Ep26 The child's right to play; an interview with Marguerite Hunter Blair OBE DL

In this episode of Pondering Play and Therapy, Philippa interviews Marguerite Hunter Blair, OBE, the Chief Executive of Play Scotland. Marguerite discusses her extensive career in advocating for children's play in Scotland and Northern Ireland, including her leadership in establishing the Scottish Play Commission, Scotland's Play Strategy, and the statutory duty for play in the Planning Scotland Act of 2019. She also speaks about her recent OBE award for services to play, learning, and health, emphasizing the importance of play for children's well-being and development. The conversation covers her journey from obtaining a master's in adult education to leading key play initiatives, as well as the significant impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the perception of play. The episode explores the various types of play, the essential role of parents, practitioners, and community spaces in fostering play, and the importance of play for children of all ages, including teenagers. Marguerite highlights the need for inclusive and accessible play spaces, especially in disadvantaged areas, and underscores the broader social and health benefits of promoting children's play.

Play Scotland - https://www.playscotland.org/

Play Northern Ireland  - https://www.playboard.org/

Play Wales - https://play.wales/

Play England - https://www.playengland.org.uk/

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Transcript

Play an Interview with Margeritte

Philippa: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of Pondering Play and Therapy, and this week my guest is Marguerite Hunter Blair, OBE. She is the Chief executive of Play Scotland. She established the Scottish Play Commission in 2007 and led the campaigns for Scotland's Play Strategy in 2013 and the statutory duty for play in the Planning Scotland Act 2019.

Marguerite is chair of the Play Strategy Refresh Group and Vice-Chair of Planning Aid Scotland and Secretary of IPA Scotland, formerly CEO. Of Play Board Northern Ireland and Community services manager, Belfast City Council. Wow, Marguerite there's loads to unpick on there, but the first thing that I just wanted to ask you was about the [00:01:00] OBE because as far as you are aware, this is the first and maybe only OBA given for play.

Is that right?

Marguerite: Yes. Thank you very much Philippa for inviting me onto the podcast today. I'm absolutely delighted to be here. Yes, I had a very nice surprise before Christmas, an early Christmas present when I received a letter from the cabinet office and the citation was Chief Executive Play Scotland for services to play to learning and to health. And as far as I know, it is the first acknowledgement of services to play. And while I'm absolutely thrilled and delighted to have received this, as you well know and your listeners will well know that no one achieves these things, these progress for play, learning and health on their own, it is a team effort and you rely so much on the people around you and the timing and the [00:02:00] opportunities that come your way.

But it was really lovely to receive this acknowledgement and the whole organization Play Scotland and our membership have been absolutely delighted about it. 

Philippa: Congratulations that is amazing. And I guess it's one of those hopefully moments where maybe people are starting to understand the importance of play and having play for children and young people 'cause it's something that I think maybe we've lost sight of over the last few years, even decades really. So how did you start on your journey to being so involved in ensuring that children, particularly in Scotland and Northern Ireland are having access to play? 

Marguerite: I think what you say is so important, Philippa, that I think for a long time play was seen as a preschool thing which it absolutely is, please don't get me wrong, but it has such a [00:03:00] contribution to make to children's learning, not just in preschool, but in the whole school, primary and secondary school context. It's really important to plan for play in the community and it's really important that we support parents to play with children as well and to allow them to play, to allow their children to play.

Yes, I think it had been boxed in for a long time and I think what we have a much greater awareness of around the world, particularly as a result of covid, that play is actually at the heart of children's health and wellbeing. And it's incredibly important if only for that reason. There's lots of reasons, but if only for that reason, it is incredibly important. So first of all, I might say something to the listeners because I do speak very quickly, so I will try not to do that. But I also have a strange accent and that's because I'm actually from Scotland, but spent over 20 years in Northern Ireland working and came [00:04:00] back to Scotland about 20 years ago. So years I think I have a nail Craig accent now, which is halfway between Scotland and Belfast. So how did I get to be involved in play? It was quite an interesting journey. My master's was actually in adult education and I had been really interested in working in African countries in this area and. In the end, love went out and I met and married my husband, who is also from Scotland, but had gone to work in the Forest Service in Northern Ireland.

And I was fortunate enough to work in a children's organization for a short while and then took up a post as a community worker for Belfast City Council, where I ended up becoming the community services manager responsible for community centers, the grant aid budget to the voluntary sector. And then I inherited some play [00:05:00] centers, six play sites, and 16 play workers.

And to be honest, a lot of the community centers that we have with over 20 community centers, most of them are not purpose built. They were converted churches and fire stations. And there was just never enough money to keep them up to date and refurbish the way we wanted them to be. So I initially had the thought that we would sell off these play sites that we had inherited from the parks department and use the money to improve the community centers.

But a lovely community worker called Moya Hines came into me one day and sat down and said, I need to tell you something really important. And I was like, oh, Moya, I'm so busy. What is it went spice. I need to tell you all about spice. Sit down and listen about spice. And when I do presentations about play now, I quite often take a picture of the Spice Girls with me because I think it's a fantastic acronym [00:06:00] as to why play is so important for children, young people.

