“Playground experiences can mold a lifetime.” – Jon Ronson
I recently got to read the book Playground by James Mollison, which is a photography project to capture the diversity of play experiences children had in different countries. He described his motivation for the project at the very end: “When I conceived this series of pictures, I was thinking about my time at school. I realized that most of my memories were from the playground. It had been a space of excitement, games, bullying, laughing, tears, teasing, fun, and fear.”
When we engage in play, we suspend reality and can give ourselves space to try on new identities, explore repressed emotions, and self-express in new ways that might otherwise feel risk in ‘normal’ life. It can be as innocent as dressing up in ways that in ‘normal’ life would leave us with a fear of social rejection or on a darker note role playing the villians in our bedtime stories. Our playgrounds are not only places of joy and creativity but also laboratories for experiments with anger, violence, aggression, and our ‘shadow’ selves.
Jon Ronson wrote that “Playgrounds can mold a lifetime”. As I look at all these photos, I can’t help but think that while we absolutely should be thinking about how we shape our play spaces physically perhaps we should be spending more time on how to shape them politically. Who makes the rules and who referees? How far are we allowed to go in our self-experiments one way or another? How do we handle conflict, address violence, and support communication?
As adults, teachers, designers, leaders–we sometimes think we know best. We forge ahead laying out rules, regulations, expectations, we facilitate and supervise, we start to box in play and public activity according to what we think is the most safe. We consult books, best practices, and professionals…. and often forget to ask the one group that matters most–our users. When things go even a little bit array, we jump in to fix, and the opportunity to have a direct experience cultivating skills in negotiation, temperance, independence and personal responsibility is greatly diminished.
What I’m getting at is: when we alienate the users of our playspaces (whether children or adults) from the creation of the rules that govern it and the decisions that physically shape it, we lose the opportunity to come together as a whole community. We loose a chance to have a group dialogue about how we want to live together. To understand collectively our standards for integrity in our interactions. We perpetuate power structures, stereotypes, and personal fears.
I don’t have a strong concluding point except to say that we should, whenever possible, engage in collaborative playcemaking. Engage all stakeholders. Seek out the smallest voices, those disenfranchised and unheard or undervalued. Our playgrounds can be more than just recreation sites… they can be places of deep healing too.
We need to expand our vision beyond simple walking paths and benches–the most common and primary park features–and start building activity landscapes that engage our senses, brains, and bodies.
Instead of confining play to the playground, embed it into the everyday, for everyone.
I think we all agree when it comes to the importance of play and movement, especially for children. However, it frequently seems that children are the only ones allowed to indulge, and that as a society we not only have forgotten its value to teens, adults, and seniors but resist it. We verbally dismiss and label it as unproductive, self-indulgent, and immature, tell others to ‘quit playing around and get back to work, to ‘grow up’, and communicate a story that play is inappropriate.
Yet for those of us who dare to play, we are rewarded with some incredible benefits. Beyond the obvious increase in physical fitness & health, you also will find that stress levels drop, our learning and memory is more complete, social interactions become easier, and our ability grows to see opportunities in places we would otherwise have overlooked.
Play contributes deeply to our development as individuals, regardless of what age.
While we could deeply examine ways our resistance to play manifest in societal behaviors, I’d like to just scrape the surface of the story being told by the built world.
The city seems to be devoted to designing, building, and renovating places to play… for children. Inevery city there are hundreds of playgrounds and public spaces, but how many are open to adult and teen play?
In Central Park alone there are 21 designated playgrounds. Of those 21, a grand total of 0 are designed for teenagers or adults, and most go a step further to display signage barring use. (There is ‘fitness equipment’ available for use, but we’ll get into that in a second.)
Teens and adults could try to creatively re-purpose these youth playgrounds for their own purpose and play, but at their own risk–social and civil. Considered a nuisance to parents-they’ll be met with dirty looks and an of concerns for the safety of the children. Considered a danger by the city, they will be ushered out by rangers and possibly even ticketed. Signs are posted, fences are built. Boundaries pop up around play.
The built world is literally telling us that play is not for the rest of us.
Of course, we are living today in what could be considered the renaissance of Play. And the City has taken notice of the importance of getting up and out on your feet (2). There are a growing number of campaigns, programs, and facilities to assist adults in cultivating an active, healthy lifestyle.
However, a gym is not the same thing as a public playground, and does not offer the same set of complex benefits. Those four walls keep a lot of people and experiences out of the equation, and unable to participate.
