisy. Da Silva says it puts her off sending her children outside on their own. “They [the neighbours] moan so much if there is any noise. We smashed windows! That was accepted then. It was paid for, but it was seen as part of letting kids play outside.”
The educator
Jack Sloan, 38, London
When Sloan became headteacher at Hanover primary school – a traditional Victorian redbrick school – in Islington, north London, his most pressing issue was how to teach children to play again. “There was a political climate that separated play from learning, and it felt wrong. The children couldn’t be themselves. We were seeing behavioural issues, fighting, they weren’t able to play cooperatively.”
Pupils at the school come from areas that include multimillion-pound Georgian terraces and large housing estates. With fewer children playing out, Sloan says the effect has been visible. “Islington is one of the least green local authorities, and the gang activity locally is frightening for parents. Many of the children who come here don’t play outside at all.
“We see children coming in with fewer and fewer skills developed through play. Role play, being able to imagine a scenario; knowing how to fall out and get on again. And the biggest loss is gross motor skills – children are weaker.”
Out in the yard backing on to the canal, children can play with large pieces of wood, tyres and other simple things. The reception class has been stripped back, with almost all the toys taken away. Instead, children can move freely around, choosing what to do for most of the day, from carpentry to building cars out of junk.
In a year-one classroom, two boys are down on the floor surrounded by Lego and deep in concentration. He points at them. “You know, those were the boys who struggled to focus on their work. Now they come in and play with the Lego for an hour or so. Not only are they working cooperatively, but, later in the morning, they are ready to do some reading and writing. It works much better.”
Sloan sees the restoration of play as a serious mission, in the face of the ever-growing formalisation of early-years education. “Political pressure has ousted play from children’s lives, at a huge cost. That cost will be seen when they are older, when they need to think creatively. We expect our children to write creatively, but with less experience than ever of real life. This is not a compromise for us; it’s a duty because our children need it.”
The street-play facilitator
Alison Stenning, 46, Newcastle
Stenning, professor of social and economic geography at Newcastle University, is passionate about children being able to play on their own doorsteps. Since 2015 she has been closing local streets for play through the UK-wide Playing Out programme. With council permission, a street is closed to traffic on regular days so that children and families can play freely outside.
One of the goals of Playing Out is to challenge the growing view that children seen out without adults are a threat, Stenning says. “It is becoming so rare it that feels invasive. In almost all cases, within a few weeks of streets closing, those fears have died away. The tolerance grows.”
“We can see the benefits in the older children who have grown up with it. Now I see groups of 10-, 11-, 12-year-olds playing on the streets regularly on their own,” she says, even when the street hasn’t been closed.
“It’s a lovely moment when the barrier comes down and all the kids just run out. A few weeks ago, we did a football match; about 20 people got involved and it went on for hours. It’s about kids knowing their neighbours, knowing they could knock on anyone’s door if they were in trouble.”
“I grew up in Hertfordshire and as a small child I played out a lot. There was an alleyway that you couldn’t see from the house, and I remember the noise it made when we all ran down it. I was out there as young as four without an adult watching.”
The playworker
Kevin Sherriff, 52, Leicester
Sherriff beams with pride at Highfields adventure playground, which he runs, as he points out logs piled up to make a den so small only a child can crawl in, and the ropes strung between the trees. “I planted those trees 30 years ago and now inner-city kids can play in dappled sunlight.”
The senior playworker sees his playground as a pocket of resistance against an anti-child culture. “The kids just come straight here after school – no adults allowed.” He laughs. “Adults are like elephants: they get in the way.”
Over the course of 30 years working here, he has seen the changes in children’s freedom to use the outside world as a playground. “Traditionally, we had kids who would turn up alone from quite young, and now the majority of kids get dropped off and picked up,” he says. “Parental anxiety has increased and being able to get in touch with them by phone actually makes it worse. We have also lost a lot of kids to video games – they are just stuck in their rooms now.”
The loss of children from the street is a vicious circle, he believes, creating a fear of young people. “There is almost an issue now that if you see kids on their own, it’s neglect. Kids on the street are seen as a threat to adults, rather than being ‘our’ children, the children of the whole community.”
Sherriff wants the children, more than anything, to have choices. “In their lives, particularly at school, children are very controlled. They have got to go here, go there, do this, do that. They don’t get any spontaneity.” He wants adults to tap into their own memories so that they can remember what children need. “We work with a lot of schools, and the teachers all say the kids are so much happier here in an outdoor environment. It surprises me how surprised they are about it. Why do so many adults need to learn that? We all know we enjoyed playing out when we were young.”
The author
Michael Rosen, 73, London
Rosen has been encouraging children to be playful for a long time, through his poems and books as well as the many hours he spends visiting schools and libraries. “Voices in power have sidelined play,” he says, and he is on a mission to remind people why it matters and how easy it is to start bringing it back. This autumn, he has a book out, Michael Rosen’s Little Book of Play, as part of his campaign to remind adults that children need, desperately, to play.
“School is more and more devoted to pure instruction, and less and less time is given to play,” he says. “We must have some free play: play as investigation; play as an activity that takes place without knowing what the outcome will be. I mean, how did any of our great inventions happen?
“Parents are becoming more nervous about children playing outside or taking risks and this is leading to more time spent in organised clubs. What we have lost is the roaming that children used to do.”
The loss of space for children to be playful is, he says, having a noticeable impact, despite the “huge body of evidence and the bucket-loads of theory explaining why children benefit from play and why they need it in their lives”.
What does he think is happening in a child’s mind when they are restricted from playing and exploring the world in a way that they enjoy? “I think you invalidate the child, you create a particular sort of conformity. I am hearing from universities and sixth forms that, when you ask students for opinions, quite often they are unwilling or unsure how to express a view of their own.”
“Play is an attitude to the world and your place in it. When I sit on a bus, I like to listen to different ways parents speak to children. Some voices are offering the child questions: why do you think it’s like this? Isn’t that interesting? They are teaching children that the world is out there and you can investigate it. Some voices I hear are just telling children: there is the world, learn about it.”
A child who learns that the world is theirs to explore, he argues, is more likely to grow into a confident adult. “Do you have the right to investigate the world, to play with it – or do you feel that you are receiving the world and are dominated by it?”
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