So s for social, P for physical. I for intellectual, I. Cognitive development, C for creativity and E for emotional. So a very short acronym and it covers so many things. And yes, we could say it's over simplistic and it possibly is 'cause it doesn't mention the big words like social and emotional learning, resilience.

But it means all of that. Do you know it's social skills, physical skills, brain development, creativity and emotional wellbeing. So it's a very nice acronym. And not long after that, I went on a course with colleagues for the parks department, a course being held in Wales, and it was a diploma on managing and developing play provision.

And after that I was a big fan and really understood it. And so when I left Belfast City Council, I went to play board Northern Ireland as chief executive, [00:07:00] and I was there for four years. And then we came back to Scotland and played Scotland, we're in touch. And I thought I would do a wee bit of work with them for a short time because the office was quite far away from where I lived.

So I said I might do six months and I've just clocked up 19 years. So I'm not very good at counting, put it that way. But it's been a fantastic journey for play and as I say to children, young people, when we ask them what they want to be, I never thought, I didn't even know there would be such a job as chief executive of Play Board Northern Ireland or Play Scotland.

And so not to worry too much when they're young about what they want to be but more to focus on doing the things that they enjoy doing and feel that they're good at.

Philippa: And during this journey have got play enshrined in law in Scotland is that right that children have legally got the right to have the space to play?

Marguerite: Yeah, so there's two there's quite a good policy framework for play in Scotland [00:08:00] and that's really been the campaigning journey that we've been on in Play Scotland, where we've tried to put in place national measures to improve play locally and the reason we went down a legal duty route. Because we did keep coming up with lots of recommendations and lovely tools and some local authorities would dip int out of those, which was fantastic. But a legal duty makes it mandatory. And a legal duty means everyone has to do it. And one of the things that we've really been trying to get in Scotland since 2007 was for local authorities to create baselines of how much play they had and how much they spent on play and of course, the first thing they ask you then is what's your definition of play? Are you including playgrounds? Are you including parks and open spaces? Are you talking about school grounds? Do you know the whole thing starts to [00:09:00] grow? And we did a simple survey back in 2007 when we asked local authorities about to tell us, do their own audit and tell us about what, if they had a play strategy, a play policy, how much play they had, how much they spent on play. And we did a very simple calculation where, what they told us they spent on play, we divided that by the number of children and young people in the authority.

And we came up with a very crude, rough measure of how much each local authority spent on each child's play opportunity. And I real, I recognize that Sheffield University have just published a study this week, much more advanced and sophisticated than what we did then. But it was similar.

It was how much do you spend, you divide it in and this is what you get. So what some local authorities complained about is that creates a ranking straight away. And a lot of people said we didn't include this, and we did include that and they included this and we didn't. So this idea [00:10:00] that we had to have a national measure, that everyone measured the same thing, and we thought maybe every two years, possibly in October. So it didn't get a summer skew create the baseline. And the purpose of the baseline would be to allow people, the authorities to measure improvements every few years. So it wasn't about naming and shaming. It wasn't about ranking because we understand why local authorities are concerned about that. No two local authorities that are like, they've got their own priorities. They need to set their own priorities. They've got their own stress points that they know what they are. But we felt it was really important that children had adequate play opportunities and experiences. And how would you know that if you hadn't measured what you've got and asked families and young people if they were satisfied with that and then tested it again?

So very simply, that's what we were trying to do in Scotland. Now, we were on a long journey, which I'm not going to unpick here. But alongside [00:11:00] that, we also were campaigning for a national play strategy. And that children's right to play would be come the law in Scotland. So those were the big asks, and these are the big asks that we now have.

So the play policy framework in Scotland now, first of all has in the planning act of 2019, it has a play sufficiency duty, which is a requirement on all local authorities to carry out an assessment a police efficiency assessment about, how many place spaces have got, how accessible they are how satisfied children and young people and families are with those and they carry out that assessment. And the evidence report that is compiled from the assessment feeds into local development plans. And we've got another lever in the planning box as well, or another toy in the box, which is called [00:12:00] National Planning Framework four, which is our umbrella spatial strategic planning framework and we consulted with children and young people for the government on this framework and on the regulations and guidance around place efficiency. And as a result of that, we actually have three extremely good policy lines in the national planning framework. And these policy lines are. What the local development plan is mapped against.

So we have one there specifically about play opportunities. We have one about access to open spaces and green spaces, and we've one there about active travel. And each of these is really important for children's play opportunities. So it's really good. There's three it's been spread out into three, so that's one part of the policy framework in Scotland.

The second part is the fact that we now have a legal duty for play because the United Nations Convention on the rights of the [00:13:00] child has been fully incorporated into Scott's law as of July last year. And that means that there is a legal right to play in the way in, in the planning legislation. The legal duty is for children and families to be consulted in the place efficiency assessment and for the evidence to go forward into local development plans.

That of itself is not a legal right to play. But having U-N-C-R-C and Scott's law, and as many of your listeners will know, article 31 is the child's right to play article 15, the right to hang about in the public realm and associate with their friendship groups the right to an education, right to good start in life.

Many rights in there contribute to children's right to play at home in learning environments and in the community. So these are big step forwards. And then alongside this the third part of the policy [00:14:00] framework for us then is the fact that we have a new play strategy. We have an existing play strategy, which was published in 2013, and there has been an ongoing refresh of the play strategy post covid.

