Creating Space for Risk: Lessons from the Fear Less Play Project

"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 connections between adventurous play, parental anxiety and children's development. 

Drawing on expertise in child psychology, mental health and play, they explore why risk is an essential part of childhood, how adults can support rather than limit children's opportunities for challenge, and what this means for the design of play spaces and the wider systems that shape children's opportunities to play.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• Why children need opportunities to experience risk and uncertainty through play.
• How parental anxiety can influence children's play experiences.
• What "graduated risk" means and why it matters.
• The role of adventurous play in building resilience and confidence.
• What designers, planners and local authorities can learn from the Fear Less Play research.

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Fortitude Therapy

Play Attention is a podcast from Timberplay - exploring the thinkers, designers and changemakers shaping the future of play.

Hosted by Beth Cooper, Independent Play Consultant.

Theme music by Dave Mullen Jnr 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:01

Had a woman say to me, I haven't played for seven years, that's the entirety of the child's life, and they were on a zipline the next week.

SPEAKER_02 0:09

Lots of sports are riskier than risky play. But because we don't value play in the same way, we immediately go to oh mustn't let them get hurt. So there's also a kind of messaging thing there around what the value of play is and why it matters.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

There's a broad range of professionals who are thinking about creating spaces to encourage challenge, independence, and discovery, and we're trying to create these environments that support a really rich curriculum of children's play. But sometimes children's opportunities can be shaped just as much by the adults that are accompanying them as the environments that they're in. In this episode of Play Attention, I was joined by Helen Dodd, Professor of Child Psychology at the University of Exeter, and Dr. Sarah Louise Hurst, who is a clinical psychologist specialising in anxiety and maternal well-being. And together they've developed the Fearless Play project. They explored through this project how parental anxiety can influence children's opportunities for challenge and adventure. We discuss in this episode why risky play matters, what happens when adults become more confident in supporting it, and what all of this means for those of us designing and championing places for play for children, for all of us. I'm Beth Cooper, and this is Play Attention. So with us today, our guests are Professor Helen Dodd and Dr. Sarah Louise Hurst. I'm just going to ask them to introduce themselves to you, our lovely audience. So Helen first.

SPEAKER_02 1:46

Hi, great to be here. I'm Professor Helen Dodd. I'm a professor of child psychology at the University of Exeter, and I'm also a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow. And the UKRI funding has funded a whole programme of work for me on children's play and mental health over the last seven years.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Thank you so much. Dr.

SPEAKER_03 2:02

Sarah Louise. Hello, my name is Sarah Louise Hurst. I'm a clinical psychologist and a researcher based in Cardiff. I founded a clinic called Fortitude Mums, where we support women's mind and mood in motherhood.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

We have come together today. We're going to talk about your most recent work together, which is the Fearless Play project. So would one of you maybe like to just give us a brief explanation of what that project is?

SPEAKER_03 2:29

Yes, Fearless Play is a program that I designed to help parents with anxiety encounter play in a way that would help them to overcome the boundaries that they're experiencing, the barriers of anxiety. Helen and I did this collaboration as a way to look at an element of play that isn't always looked at, which is what the parents' emotional state brings to play. So we recruited a selection of parents who turned out in the end to all be mums, so you might hear me refer to mums a lot. We recruited a group of parents who took part in the Fearless Play project, which to briefly put was a couple of sessions with me in a typical therapy session, learning act therapy skills. And then we took those skills out into an adventure playground setting where the parents encountered play equipment that they would have previously described as something that would have given them a sense of anxiety and allowed their children to play on that equipment whilst using the tools that we learned in the therapy space. And we just used that as a snapshot, that play space is a snapshot really of what happens inside the parent, what happens in the behaviour of the parent, but also what happens for the child when the parent and the child play together. And that unique combination of the therapy space that I have in my own clinic plus the play space created some really interesting outcomes for us.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

And at a time when people are facing so much anxiety about all sorts of different things, it's a really uh great process to go through to support them in supporting their own children, supporting themselves, but supporting their own children. So, Helen, uh what were your particular skills and experience that you brought to this project? Because I know you've got a whole wealth of of play play background before before you two started collaborating. So it would be really interesting to hear a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_02 4:24

