An adventure playground is a specific type of playground for children. Adventure playgrounds can take many forms, ranging from "natural playgrounds" to "junk playgrounds," and are typically defined by an ethos of unrestricted play, the presence of playworkers (or "wardens"), and the absence of adult-manufactured or rigid play-structures. Adventure playgrounds are frequently defined in contrast to playing fields, contemporary-design playgrounds made by adult architects, and traditional-equipment play areas containing adult-made rigid play-structures like swings, slides, seesaws, and climbing bars.
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History
Harry Shier, in Adventure Playgrounds: an introduction (1984) defines an Adventure Playground this way:
The first planned playground of this type, the Emdrup Junk Playground, opened in Emdrup, Denmark, in 1943. In 1948, an adventure playground opened in Camberwell, England. The term "junk playground" is a calque from the Danish term skrammellegeplads. Early examples of adventure playgrounds in the UK were known as "junk playgrounds", "waste material playgrounds", or "bomb-site adventure playgrounds". The term "adventure playground" was first adopted in the United Kingdom to describe waste material playgrounds "in an effort to make the 'junk' playground concept more palatable to local authorities".
Denmark
The first junk playgrounds were based on the ideas of Carl Theodor Sørensen, a Danish landscape architect, who noticed that children preferred to play everywhere but in the playgrounds that he designed. In 1931, inspired by the sight of children playing in a construction site, he imagined "A junk playground in which children could create and shape, dream and imagine a reality." His aim was to provide children living in cities the same opportunities for play that were enjoyed by children living in rural areas. The first adventure playground was set up by a Workers Cooperative Housing Association in Emdrup, Denmark, during the German occupation of the 1940s. The playground at Emdrup grew out of the spirit of resistance to Nazi occupation and parents' fears that "their children's play might be mistaken for acts of sabotage by soldiers." Play advocates sometimes emphasize the importance of adventure playgrounds for children of color in the United States, where policing "can feel like a kind of occupation."
The UK
Marjory Allen, an English landscape architect and child welfare advocate, visited and subsequently wrote a widely-read article about the Emdrup Adventure playground titled Why Not Use Our Bomb Sites Like This? and published in the Picture Post in 1946. While Marjory Allen's article is often credited with the introduction into the UK of "the idea of transforming bomb sites into 'junk playgrounds', historians of the Adventure playground movement have pointed to the role played by other experiments carried out by youth workers in the UK. For example, "Marie Paneth, an art therapist heavily influenced by Freud, independently developed the concept of permissive play as a tool for ameliorating childhood aggression in her work running a blitz-era play centre in London."
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List of Adventure Playgrounds
To date, there are approximately 1,000 adventure playgrounds in Europe, most of them in England, Denmark, France, Germany, The Netherlands and Switzerland. Japan also has a significant number of adventure playgrounds.
The Americas
- The city of Calgary, in Alberta, Canada, piloted a mobile adventure playground in five city parks during the summer of 2016.
- Toronto Ontario hosted an Adventure Playground from 1974 until the mid-1980s. It was a part of the revitalization of the waterfront called Harbourfront Centre.
- Mercer Island, Washington
- Adventure Playground in Berkeley, California
- Huntington Beach Adventure Playground in Huntington Beach, California
- Adventure Playground in Irvine, California
- The Hands-on-Nature Anarchy Zone in the Ithaca Children's Garden, Ithaca, NY
- Adventure Playground at The Parish School in Houston, Texas
- Play:groundNYC on Governors Island in New York City.
Asia
- The Setagaya Play Park or "Junk Playground" in Hanegi Park in Setagaya ward, Tokyo, Japan.
- Children's Dream Park ?????????? (or "Yume Park") in Shimosakunobe, Kawasaki Takatsu Ward, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.
Europe
Denmark has several adventure playgrounds, now known as Byggelegeplads (Building-playground) and formerly as Skrammellegeplads (Junk-playground). From the first site in Emdrup, the idea spread across the country and at the height of the popularity in the 1960s, there were about 100 adventure playgrounds in the country.
- Skrammellegepladsen in Emdrup, Copenhagen.
- Bredegrund Byggelegeplads on Amager, Copenhagen.
- Remiseparken, on Amager next to Bredegrund.
- Regnbuen in Hvidovre a suburb of Copenhagen.
- Rødovre Byggelegeplads in Rødovre a suburb of Copenhagen.
- Byggelegepladsen Broparken, Rødovre.
- Byggelegepladsen Rønneholm, Rødovre.
- Højkjær Byggelegeplads in Brøndby a suburb of Copenhagen.
- Skolemarken in Aarhus.
- Søndergård in Lystrup a suburb of Aarhus.
- KiB--A federation of adventure playgrounds and children's farms in Berlin, Germany
- Robi-Spiel Aktionen--An organization of adventure playgrounds in Basel, Switzerland
- Camberwell, England
- Eccleshill Adventure Playground, also known as The Big Swing (Bradford, England)
- Evergreen Adventure Playground, Dalston, London
- Glamis Adventure Playground, London
- Lockleaze Adventure Playground, Bristol, UK.
- The Land (Adventure playground) in Wrexham, Wales, UK
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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