We consulted with children and young people, and they told us that they had missed their fun friends and family and that they wanted more play and better play opportunities. And the government, the children's minister at the time, Claire Hockey, accepted their recommendations for a refresh of the play strategy and the new play vision statement.

And action plan 2025 to 2030 is being published later on this month. So I'm sorry we're not having this conversation at the end of the month, but it will be something for your listeners to to listen out for. And I can talk a little bit about it, but only a little bit at this stage.  

Philippa: That would be fantastic just to give us a overview.

But my first question about that is it, as it [00:15:00] sounds, wonderful and from a professional's point of view where, all our lives, mine and Julie's is all about play and, the importance of play, whether you are a teenager or a baby, it sounds, very ahead of the time really, in some ways isn't that, that lots of people aren't doing it.

And really behind the times in the fact that actually really should we having to be only now enshrining these things in law and that other people aren't. I guess from a professional point of view, I think it's amazing. But what I wonder for parents, if parents listen to this, I wonder what they would see. So you've got the, you've done this amazing work over the last, 20 years really to get this into the into Scottish law, into Parliament. You've got these commitments, but then what does that mean for children and families? What are they gonna see in Scotland? 

Marguerite: It's [00:16:00] really interesting.

I might talk a tiny bit about the new Play vision statement and action plan coming out because it's underpinned by a play theory of change. And the three drivers in this play theory of Change are parents, first and foremost practitioners, which includes educators and place. And obviously there's underlying themes of poverty and participation.

But to go back to the question you've asked me, parents are so important. You could say in some ways the parents are the gatekeepers of play. And it's up to those of us who have worked alongside the professionals and the researchers and old people involved in children's development to make the case to parents as to why it's so important.

And of course, the parents nowadays, I'm a parent. I have five children grown up now. [00:17:00] But you have such a big responsibility and you're judged so harshly by your peers and by society. If you are seen to be allowing your child out where other people perceive it not to be safe you cannot take away from the fact there's, many more cars now than there ever was that that are legitimate concerns for parents as to what they can do.

And I think. Some of us have slightly been lulled into a false sense of security, thinking that a children are playing online. Yes, they're getting social connection and they're getting a lot of stimulation. And we do think that maybe that's a safer option. We have thought that perhaps up until quite recently, when the, when that has all fallen away from us and we realize actually it's a very scary place and we need to pay complete attention and not sleepwalk into something that, that we haven't really understood.

But change is happening very fast. So parents are so important and we need to give so much support. And we do have a lot of play, resources on our website. [00:18:00] We have a parent club website in Scotland that is managed by the Scottish government. We have parenting across Scotland. There's lots of places 'cause we recognize that actually.

Parents are so important. And like alongside that, we also know that even before Covid children were becoming much more sedentary indoors. Not playing, not being, engaging and being sociable with others. Poor physical literacy and strength, overweight and most wording, they of all life expectancy stalled.

So there was something known as the Millennium Gates head study which is still going on. So children born at the millennium the turn of the century, and they're being followed by the Gates head study. And they had published some findings in 2017, which were quite, I would consider quite alarming at that stage, suggesting that by age seven children spent half of their day sitting down.

And I think there was a sense [00:19:00] that being school ready for children was being able to sit down for long periods of time and possibly try. Tie your shoeless is definitely being toilet chain, but what was our exp And rather than thinking about to be school ready, you had to be curious, creative, fearless, autonomous learners.

I think we just had a we've been in perhaps the wrong paradigm, I think about what school readiness is all about. And being able to sit down, I would suggest is not the number one requirement, particularly as we know boys up until the age of eight, the right left brain development hasn't even out.

And so standing in learning is a much better offer for them than sitting in learning. So we know all these things and as I say, if these were breakthroughs in cancer therapy, if we didn't apply them people would be quite rightly horrified. So when we know these things, we need to take them and use them to enhance children's learning and make it a better [00:20:00] experience, but even more so to foster this.

Innate sense to be curious and creative that our children and young people have. And I often think of the code from Picasso and if you don't know Picasso's work if you go on and have a wee look, Google go on and have a look at it. And one of the features in a lot of his work is that one eye will be much bigger than another eye.

And what Councilor says is he spent his whole life trying to paint as a child again to see as a child and paint as a child again. And when you see his early drawings of a face not being, I've forgotten the right word for you not being a match Symmetrical, yes, it's not symmetrical, but when children go to school and they start to draw a picture, if they don't draw a symmetrical picture, the two eyes, same size and the same place, they're steered away from that to say, no, this is what a face looks like.

This is what a face looks like. But a child, [00:21:00] because they will have such close proximity to their mom, their dad, their caterers, their grandparents or siblings will actually know because they do study things very keenly. They will know that the face is not symmetrical. So when they're then told that it is, there's a cal learning going on there that takes away from what they actually know to be real and true.

And I find that fascinating. When I saw, I was lucky enough to go to the museum in Malika where. Picasso grew up and you see these early sketches, and so many of them have this. We might see it as a distortion, but actually it's the reality of what a face looks like. So I just think that the problem is if we try and make everyone learn the same, in the same way, and remove this innate understanding and learning and curiosity that child has formed even before they were born.

