As you may know my name is Sophie and I am the Project Co-ordinator for Playing Out but I am also mum to two wonderful girls Immy, 10 And Megs, 7. As a family we love being outside, taking our dog for a walk, Immy loves football and Megs likes climbing trees and this is why I love Playing Out the opportunity for not just children but adults to be outside connecting with neighbours and for children to have the freedom to play.
However, with Immy growing up (way too fast in my opinion) and off to secondary school in September, the dreaded question of should she have a mobile phone keeps cropping up. Immy has a close friendship group of girls, so I regularly meet with the mums for a natter over a cup of tea or a glass of wine, and the conversation invariably turns to ‘What are we going to do about the girls having a phone?’ It is not that we don’t want them to be tech savvy, they are probably already better than us anyway but because we have a really desire to protect them for as long as possible, to give them the freedom to be children, to be able to play outside with wild imagination, to not to grow up too quick and not to be indoors constantly on their phones. Older kids falling into the 11-14 year old bracket typically increase their daily screen time usage to around 9 hours (source: The Independent).
Our mum conversations then turn to our memories of growing up and our memories of playing outside with our friends. Lots of talk, of knocking on neighbour’s doors asking ‘Can you come out and play today?’, of jumping on your bikes and seeing who was outside to have races with, memories of drawing hop scotches and playing with hula hoops, French Elastic and skipping ropes. I myself used to walk down to our local park with as many friends as I could pick up on the way and play the roundabout game, where you took your shoes off and then spun the roundabout super-fast and then you had to lean out and pick up as many shoes as you could, inherently dangerous probably but so much fun and a very vivid memory of mine
One of my friends remembered ‘We used to play huge games of ‘Blockey 123’ with all the kids who lived nearby where we all hid in the garage blocks and in bushes and had to reach a ‘base’ without being caught’. Another friend fondly remembered playing British Bulldog in the cul-de-sacs where she grew up. One friend grew up in a farming community and spent every day after school building dens with hay bales and playing hide and seek.
We all have memories of play, what is yours, what do you remember, do you remember the freedom, the ability to let your imagination fly, the opportunity to just meet up with your friends and have fun? Most of my friends were the same as me, you could stay outside until tea and then it was home time, no phones, no adults, and all children just connecting and having fun. However nowadays, only one in four boys and one in five girls in England get the recommended 60 minutes of activity every day (Source: Children’s Commissioner).
I am not saying that kids do not have fun, that they don’t play, but in my personal experience when children participate in sport and exercise, it is mostly structured, its adult run classes, pick up at one time and drop off at another. The Raising the Nation Play Commission report states that the amount of time children spend outside has declined by 50% in a generation, due to playground closures, safety concerns, and a lack of money for public play facilities and that is why I love Playing Out. Playing Out is a happy compromise. You can close your street off for a couple of hours to make it a safe space to play and for you to know where your children are. It enables children to have the freedom to just play and use their own imagination for a couple of hours and it might just enable you to have a couple hours to have a cup of tea and a natter with your neighbours, a win, win situation!
If you live in the St Albans district and are interested in your street organising Playing Out sessions, then please do contact me, we can provide the support and equipment to get this started in your street. I would love to hear from you; email me at playingout@sustainablestalbans.org. If you live elsewhere, you can find out about local initiatives here.