Outdoor Gym ≠ Playground
In 2012 NYC opened its first official ‘adult playground’ and has plans to build two dozen more by the end of 2014 (3). This is a great start.
However, calling these spaces playgrounds is a gross exaggeration. Playgrounds are spaces that require creativity and imagination, storytelling and social negotiation, problem solving and exploration – and these ‘adult playgrounds’ lack all of that… because they are just outdoor gyms. Gyms come complete with rules and regulations, signs and directions, notions of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, expectations around achievement and behaviors. There is little creative thinking required and social interaction is avoidable.
While there is the benefit of improving economic access to a socially permissive space for physical activity (and that it smells significantly better than a box gym), so much is still lost and missing. Not to mention that the story being told about movement for adults is one of prescription and conformity.
(I will note that there has been some effort made to provide spaces for teens, but mostly in the realm of skateboarding-contingent upon the signature of a waiver and specific equipment requirements. There also was a recent project to build a playground for teens in Hudson Yards, but no others that I could find slated for construction. )
All spaces considered, there is no deny the unacceptable and near complete lack of opportunity for teenagers and adults to engage in free, unstructured, social, creative movement play.
What Next?
Now, I know here many will say that NYC has so much open park space. But in reality, in a Park your options are to walk on this path or that one, or to sit on a bench, in the shade or the sun, or to buy a vendor hot dog & people watch. There are tons of bike paths if you’re able to afford a bike, or you could throw a ball in the field, if you’re allowed on the grass, and only as long as you don’t disturb your neighbors. Any deviation from ‘normWhat next?al’ behavior will still be met with the social kickback we talked about above.
We need physical spaces complete with policy and permissions that permit play.
Thus with the lack of options it should be no surprise to hear that in NYC more than 1/2 the adult population is either overweight or obese(4)(5), especially when compounded with the fact that many of the opportunities that are available to get moving are too expensive, difficult, competitive, or, to put it plainly, not a whole lot of fun.
A sustainable, healthy lifestyle needs to be more than gym workouts, expensive specialty classes, and competitive team sports. We don’t need more gyms and classes in our city; we need more playful infrastructure and community spaces to support play across all ages. We need spaces that are complex, inter-generational, and flexible, that allow adults & teenagers to develop and explore their own open-ended challenges. Colorful. Social. Open to chaos, exploration, creation. A place that is safe, welcoming, accessible, and fun.
We need to stop looking at play as a distraction or diversion from reality, but rather as an integral element of our continual, healthful development. We need to design the places we live to support living a life in play.
We all have our own map of the city in our head. For most it remembers where our favorite places are to eat are, where our friends live, where to get coffee, where to hang out, and so on.
My map, however, remembers where the best places are in the city for an adult to play; Little dots light up across the mental landscape pinpointing locations of sturdy scaffolding and rough concrete barriers, with play-friendly public spaces, and large oak trees with branches that hang low enough for jumping on. It records every physical challenge we’ve completed and all the ones yet to be. It knows the difference between public spaces that tolerate and ignore play and those that embrace and encourage movement.
This map is a unique map of textures and temperatures and human activity, of tested and untested public and private relationships, of enjoyment, tolerance, and rejection–and it is a map that could only come to be through Parkour.
What is Parkour you ask?
What Is Parkour?
Parkour is a discipline of movement and self-improvement that teaches one how to overcome any obstacle both efficiently and creatively, using nothing more than the human body. This playful platform of movement encourages interaction between yourself, others, and your environment.
Traceurs, or individuals who practice Parkour, thus know the city like no other. We study textures, we grip, we feel how sturdy our obstacles are. As we walk through the city we are compelled to interact with it; running, jumping, climbing, crawling, swinging, and balancing. The mere act of walking around becomes an adventure, leading us to look for new challenges, new ways to improve ourselves. Can I jump from this curb to that one in a single bound? Can I slip through this scaffolding without touching the bars? Can I balance along this rail without falling once?
And it is this type of interaction with the city that there needs to be more of–this engaged awareness, this parkour mentality. It brings new life to both popular public spaces and those leftover and overlooked. Things that once slowed movement–benches, tables rails, walls–now become elements that enable . Obstacles become opportunity for growth, imagination, and play. And suddenly there is no mission impossible, there is no challenge too great.
This playful view of the world, this parkour mindset and approach to life, is something we all once had. At one point, when we were at our youngest, we didn’t understand the word ‘impossible.’ We believed in ourselves, we took risks, we wrestled for hours with how to get across the playground without touching the ground (it was lava, remember?). We tested ideas and learned of our limitations. We became the ultimate problem solvers.