And we try and mainstream it and put it into a particular way. We're losing a lot. We're losing a lot. We're really losing the next generation of [00:22:00] innovators, designers, creators. And that's, it's really important that we don't do that. So I think though, as a parent, when your child goes to school, you worry, you want 'em to have to read and write, and you don't want 'em to leave in school three years.

Behind the reading and writing age, we're really motivated. We want our, most parents want their children to do really well, and they want to do what they can to support them. So I think it's really important that we make the case to the parents as to why play is the best form of learning.

It's the one they start with, and it's the one that we need to foster as much as we can throughout their life. Not just in the school environment and learning environments, but in their home life and in their community life. Because as we know when we come into work, work life, it can be very stressful and we have to be able to play.

To wind down and relax. So these are actually life skills that children need to realize and appreciate, are really important. And we need to try and ensure that they retain [00:23:00] these life skills so that they have this good work life balance throughout their life. Because it looks like they're gonna be working for a very long time as the pension age worrying, they keeps going up.

So you want them to find something that they're interested in, that they're good in, that they want to get up to do every day. And they want, you want 'em to have things that they can use then afterwards to relax and have some downtime. Yeah. When you were talking, there was so many things go going through my mind really.

And I have loads of questions but one of the, I guess the big ones is that I think plays change. You talked about that, about it going online, but I also, I. Think Julie and I have talked about play being more pressured for parents, about getting it right and getting the right toys and the right situation, and the, having the, this amazing craft table all set up or all the dolls lined up and those sorts of things.

[00:24:00] But I'm wondering if actually what some of you are introducing is that actually play, just being outside in a field or being in a park, or just being in a community center where there's connections and you can be playing with a football or playing with the top of a pot bottle, it doesn't really matter.

Play is about those connections, creativity, joy, rather than. Always this staged expectation that sometimes can come over on social media that, that this is the way we should play now. Would that be correct? I think you're right. And I think I have a three-year-old granddaughter and the one thing that absolutely blows me away when I see her at play or playing away is improvisation.

Do you know? And she'll, she'll find maybe a napkin or a piece of kitchen roll or something. And this is the baby's nappy and the baby is, [00:25:00] possibly a little dog that our older children had when they were young or what's left of a knitted scarecrow and this is the baby and this is the baby's nappy, and this is the baby's blanket.

And it's this constant improvisation. The baby's having milk and you turn around and she's found a pen or the back of a pen, and that's the bottle that she's using or do you know? And it's constant improvisation. They've got something in their head. And of course, the worst thing you can do is an I don't, and we do it without even thinking is, oh, that's not that.

Oh, that's not that. Or, here take this. That's more like now. Yes, if you're handing a tea towel or something and saying, oh yes, that could be the baby's blanket. Or the baby's, but if you actually go and get what it is they want, then it's not improvisation anymore. And it, I think this instinct in the parent, because we want the best for our children.

It's almost a takeover. So when they're. Playing with maybe some letters and pretending this is this letter and that letter, you just want to jump in and say, oh no, this is your letter for your name. And then suddenly that's [00:26:00] anxiety because then they're trying to do it right. They know you want them to have the right letter for their name, whereas up until then they're just playing it, making a name and pretending that's their letters for their name.

They don't really know what the letters are and they're just pretending and they're having a great time to you leap in there and try and put them right. So I think this and I'm just using that as an example because I think improvisation is one of the keys to success. Life when things start to unravel, most of us have to go into improvisation mode where we're planning a lovely event at the end of the month with our children's minister.

And children's commissioner is going to be MCing it. And because it's all online, we spent a lot of our last meeting talking about what was our plan B going to be, how are we going to improvise if things start to go wrong and and how can we do it playfully and blah, blah blah. And children instinctively improvise in a playful way.

And it's really addressing that we as adults then have to really think hard how to do that. 'cause we've trained ourselves out of doing it. I just think the improvisation, the curiosity, the creativity and [00:27:00] this make believe, they do play out what they see all the time. So you don't need to make the arts grass table on that.

And you take them outside and honestly they see these bugs in the grass that even with a magnifying glass, I couldn't see. And grandma, can you see the spider in the grass? Actually no I can't. So I just say yes I can. And a 6-year-old, a friend of ours recently said to me, oh, can you see the spider in the grass?

And I said, no I can't. And she said yes, and she's got a sack on her back and that means she's eaten the male spider. And she's wrapped him up in her web and she's carrying on him back, on her back and she'll eat 'em later. And I was like, oh my goodness, I can't believe that. But her grandma was actually a spider, still a spider expert and has obviously told her this, that she's completely absorbed it, then seen it for herself and repeated it back to me.

Who had no idea about the life of spiders, how interesting it might be. So it is that they are so interested in nature and [00:28:00] yes, I do feel, their brains are just so ready to learn. And but all we can do, I think, is provide all the ingredients and let them go forward themselves. So we try and do it for them.

Then it's, I don't think it really gets a sustained learning, do you know? And they need to be curious and interested. And in that example, not every child might be interested. I'm curious about spider. They might actually be scared of the spider and that's okay as well. But it is just trying to let them lead us in a way.

And I know that would be hard for parents when you're trying to sort out dinner, homework, what they're wearing next day to school or getting them ready for bed, calming them down. There's so many things that parents need to be worried about. And yes, the online presence and all the other things that are going on, maybe getting World Book Day dropped into them the night before.