Yeah, so my background's in children's mental health, and um basically across all of my career I've worked on understanding anxiety, the development of anxiety, and how we can prevent anxiety. And I started working on children's play probably oh, seven, eight years ago now. Um, because what I realized, I think, when I became a parent was that so often with um with children, when they're doing stuff as parents, we have to give them space to test things out. Like when they're first starting to walk, for example, you know, we worry, oh, they're gonna fall, they're gonna hurt themselves, but we support them and we let them do it. And when they play, we have to do the same thing. We have to give them that space to kind of explore, push themselves a bit. And sometimes when we feel anxious, we say, no, stop, get down. And maybe in doing so, we might remove some of those opportunities for learning that happen. So I've been studying play and studying that kind of pushing of boundaries, adventurous play, and the interactions with the anxiety for the child and anxiety for the parents over the past seven or eight years, as I say. And then Sarah Louise and I had a really interesting conversation probably four or five years ago at this point about how our work came together. Um, so I was I was saying, well, like anxiety is a really key thing that seems to be getting in the way of children having these important play opportunities. And Sarah Louise is an expert in parent anxiety, so we were like, what can we do to come together and try and kind of put our heads together and our skill sets together to support parents who are struggling with anxiety in that context?

SPEAKER_00 5:57

Yeah, I mean that's fascinating. So, as a professor of child psychology, you're based at the University of Exeter, but obviously with all of these things, those conversations go much wider than just the academic institution you're housed within or you support. So, Dr. Sarah Louise, your your background is slightly different. It'd be great to hear a little bit about your background, but also then how that collaboration actually sort of formulates.

SPEAKER_03 6:22

So I I'm a clinical psychologist based in Cardiff. Um I used to work in the NHS as part of the perinatal dental health team. Uh, but since leaving that and setting up my own practice, Fortitude Mums, and I specialise in women's mind and mood in motherhood. And that covers the whole spectrum of experiences for women through fertility struggles, baby loss, all the way to transition to motherhood, um, and all of the experiences we we have as mums, um, alongside another psychologist and a sleep coach that works for me in Cardiff. So I'm always trying to look at creative ways to increase the impact of what we've got from the evidence base of what helps women with anxiety. And one of the things that I've noticed working with mums is that um there's nothing quite as motivated as a mum who wants to change on behalf of their child. And a big part of the therapeutic approach that I use with ACT therapy, which I'll talk about later, is going out there in the world and doing behavioural experiments because conversations are wonderful, but they're quite conceptual. Real change happens when we activate our nervous system, when we go out and do the things that matter. And so for me, it was kind of using my values of wanting to be outside, be a bit more creative, use outdoor space and play. Um, using that context, was there a way that we could we could harness some of what's known in the play literature and combine it with what's known in maternal mental health and create an intervention that is brief and is effective and kind of harnesses some of the thinking that's being done by thought leaders at the moment and in local government, local authorities, um, play architecture, all of that, trying to bring that together. And it was really helpful being able to access Helen's knowledge in child anxiety and all the experiences she's got in the play space as well, to kind of come together and think about how we could use outdoor risky play as an ideal context to activate the nervous system and create real life belief changes in real time. When I was able to stand in every play session coaching parents in the moment, which is a richness of data that we don't often get.

SPEAKER_00 8:25

Amazing. And there's a real personal resonance for me because I love what you say there about um there's nothing more motivated than a mum who makes wants to make a change for her child. In terms of formulating who it was that you were going to work with, um, the space that you chose for for working, what were the key, what were the key parameters that you wanted to put together in that research to be able to deliver this project?

SPEAKER_02 8:52

So we'd done work looking at um talking to parents, surveys of parents, about what are the barriers to supporting children to play adventurously. And things that came come out of that are things like safety of society, risk of injury, road safety, that the parent feels anxious. So all of those things are either directly about anxiety or underpinned by anxiety. So we knew that we wanted to create something which was about managing anxiety. And I think we both felt that the kind of the CBT content behaviour therapy type approach basically takes takes your cognitions, takes your thoughts, and tells you not to think like that, to think differently. But when you're thinking about the safety of your child, you know, we're we're designed as mothers to want to protect our children. So it doesn't fit, it doesn't sit quite right, the idea of saying to mothers, oh, don't think like that. Think differently about the safety of your child. So that was a real it was like a bit of a Eureka moment, really, wasn't it, Sarah Louise? And we're having that that conversation, because Sarah Louise's therapeutic approach really works well with the idea of, okay, we understand that parents feel anxious about their kids getting hurt. That is a normal way to feel, but when it becomes too much, it gets in the way. So, how do we take a therapeutic approach, which is sensitive to the fact that it's normal to feel like this, but but allow parents to manage that anxiety in a way that stops it from getting in the way of their child's play. And that's why the therapeutic approach that Sarah Louise took, which is called ACT, which she can talk about, um, felt like the ideal way of approaching approaching this problem.