As we grew older, however, we lost that unwavering resolution, that uncapped potential. We scraped our knees, we broke a bone, our parents panicked at the sight of blood. We were told that some problems were too hard or impossible and that either we weren’t strong enough or smart enough or old enough. …That we never would be.
But this isn’t the truth. This is just the world trying to tell you to grow up, to color inside of the lines, to fit the mold, to play it safe.
So I want to demand an answer: Why is this considered the right thing to do! Why have we allowed safety to be emphasized to the point of instilling fear, insecurity, and inability in both children and adults? Not only does this obsession with safety decrease the number of real opportunities to create and engage with your environment, it also severely limits self-exploration of personal (physical+mental) abilities and limitations.
And if we continue to place emphasis on being overly safe we’ll end up only creating the unsafe–a world where people don’t know how to confront complicated challenges or to cope with uncertainty.
As famous playground designer Paul Friedberg explains, “[Our problem is that] We want the child to be living in a padded box. [But] A child has to have the real world, fraught with challenges to overcome.”
Return to Play
So, there needs to be a return to play. True, fulfilling, authentic play, where children and adults alike can seek out real challenges, navigate real risks, and begin to honestly understand their physical and mental capabilities. …Play through which they can really grow.
And Parkour is one of those few disciplines that can provide this holistic platform of play while acknowledging this already pervading atmosphere of fear.
Through the medium of games and challenges, Parkour encourages curiosity and experimentation, builds strength and self-confidence, and of course teaches the value of risk and the importance of facing your fears.
Furthermore, Parkour teaches creative problem solving. A simple game of hopscotch can be transformed in an exercise in problem-solving when squares start to appear on the sides of walls, under railings, on low ledges. In practice we learn that techniques that work in one situation may not work in another. We are forced to explore alternative solutions, other ways over/under/through the obstacles we face, to find a way that we may not even have seen or tried. And through this process, Parkour teaches us how to adapt to every situation, to think outside the box.
As to those safety concerns, through its practice Parkour ingrains safety. You learn how to run properly, to jump and land without impact, to move without hurting yourself. It teaches you not only how to assess the risks associated with any challenge you face, but how to judge it to be within or outside of your abilities.
So, forget buying expensive equipment or building one of those sterile play-structures in your backyard. Teach your children Parkour, learn it for yourself. With only a pair of shoes and their imagination, one can learn how to seek out challenges and games alone.
For Teens & Adults Too!
Especially, we would like to emphasize how crucial it is to teach children Parkour as they enter their teenage years. You see, as children get older they outgrow the playgrounds they know so well. Most of those constructed around the country are designed for children under 12 and restrict children older. Even if there aren’t any signs forbidding play, the dirty looks of adults say enough. ‘You don’t belong here, you’re too old to be playing here.’Teenagers and adults alike are cast away from the only spaces their communities provide for play.
And, at a time so crucial for defining who they are, society shepherds teenagers and adults away from the playgrounds and into other public spaces, where play is no longer the apparent intention. Rather, these public spaces and parks offer benches to watch some tourists and enjoy a vendor hot dog, a patch of lawn for a nap or cloud gazing, windy paths that lead to no where and offer nothing but a view. (And we wonder why obesity is an issue, hm).
Now, we’re not saying that we’re against benches and ice cream and napping on a nice sunny day, but these provisions alone clearly offer very little in return in terms of human growth.
Adults and teenagers should have as much of a place to play as children. They need to play too! The same gains we make as children through play will only increase in complexity and magnitude as we age and mature. Our abilities to assess risk, to problem solve, to cope with uncertainty, can continue to increase and refine themselves ad infinitum. There is so much growth that can still be gained as we slip in to adulthood.
So Parkour provides that playground, for teens and adults alike. It provides a world that will never run out of challenges, that has no age limitations and no skill requirements. And if we teach children while they are young enough, they will never find themselves lost in a world without a playspace of their own.
Obstacles Are The Everyday
Obstacles are apart of every day life, whether it is climbing a wall, getting to work on time, or delivering making a presentation in front of a large group. The lessons we can learn through play and though parkour--to creatively approach problems, to face our fears, to love and respect the people around us and the world we are in--are lessons that can be carried out through the rest of our lives, and are lessons without completion.
So we urge you to, right now, this very day, to start pinning your map with every opportunity for play, for every chance to grow. To always look for opportunities to become better than you are, regardless of whether you are a child or adult.