What am I going to wear tomorrow to be a character in World Book Day? Or the famous Easter basket as they're going out the door, oh, we were supposed to all take an Easter basket this morning. So [00:29:00] parents are under a lot of pressure and whatever we can do to support them, I think it's incredible incredibly important that we do that.

Philippa: And when we are thinking about getting children's school ready like you say, there's this, they need to read, they need to write, they be able to sit still, they need all these things. So we almost, I don't know, sometimes maybe the pressure is to formalize that within the home and almost start them on that journey of being at school or doing all these things at school way before they even get to school.

Because the pressure, like you say, is to get them ready. I suppose in my view, really children just need to be playing and not learning until they at least 7, 8, 9, so even school for me is way too soon. But I'm wondering as a parent that. That actually, if you are not doing that, you are worrying, your children won't be ready. I wonder what your view is that actually, if we let them use their imagination, if we let them talk to them, then, and actually they absorb more [00:30:00] learning because they are curious about what does this word say? Rather than formally sitting, saying, you're gonna write your name, they become curious about it themselves and they can learn in a much more playful way. And I wonder if that stays with them longer than if they've had formal training as it were. 

I

Marguerite: think it is that, I have struggled over the years with the the development of computers and programs and, over covid everything moved online.

We had to be able to do all these things and do you know, I didn't even have basic typing skills really. People would say to me, oh, this is how you do this and this is a shortcut for that. And they would quickly come onto your computer and do it for you. And of course, the only way really to learn is to do it yourself. You've gotta join yourself. You've gotta work out how to put the camera on, to put the sound on if to hold your nerve, if the whole system crashes and starts to update when you're just about to start speaking. So we've been through that process, and I think it [00:31:00] is like that for children at the very beginning.

You know what the learning they do for themselves, directed by themselves and practiced by themselves is a learning that really stays with them and never leaves them. And that fearlessness. About curiosity and work. Sometimes that, you look round in a room if you're presenting and it's not working looking for the youngest person because you know they're gonna come up and it's not that they know the right button to press, they're gonna press lots of buttons and they don't really mind so long 'cause they know they will get the right one eventually.

Whereas I would be scared to press the button in case the whole presentation disappeared. So I just think there's a fearlessness at the root of curiosity and creativity that we lose as we get older or maybe 'cause of the school system we came through that has to be nurtured and fostered in young people.

And this self-directed learning, as you call it, is so important. And what I would suggest that we have a nice we have loads of resources on our website, as have the other national play organizations, but one that is our biggest download is called the play Types Toolkit. And we [00:32:00] did it really to support.

Play in school. And to make it easy for teachers, we mapped against the CU curriculum for excellence in Scotland. To say if you do this type of play, what does that look like? What would you need to do? A bit like a recipe? Do you need to do? What does it look like? And where does this fit into the curriculum for excellence?

So they could, manage to map against the areas that, that they had to report on. But what is really nice is a lovely poster in it, and it's based on Bob Hughes taxonomy of play types. And he talked about 16 types of play types. And it's really interesting because I think if I was saying to any parent, it's about trying to get children school ready or ready to learn is about trying to expose 'em to the widest.

Type of play opportunities and experiences they can have because we tend to talk about play and assume that everybody knows what we mean and we, and sometimes it's narrowed down to outdoor play and indoor play. So we're actually taking away as to dressing up, play risky, play, challenging play, adventure play.

Let's pretend, [00:33:00] let's reenact what we've just seen. Do you know if we've seen something where we don't understand children? We'll play it through to try and make sense of it. Symbolic locomotor mastery skills there's just so many different types of plays. So in a way, just using the word play, we're not doing a service to this as to the different experiences and opportunities want children to have inside and outside, which actually stimulates brain development.

It stimulates language. It stimulates social skills 'cause there is quite a high bar when you're a young person to be part of the group. And how to stay part of the group. So you have to have the right social skills. If you go and bite somebody, then you'll not be invited into the group. You might not be allowed to stay.

And so there's just lots of different cues that everyone's learns to respond to. And I think this is just so important because. One of the things that happens when you go to school quite often, not all schools, but is you tend to then have to play in your age range. [00:34:00] And as we know, when you come to the workplace, you don't go into the workplace and say, oh, I only want to work in my age range.

You would just feel laughed out the door. But actually there's a very different way, and I look back now, I'm coming to the end of my career and I look back to when I was younger and couldn't wait for some of these people just to get out the door so we could do things the way we wanted to do them and make changes and actually make mistakes that they probably knew we were going to make all over again.

And they were trying to stop us from making them. But I look back now and realize that actually sometimes you can do things the same way again and get a different outcome. You don't always get the same outcome, but you do bring a different energy and enthusiasm and different approaches sometimes.

But it's not all just to say that other people had that wrong. I'm not saying that at all, but I'm just saying that, we can learn from working across the generations. And I know one of my children when he went into P one and I asked him, did he have a friend? Yes, he did. And I was so pleased because some of the children he'd been at nursery [00:35:00] with had gone to a different school and he wanted to bring this friend home at the weekend.

