A Place to Play

Growing up in North-West London, I always had a place to play. Out on the street, my brother, sister or friend would call out for you me to come and ‘play out’ — we’d rollerblade, pogo or cycle (or some kind of hybrid) between two humps in the road — those humps marked the boundary of where we were allowed to roam when we were still little. Although there were some vague rules, like this marking out of the territory, we were pretty much free to do anything that entertained us. Looking back, that’s what made play what it was. It constituted so many different things: playing knock down ginger (admittedly annoying for those on the receiving end of a doorbell no-show); scavenging scrap from skips to make our own sculptures or dens; climbing trees or playing capture the flag in the local park. We’d borrow the neighbour’s dog and run for hours, or challenge each other to monkey bars contests until your arms felt like they’d drop off. And all of this with relatively little supervision — at least that’s how I remember it being when we were a bit older.

It’s hard to say whether nostalgia imbues this next provocation, but things do seem to have changed in the world of urban play. There’s no doubt that I was very lucky with where I grew up: a middle-class enclave on the doorstep of the expansive pastures that are Hampstead Heath. That’s not to say it was always the safest place to wander around as a child; in fact I’m sure there were unsavoury characters around but the same goes for any part of any city. The thing that strikes me in both London and Leeds — where I now reside — is that I don’t see as much of this unstructured, exploratory street play that was so prevalent when I was growing up in the 90s and 00s. I don’t think there’s one single reason that explains this change in the nature of cities and play; it comes down to something more nuanced, complex and interwoven in the socio-economic and cultural-political cogs of the urban machine.