The connecting power of play streets

Marg and Kat discuss the emergence of a local play street project in inner city Perth, Western Australia. During the four years of play street they have learnt much about the power of reclaiming spaces for play in local neighbourhoods where children can get to know the place they call home. Here’s what they had to say…

We started talking about things like, “how do we encourage our kids to get to know the place in which they live? What do our kids do after school? Do they really need to go to after school activities; it would be great if they could just hang out and play.

“The idea of play street really is to recreate what we had when we were kids. We were told to go outside after school and not come back until dinner time. We might have come across some situations that had a little bit of inherent risk. Where we played on empty building sites or rode down the hill a bit too fast on our bikes, but had to make those decisions independently. Our children really don’t have those same opportunities so much anymore. Most of their play provisions are in activities or in organised play dates with one or two kids that are usually their age and often their gender.”

Twelve year old Zadie tells of her play street experience and how mixing with different ages is really fun.

“During play street we play with both the boys and the girls, all different ages. At lunch and recess at my school, the girls all sit together and the boys all sit together and we play very different things.”

We know that play builds brains and play is really important and by playing together with this bigger range of children, where they’re practicing to get along together and practicing sorting out difficulties. They’re really practicing becoming better citizens.

Tim Gill says that “children are an indicator species for cities. The visible presence of children and youth of different ages and backgrounds, with or without their parents in numbers, is a sign of the health of human habitats. Just as the presence of salmon in a river is a sign of the health of that habitat”.

The biggest inhibitors to play now is that we are finding perceptions of risk that started with the Council’s fear of something happening on the street and litigation. We found that so many of our kids were not allowed to go past the front gate because something might happen to them. We’re so afraid of our kids going out and being abducted, or we’re drumming this idea of stranger danger into them. We’re not allowing them build the skills of assessing risks. We’re almost creating a generation of kids that isn’t able to cope with those life situations.

A national “1000 play streets projects” is underway funded by Sports Australia in partnership with Play Australia and Play Streets Australia. Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia all have trial sites that enable local residents to try out a play street, work with local council to establish guidelines and embed the play street concept into their ongoing community development strategies.

Play Australia partnered with LaTrobe University to develop and evidence review report on the benefits of play streets. The review was released in June 2020.

According to Kat’s experience as a parent:

I feel so much more comfortable knowing that I think my kids are going to be okay. They’re learning so much through play streets and playing with their friends. They’re learning to stick together. They know their neighbourhood so much better. They know they can pop into the corner store. They know the storekeeper. They know people around them.

By giving our children the freedom to move around their neighbourhood independently, we’re building their confidence and their trust in themselves to make the right decisions and be able to assess risks.

So we started Rae Street Play Street by an email conversation just to get a bit of a feel that the idea was a fit for our area with our friends and those we knew already in the neighbourhood. Then the next step was a call to Council. The City of Vincent are quite a proactive council, particular around social inclusion and community development work. Council encouraged us at that point to just have a go. They have since developed an Open Streets policy.

Things that we pushed over the course of the play street project included riding of bikes, scooters and skateboards, with some bike tinkering sessions. Some of the older children and some of the adults have come along and done repair work and shown people how to maintain their bikes. That’s a nice flow-on effect from the play itself. It shows a bit of role modelling and a bit of modelling between the older children and the younger children.

During play street days, children will investigate the verges, and climb the trees. You’ll see the children initiate play with the inclusion of loose parts, such as cardboard boxes, tubing, materials, blankets, and there’s lots of cubby building, for example.

Sometimes the question put to us as we developed play street was, “why not just go down to the park and play?”

Thinking about the way in which you have to get to a park, you have to navigate your environment and know your place if you do want to go down to the park and have a play.

In our adult brains we often categorise off “this is a place for play”, “this is a place to catch up”, but we tend to forget that places like our streets are our connecting membranes. They are the arteries. They are not just car-oriented arteries in our neighbourhoods. We have to reclaim them again as our community avenues as well.

Play street has really activated our use of the street. As well as our community in coming together to be empowered to claim back that bit of space and hold that space for our children to play.

Ten year old Felix says play streets has been fun, enabling him and his friends to get out more and enjoy the local neighbourhood.

“It’s really brought out the community. I’ve felt safer ever since this was made. Just coming up and riding around the streets and having a go at random stuff. I’ve made a lot of new friends. It’s really fun.”

The experience of being out on the street with our children has given us as parents more confidence to talk with our children about this being our place, and being your place and you can have a great deal of ownership about what happens here.

Marg O’Connell and Katharina Popp

15 November 2019
Interviewer: Lauchlan Gillett