I said, oh yes, absolutely. And what's his name? And do we have a phone number? And it turned out his new best friend was in P seven. And I initially was quite taken aback by that because I was expecting him to be in P one with him. But apparently this. Person really liked playing football, as did my boy.

And they just loved playing together. So we did have his friend at the house quite a bit, and it turned out there were sisters in the family that were across the same age range as some of our girls. So that was lovely. But it was just that we just expect children to only want to play in age range and we need to create opportunities for that to change.

'cause when I was young, we just played out with everybody in the area. Didn't matter what age they were. And actually looking back, the older ones were probably looking out for us, younger ones, we just didn't realize it. 

Philippa: Absolutely. I, Julie and I often talk about that's what we did. We just played outside in the field and, and I recognize, like you said that now, one is, some of those spaces have [00:36:00] got, and where I used to play, there's housing loads of houses on it, or there's there's a lot more cars and those sorts of things.

I will put a link to your website in that in the description of this so that people can access it. I just wondered, so we've talked quite a lot about younger children. Does the, does your thinking include teenagers and what is what is that thinking around teenagers and older children?

Marguerite: It's it does include the older children as well, and it includes the secondary school schools, not just primary schools. Because we do have a played pedagogy award, which is a whole school approach. To play-based learning for primary schools, and that's extending now into secondary schools. It's so important for teenagers to have, and this is where the word play becomes a problem again, because yes, a lot of teenagers will talk about play.

They talk about hanging about they like to gather in groups as we know, and they have a right to under Article 15 of you, NCRC, [00:37:00] but older people in the community. Adults don't particularly like to see that, so it's really important that we create spaces and places for them to be, that they co-design and co-produce because it's hard to remember.

Most of us try and pass over our teenage years. We don't dwell on them too much sometimes. So it's important that we let teenagers who are having a very different teenage experience than we had where we might have queued up to use the phone in the hall and whisper into it. Their whole world is so different and it's really important that we listen to what they want and we create these places for them and we allow them to co-create.

And that's what the place efficiency assessments are happening are allowing to happen in Scotland. And there's great examples in Glasgow where a lot of the schools, including the additional support needs schools have been involved in this. And the local authority has set aside some money to allow them to co-design spaces paying particular attention to girls.

Feel less safe sometimes you would look at the statistics and know that boys are actually less [00:38:00] safe outside older boys, but actually girls feel unsafe. So it's really important that it create spaces that meet their needs as well. And other and minority groups too, of children in different ethnic minority groupings.

So it's really important. Inclusion is also incredibly important and I was absolutely appalled to hear about a study that was done in Sweden about children with A DHD suggesting that there was a difference in lifespan of 15 years, 15 years wow. For children with A DHD. They would've a shortened lifespan.

And that it's so important that we design the community to be less noisy. Less stimulating. And there are the spaces that we want for all young people because what we do tend to find, and I'm gonna steal from Gale's Penaloza here, who is a former mayor of Bogota, and what he said was, if a city is fit for an 8-year-old and an 80-year-old, then it's fit for everyone [00:39:00] and I would suggest as well for people with A DHD and other additional needs, whether that's wheelchair use or crutches, or parents with buggies when you start to see, once we think about proper inclusive and accessible design of spaces, we are actually creating better spaces for us all to live well locally.

And that's one of the things that Place Efficiency has allowed in Scotland is for children and young people to be part of the conversation about how to live well locally in your street, in your. Area of the city and actually in the whole city because that belongs to you too. So these are really important conversations that very often children were excluded from.

And even if they were asked that opinion, there was no way of giving it due waiting. And I think it's incredibly important. And again, when I talk about if this was some learning to do with, serious illness, we would all be paying huge attention and [00:40:00] complaining if it wasn't, if there wasn't mitigation taken and implemented.

So now that we know these things, it's really important that that we take full account of that when we design. And if that factors. One of the things we also really want out of this is we want young people to want to be planners and designers and landscape architects. And I'm not sure that's a profession that up until now, a lot of them would've been interested in and would've seen a purpose in for them and have seen any route into.

So now I hope we're creating really positive roots into planning for children and young people so that they actually see this as a really important career. Because as the Chief Medical Officer of Scotland, former one professor Sir Harry Burns, said, place is at the heart of wellbeing places.

Everything where you grow up affects your health, your wellbeing, and your life chances. So place is everything and the opportunities for play in the places you grow up. Are in there as well. So place is at [00:41:00] the root of everything I believe, and in children's life chances and wellbeing. And so we need to take it very importantly.

And if we are looking at play and thinking about play in schools and play at home, I mean miss out play in the community, then in some ways it doesn't matter what we do in those other domains, we'll never actually achieve a sustainable lasting difference to make better use of where we grow up, where all of us grow up and live.

Philippa: And do you think that play in areas where there's deprivation and poverty? Because, I work in an area where there's very high levels of deprivation. And I know in Scotland there are some towns and cities where the, in the top 10 like the area that I live in where deprivation is pretty prevalent and poverty's, has massive impacts on families.

Do you think play is accessible to those communities or how do you make the play the spaces the opportunity's more [00:42:00] accessible?  

Marguerite: There's been lots of research over the years about the poverty of play opportunities for children and young people in disadvantaged communities. And there's very strong evidence that play is a social justice issue and a spatial justice issue.

