September 23, 2016 - 15:57
Kate Weiler
In amanda.simone’s post ‘Play next door,’ the author recounts a childhood memory of playing on her neighborhood playground, and how the idea of play changed when the site was remodeled. The original playground included an open field, a play structure, “a crumbling retaining wall that functioned as a rock gym,” and offered many spaces for her and her friends to explore (amanda.simone). The space allowed for multiple forms of expressive play, until the playground equipment was deemed outdated and unsafe by the town. The author’s mom, both a parent and a pediatrician, played a major role in selecting the safest structures. This took the fun away from the playground for the kids, so they chose to “ignor[e] the intended function of each piece to use it in the least safe way possible. Plastics roofs of little play huts became slides and jumping platforms” (amanda.simone). The parents were not happy, but the children definitely were. This experience correlates with Tim Edensor et al.’s dialogue in their chapter ‘Playing in industrial ruins’ regarding adventurous play as well as artistic play, and how the authors conclude that play, in the end, will always prevail against work.
Adventurous play, according to Edensor, occurs in a space that holds potential for playful interactions with the space (Edensor et al., 70). The original playground in amanda.simone’s post undoubtedly offered this space for the author and her friends. The space allowed children to use their imaginations to create new characters and worlds, crucial to expressive play. The antiquated, unstable play structure provided a “location for play that entail[ed] risk and danger through encounters with unstable structures and surfaces, requiring balance, agility and bravery” (Edensor et al., 70). The unconventionality of the play structure in the post paralleled the description of ruins in Edensor’s work; the park had obviously been there since a time when safety was not taken into account when these structures were designed, and thus encouraged visitors to engage in rather adventurous activities for a time of extreme caution. The age and state of the structure mimicked the sense of “material looseness” associated with adventurous play, and allowed children to work with that instability in order to heighten their sense of fun, curiosity, and adventure (Edensor et al., 70). The obstacles presented by the structure, as well as the general wear and tear of the area around it, as shown in the old wooden gazebo and crumbling wall which children would climb, presented many textures, heights, materials, limits, and possibilities for children to explore and test, true of any space for expressive play (Edensor et al.).
While this play space encouraged physical and imaginative playfulness, it also led to safety concerns of the children’s parents. This led the county to replace the structure with a newer, tamer model. The parents and other adults in the community looked at the state of the structure and surrounding area and saw it as ruined by age and usage. Thus, they took steps to get rid of the ruins and replace the playground with something more useful and attractive. When repairs were made, a new, colorful, safer structure stood in place of the steep slides, wooden ramps, and high roofs. In the parents’ view, what had been ruined had been fixed and improved. Their kids, however, saw the new, safe structure as the very thing that ruined their play space. In their view, the adults had taken their play paradise and rid it of fun. This is an example of the dichotomy of ruins and regulated spaces, and how different people can view each in different ways. An old saying declares that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. In this instance, the trash the parents saw when they looked at the original playground, full of potential danger, was paradise to their kids; it acted as a place that challenged them, forced them to be imaginative, and encouraged them to take risks. The treasure of the new structure was seen as completely useless to the children. This ties adventurous play to artistic play, where one transforms found objects or space into something different. The children took the original play structure, thought of as useless by the adults, and transformed it into a pirate ship, a store, a house, an airplane, and any other structure their minds would take them, taking an important aspect of artistic play and using it in an adventurous way. They did this again when the structure was replaced.
When the community destroyed the re-purposed playground, used by local children as a blank canvas for physical and imaginative exploration, replacing the older wooden structure with a new, brightly-colored plastic one, the children, transformed they space they viewed as ruined. They used their imaginations to make the best of the structures, ignoring the intended purpose of each part of the structure and using it in a way seen as unsafe by their parents. They used roofs as slides and platforms for jumping off of, utilizing the structure to correspond with the way they wanted to play (amanda.simone). This reinforces the conclusion Edensor et al. comes to at the end of the chapter. They concludes that play is an important way to transform power relations, and this holds true in amanda.simone’s experience. When the parents traded safety for their children’s fun, the kids flipped it back and used the new circumstances to their advantage, playing as they used to, in a creative, borderline dangerous manner, in order to regain their sense of fun and freedom in the playground, and taking some of their power back.
Although the new space was clearly regulated by local government and the children’s guardians, the children used their play as a form of rebellion against the power imbalance that put their happiness below that of their parents’ sense of security. Edensor et al. recognizes that play in ruins can also be used to “think non-teleological about play in other spaces in which powerful forces of exclusion, domination, and governance are more readily apparent” (Edensor et al., 77). This holds true in this example, and shows that although the playground in this example would not be technically classified as ‘ruins,’ the ideas from the chapter do apply to it. In this way, with kids and their parents re-defining and changing this playground over time, the children are “playing with [adult roles], negotiating and transforming their relations to dominant power structures in the process” (Edensor et al., 77). This playful transformation showcases inherent differences in children and adults, and the stark dichotomy between their priorities. The children in this example used their play as a way to regain freedom in a world regulated and driven by adults, and shows another side of play that is often forgotten about: play as a form of freedom. In an age where clear divides exist between races, cultures, and professions, especially regarding police violence, violence by white people against those of color, and stereotypes forced upon minorities, this sense of play in the context of re-defining oneself and asserting one’s right to live freely could be important in mending these harsh separations between different groups of people.