Play Attention

Over the past year, we’ve asked every Play Attention guest the same question: if you could click your fingers and change one thing tomorrow to improve opportunities for play, what would it be? For Episode 10, we bring their answers together in a montage of ideas, hopes and provocations. From practical changes to big ambitions, from heartfelt reflections to calls to challenge the rules, the answers reveal the many different ways people are thinking about a better future for play. Some gu...

What does it actually mean for children to have enough opportunities to play? In this episode, Beth Cooper is joined by Mike Barclay and Ben Tawil from Ludicology to explore the idea of play sufficiency - a principle that is quietly reshaping how councils, planners, schools and communities think about children's everyday lives. Rather than seeing play as something that happens only in playgrounds, Mike and Ben explain why play depends on three essential ingredients: time, space and permission...

This week on Play Attention, Beth is joined by India-based landscape architect Parth Divekar, founder of Grade Landscape Architecture, whose work spans luxury residential developments, public landscapes and civic projects across the country. Having grown up in India, studied at Cornell University and worked on landmark projects in the United States - including the Gathering Space Playground in Tulsa - Parth brings a unique perspective on how culture, childhood and urbanisation shape the way w...

"You can have the most beautifully designed play space, but if the adults standing around the outside are flooded with anxiety, that is going to impact the function of that space." In this episode of Play Attention, Beth Cooper is joined by Helen Dodd, Professor of Child Psychology at the University of Exeter, and Dr Sarah-Louise Hurst, Clinical Psychologist and founder of Fortitude Mums. Together, they discuss the Fear Less Play project, an innovative piece of research exploring the connecti...

In this episode of Play Attention, we sit down with Scott Chalmers, Head of Green Infrastructure at Urban&Civic, to challenge the assumption that play belongs in a designated, fenced-off area. Drawing on years of experience delivering large-scale communities, Scott shares why play should never be “dropped in” to meet planning requirements, but embedded from the very first moment of design. From removing fences and rethinking risk, to creating landscapes that invite people to stay, dwell, ...