Just as you have described. And one of the things that happened during Covid is that became very noticeable when people had to stay at home and they're only allowed outside for a short space of time. The quality of the spaces mattered, and so many families particularly in disadvantaged areas can often be living in flats and in premises with no gardens. And so that was a particular difficulty for them. And so we know this is a, an issue for us and we know that there can be quite a high instance of brownfield sites in more deprived areas. And you only have to go into some communities to see, closed up shop fronts.

And this [00:43:00] is what's so interesting when you ask children and young people then. What they would like to see. They give a very consistent message. They want the removal of, they want clean spaces. What do they mean by clean and safe spaces? They mean no glass, no dog poo, no litter, and the removal of rubbish.

Now I can't think of any adult that doesn't want all those things as well. They're not asking for a destination play park at all, but they do want to be playing in and around where they live. And I don't think that's unreasonable that we should be able to facilitate that. And yes, there can be some playing out models about children in streets, but they tend to be for two hours, one Sunday of the month.

That's not being able to play out locally for me, it's better than nothing. Some people would say. I think in some ways I wonder, is it because, is it teaching children, young people that the rest of the time the car is king and they're not So actually no children have a right. It's got now a legal right to play in and around where they live.

We need to [00:44:00] work hard to actually accommodate that because yes, we do have more traffic. We do have an outrageous amount of no ballgame signs, which creates a very toxic culture for children being outdoors as well. We need to, those need to be removed. And the problem is there's thousands of them. Local authorities don't even know where they all are.

So there's lots of things that children young people ask us for that are actually very simple and easily achievable and they want to be able to play with their friends. They want to play in and around where they live. They also want access to affordable food in their area as well and good food.

So I don't think these are unrealistic asks, and I actually think they're very basic human rights that our children should be enjoying everywhere, every day. And so it's really incumbent on the adults to step up to the mark now because we do have all the talents that can achieve this, and some of it will cost money, but in the long term, we'll be saving money.

We'll be saving money on the health budgets. We'll be saving money in, in other [00:45:00] spheres as well. And how we have to support children who haven't had these good starts in life. So let's give them the best start in life. We know what it is. It's not as if it's not really difficult science. What does it, what do children need to give them a good start in life? We know what it takes. So let's get the talents together and make this possible. And I think let's listen to what children young people are telling us about their local communities because they understand their communities. And when you walk around a local community with young children, you'll find they have their own names for things. Do you don't remember one group of children talking about the spooky post office? So I had to go back and look at it and it really was a post office in a spar shop. And I know if you like to say spar, but I did wonder what made it spooky to them. But that was their name for Oh, the Spooky post office.

Okay. That was how they saw it. So yes, we need to know and pay attention to how they see where they live, rather than always looking at it on the lens of the adult.  

Philippa: And I think for me, just as we wrap up as parents, as people [00:46:00] who had also are responsible and connected with children, the most important thing is that our children are happy and that, there's that joy that they have those moments of joy and that they have those opportunities and I suppose play for me, just. Even if you are living in really tricky situations or life is really hard play can provide those moments of joy, of connection, of happiness. It, even if it's only for 20 minutes while you're playing football on a pitch that's clean and not got broken bottles on and and you're connected with your friends even if you then have to go home and life's a bit more tricky, you've at least play has given you those op that opportunity to experience a connection. A moment of joy, a break really sometimes from how hard lives can be. And for children to connect on all different levels, where, wherever they are, whether [00:47:00] it's outside, whether it's inside, whether it's at school, like you say, going through different areas.

We, we can connect and learn about families and children who maybe aren't in our realm of everyday families. And it just provides so much more than, let's play, for five minutes and learn how to write our name. And, it's that greater extent, isn't it?

Marguerite: You're so right. When we asked children after Covid how they were feeling and what they would like to see, happen next, they told us that they had missed fun, friends, family, and for me, quite incredibly, they said freedom. Now I was astonished at that we'd done lots of consultation with children and young people over the years the word freedom had never come into that, but they really recognized that this freedom [00:48:00] to come and go had extended beyond the parents. Normally it's the parents that are saying, yes, you'd be out to this time, or Yes, you can go there. No, you can't go there. Yes, I'll take you there. I'm not happy if you go there on your own, you'll need to go with so and so normally gatekeepers, as I talk about it, were the parents and suddenly it was more than that. And even the parents were being guided about what was allowed and what wasn't allowed, which was a really big pressure on the parents. But this missing out on fun and the way the children described it was they wanted more play and better play opportunities and I think that very much talks to what you were talking about there, about the poverty of play in disadvantaged areas and actually maybe in families where there's a lot of activities going on. But they're not directed by the children and the children maybe are quite happy doing something on their own and quite absorbed in it, but then maybe they've gotta go to lessons or training or other things that parents think are maybe more important.

So it is a balancing act. And one of the things that children tell us a lot about is about access to green and open spaces. And I, and [00:49:00] it really intrigues me because I think intuitively and instinctively in the same way that children have natural posture until the age of eight, you watch any child, the way they sit, the way they stand, the way they hold themselves as beautiful, natural posture I think they innately know that they need to be near green spaces to be happy. I think they just know it. I think we know it, we forget it on our journey, and then we need to be reminded about it. And then we have to make a huge effort when we're older to get the steps and then get ourselves out to these green spaces.

But I just think in terms of when you see children with this very natural posture, I think innately. They know they should be in and around green and open spaces and they tell us that even if they don't have that access, so they seem to know about it. Now. It's very interesting to me that children, even in Glasgow in high school, some of them when their teacher was speaking to them a few years ago, had never been to the sea.

And I thought that was very interesting. 'cause actually, Glasgow isn't that far from the sea. Do [00:50:00] you know? If I had to guess at this stage, I would say 20 miles, maybe 25 miles. It's not that far. Obviously we live on an island in the uk. But it was also something that came through and a lovely video I saw from Northern Ireland from the May Murray Foundation.

And it was those young people and children who have profound, complex additional needs and they had wanted to get to the beach and they wanted to do a little pick and play on the beach in fact. And and so one of the local authorities had said, oh yes, we've been thinking about this and we've actually got a plan in place.

And what they've done was they've removed some of the sea wall and put big per perspec panels in there so that children with complex additional needs could see the sea. And of course they rejected this and said no, we want to be on that beach in the sea. And of course, if you want true inclusion, inclusive play, there's one thing to be accessible paths and make things accessible, for young people to get there and have accessible, inclusive play equipment. But actually [00:51:00] true inclusion requires infrastructure. You do need toilets, changing facilities, perhaps car parking as well. If children with additional complex needs want to be at the seaside, they maybe even need sharing facilities there as well. So there's a whole campaign and plan then with local authorities in Northern Ireland to achieve this.

And this lovely young woman Talia, who's 16 now. Famously in the film gets down onto the beach for the first time at 16 years of age and she speaks through a voice monitor 'cause she's nonverbal and she says, her first words are, did you know the sea was salted? And of course, we all know the sea is salt.

But she didn't. And it is so moving. And I was thinking how it took her to 16 to be able to experience that. But actually we've also got children in disadvantaged communities that are living not that far from the sea, that haven't experienced that. So [00:52:00] this accessibility is a big issue. And much that I think a lot of young people instinctively know, they should be near green and open spaces.

They should also be near the elements. They should be near the sea, they should be near experience the wind and and these different experiences. So when they go to play Park and back to talking about inclusively here, they can't just be a swing or a roundabout that's put in. There should be lots of different experiences in that play park for those children, for all children to experience.

And it goes back to what we said earlier on, if we're actually designing for everyone. That it's a better play experience because I can still remember, the wheelchair swing that's locked off. 'cause it's a very heavy, the original ones were very heavy and they were locked off and they were sighted away from the main play park.

So children had to go and play on their own. So they're, so even when they got to the play park, they were excluded. Do you know? So you had to have the key to open it. So I think we're getting a lot better at understanding what makes inclusive play and what the barriers are. This is what we really need to get our head around, what are the [00:53:00] barriers and how we overcome them and we have no shortage of designers, manufacturers. And landscape architects. And so I think it's just about, as I say, bringing all the talents together, listening to what children and young people are telling us and moving into that co-production, co-design phase that I think we're ready for in Scotland now that we're into the implementation phase, and I actually don't think that other countries like yourself, like England are far behind. I think there's big discussions going on now there with the plague commission going on in England. A lot of conversations going on in Northern Ireland and Wales, of course, have their own legislation framed slightly differently from Scotland and have had place efficiency for over 10 years now.

So we're all at different ages and stages of development, I would suggest. And it's really important that we learn from that. And, people don't have to start at the beginning. There's different ways you can pick up on these discussions and different aspects of making the children's right to play a reality for them here and now.

And 'cause that's what we really want is [00:54:00] children who have a good childhood and have lots of fun, as you say, Philippa expressed so eloquently. We want 'em to fun here and now because there will be challenging things go on in their lives around them that's real life. But it's really important that they get good quality of play experiences, which will actually support them through the more difficult things in the li in their childhood.

Philippa: My last question was going to be how do you think we're doing, and I think you've just summed that up a amazingly. Is there anything that you think I didn't ask that maybe you think the listeners would be interested in or that I didn't ask that you wanted to cover?

Marguerite: Not really I do think if you're putting up our website, it's definitely worth putting up. Play England's play Whales and play board Northern Ireland because they're full of things for parents. They're full of things for practitioners and planners, so I think it's really there's a wealth of resources there and there's London play as well. Le is fantastic at doing stuff now. Leeds play. [00:55:00] I, you'll find it. I think it's let's play leads or something they call it. So there's lots of really good stuff out there and it's just encouraging. We're just trying to motivate people to be interested enough to look it up and at the end of the day, a lot of people put a lot of effort into trying to make things more play friendly for.

Families and parents and practitioners, planners and other professionals who don't realize that play has got something to do with them, even if it's not in their job description, but the strategic decisions that they make. I'm thinking of people planning roads, planning pavements trying to maintain twenties, plenty these people don't realize that they have a huge contribution to make to children's opportunities for play. So we call them unusual suspects. I'm always on the lookout for them, always on the lookout for them. Oh, that's amazing. Yes. I'll put those in the description of the episode. I will put a link to as many of these things as possible so that [00:56:00] parents and professionals and whoever hopefully listens to this can access it.

Thank you very much Marguerite, for being. I hope that those things,