Stories of Children Playing: What do they tell us about the significance of play and playwork?

This lecture explores how we can deal with the approach that western societies have taken to the study of children and childhood of isolating the problems that individual children pose to society. It looks at the significance of play in childhood and in a child’s world and whether playwork can offer solutions; or is it wrong to ask it to provide solutions when the playwork profession seeks to enable children to find their own play in the world? We can all, as adults, share the experience of having had a childhood and can provide insights into a child’s world but this rarely make us "experts". In reality, each person’s childhood is a unique experience, and it is that which draws us into the complex and often emotional arenas of debate about childhood. The Playwork profession in the UK has always exchanged their experiences of working with children and often reflected for both the children and the playworkers. In this lecture, Professor Brown offers a selection of stories that have been submitted by playworkers for inclusion in his forthcoming book, Play and Playwork: Reflection on Practice. The stories are about children playing. They are always instructive, often funny, and sometimes sad. The stories help us explore complex issues such as risk and the unpredictable nature of play. The introduce us to a number of key theoretical concepts, such as play cues, adulteration and the significance of reference points in children’s lives. Some of the stories illustrate the therapeutic aspects of children’s play. The overall intention is to focus on the connection between theory and practices that is so often misunderstood by politicians. Professor Fraser Brown is the first Professor of Playwork in the UK. He is also the joint course leader of the BA (Hons) Playwork degree at Leeds Metropolitan University. He has presented at conferences across the country and around the world and has produced several key texts in the field of play and playwork. He is the chair and Co-Founder of the Aid for Romanian Children Charitable Trust, and a member of the Executive Board of the Association for the Study of Play (TASP). He has researched into a wide range of subjects, including the concepts of play value, the impact of deprivation on children’s behaviour, and the reasons for the longevity of certain adventure playgrounds. He is probably best known for his research into the therapeutic effects of playwork on a group of abandoned children in a Romanian paediatric hospital. Fraser’s work as an academic, as both tutor and author, is characterised by his gift for making difficult concepts accessible to a wide range of audiences. This should not be seen as trivialising the subject matter, but rather following the principle that there is little point in producing work which your audience cannot understand. His most recent work makes use of real life stories of children playing, and prompted the following response from one reader: “You have a very graphic style of writing. Reading your article feels almost as if I am there, seeing it happen.