Palmers Green is to be the trailblazer for a project which will return to children some of the independence that has been taken away from them in recent years.
London's first Play Quarter will build on the existing Play Street schemes in and around Palmers Green - in Devonshire Road, Old Park Road, New River Crescent, Riverside, The Mall and Orpington Road. Those streets are now not only home to more active, happy children with new friends next door, but they have also become friendlier, safer places where people have got to know their neighbours.
The project is being run by the award-winning charity London Play. For them Palmers Green was an obvious place to launch this next phase of their child-friendly agenda - it already has the highest concentration of play streets in London.
In the words of Paul Hocker, Development Director at London Play: "Where residents in a street have come together and worked with us to set up a Play Street they’ve inevitably found great benefits, and not just for their kids. Now we want to bring that better community feel to more people while maintaining our focus on London’s children. Palmers Green seemed the perfect place to start.”
Children enjoying a play street session in Palmers Green
While a Play Street involves closing a street to through traffic for a few hours, the purpose of the Play Quarter concept is to build a permanent awareness of children and their crucial part in all our communities.
To do this Play London will be using a variety of methods, which they say will be simple and unobtrusive:
- "Joining up" existing play streets and helping set up new ones
- Creating a schedule of doorstep play sessions where children can play with their friends and neighbours can get to know each other
- Setting up Walk Groups so that children can get to the park safely at the weekend
- Encouraging schools to introduce play street sessions at the start and end of the school day
- Working with schools to reduce school run traffic
- Developing a smartphone app mapping out local play streets, safe walking routes and supportive retailers
- Working with Play Quarter Partners - local retailers and food outlets - to create a discount scheme for healthy eating options.
Children have not changed
Children have not changed - their innate desire to play and make friends through play remains the same as it was 50 years ago. But the reality is that on an average day, most children play outside for less than 30 minutes – and one in five children does not play outside at all. This suggests that across Enfield almost seventeen thousand children do not play out. Children are spending twice as long inside on screens as they are playing outside.
Their innate desire to play is curtailed by many things including the built environment, and – perhaps more obstructively – by adult attitudes based on belief that the places where we live are not safe for children to experience independently.
It will, for some, take a leap of faith, perhaps a reflection upon the freedoms of their own childhood, to support the changes we all need to make to give children back some much needed independence in their childhoods. One of the big changes is to move from the idea that other people’s children have little to do with us, to an understanding that they have everything to do with us. An investment in them is an investment in London’s future, as they will inherit this city and become our future nurses, entrepreneurs, fire fighters, neighbours and teachers.
The Palmers Green Play Quarter will be launched in the New Year. London Play are currently recruiting a part-time Play Quarters Project Worker - the deadline for submitting applications is Monday 24th October.
For background into the importance of play and how it is affected by the quality of the built environment, see the following two papers, both written for the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child Day of General Discussion, 2016:
