“Children are a kind of indicator species. If we can build a successful city for children, we will have a successful city for all people.” (Enrique Penalosa, former Mayor of Bogota).
A good summary quote for the sessions watched at the LI Greener Recovery Festival that covered the importance of thinking about the younger generations and the spaces they have. Elizabeth watched the session run by Jenny Ferguson of BDP and Mark Grimshaw of Timberplay on child-led community green spaces, after which she said;
"Wonderful to see sterile and boring spaces connected and turned into a multi-functional landscape, providing space for SuDS, children’s play and the community to meet each other and engage with their environment. Great to see no fences around the play space – the area was demarcated using natural materials and changes of feel, with lots of opportunities for play. "
A virtual tour of Harwoods Play Space by Jupiter Play showed the value of inclusivity within a space. The focus on inclusion in their designs should be taken into play design everywhere. We loved the passion for it to not just be the normal play areas you see everywhere, and the idea of the family unit all taking part in the play experience fully, no matter ability or age. Jupiter Play talked about the 6 senses of inclusion they use to design a space; Proprioception, Vestibular, Touch, Sound, Sight & Smell; using these they can create varying experiences for everyone and give the kids choices.
For creating an inclusive space, a tool worth knowing about is the PiPA – Plan Inclusive Play Areas checklist.
We first ran the blog above as a series of posts on our social media channels – follow us to be the first to get updates in future!
The whole conference is now available on LI Campus at https://campus.landscapeinstitute.org/event/li-cpd-greener-recovery-festival/