SPEAKER_03 10:30

Sarah Louise, do you want to pick up a bit about what Act is and why that works? Um ACT therapy stands for acceptance and commitment therapy. It's an evidence-based approach, so it's a it's a well-known and very well-evidenced therapeutic approach. What I love about it, I feel quite evangelical about it, is it doesn't just access top-down. So it doesn't just talk about cognitions down, it also takes a bottom-up approach. So it thinks about your body and your body experience in the moment as well. So the acceptance part of ACT is about being willing to make space in your mind and your body for difficult emotions and for intense and overwhelming thoughts to show up. And when they do show up, rather than trying to fight them, instead you keep doing, you commit to what matters to you in the moment. One of the key elements of it is people becoming really clear on what their values are, and what I called in Fearless Play your personal and parenting values. So if you imagine as a woman with like a bus driving through life full of values, most of the women that we know want to commit to being out in nature, they want independent, resilient children. Mums always want their children to do better than they have done, to not have the experiences they do. So all these values of connection and play are on their bus, but the driver of the bus we found in Fearless Play tends to be avoiding harm and over-responsibility. And whilst avoiding harm and over-responsibility is driving the bus, the bus doesn't land at the playground. Because why would you risk your child's health and wellness and letting them go to play when you could keep them inside, you could keep them on a screen. So one of the key parts that Act brought to it was an allowing women to realise they were clinging too hard onto protection and to allow nature to step in, allow connection and fun to step in. And that was really quite a beautiful moment in the play spaces. As some women did that for the first time, had a woman say to me, I haven't played for seven years, that's the entirety of the child's life. And they were on a zipline the next week outside of the outside of the play space that we had. So the values being embodied enable people to overcome the anxiety that's also on the bus with them at the same time. But the other wonderful part of it is about showing up in the present moment. So our minds are constantly chattering, telling stories about what might happen. So a woman in a play space looks at a high level and her mind tells her stories about what might happen to their child up there. The women were getting very vivid uh images of children falling, they described brains coming out, you know, lots of really vivid graphic images. But that's a story. So what we were learning to do instead was to turn up in the moment and use your senses to notice what's actually happening. And that was stunning too, because women were saying things like, I never knew he was that strong. Look at how wonderful she is with people she doesn't know. Um, and lovely stories coming back from the children about Oh Mum, I've done this before, we do it at school all the time. So, in that moment, the whole belief system of the woman was shifting in real time as she realized that it was okay, that she could adjust the rules that she was living by, that she was applying to play and applying to safety in the moment. And that's a power of act, it's not about changing your thoughts or changing your experience, but learning how to live through difficult moments and commit to what matters. And in our play space, what mattered was moving higher and higher into into levels of um risk and adventure in a safe way.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

And I think that whole process of experiential learning, it it sounds like I mean, play has that. I mean, you'll know this, both of you will know this, and we know this from experiencing things ourselves. If we experience stuff, it it lands very differently, and it sounds like you're not talking them through the process, that you're giving them the opportunity to show themselves the process, but you're supporting the you're not expecting them to come in to be able to make those changes, you're actually stepping them through, and it's through the demonstrations. So I've got some, you know, I'm quite interested to understand how you chose the environment within which you worked, because that must have been quite a key part of the of the process.

SPEAKER_02 14:49

It's a really good question. So Louise and I are smiling at each other because it was it was possibly the hardest part of the whole project was finding the right place to have these play sessions. So there's a there's a lot to think about. So we wanted somewhere where there was opportunity for adventurous risky play. Um, there would be no point in taking parents into a play area which was very, very safe and predictable. But we didn't want it to be overwhelming for the parents. Um, we had a lot of discussion about whether we wanted other children there or not, um, because as soon as there are other children, the environment becomes much less predictable for us and for the parent, and it brings in a whole different dimension. Um, so we decided that ideally we wanted a play area where there was opportunity for kind of graduated risk and where there weren't other children. Um turns out that's quite a difficult thing to find. Um, and for it to be relatively controlled. I mean, I guess that relates to there not being other children. If it's a public play space, you know, we're never going to say that no, that other children can't play there. So, but then it also had to be local for the people who were taking part in the research. And they were doing some of the sessions with Sarah Louise in person, and obviously the play sessions were going to be in person and Sarah Louise's space in Cardiff. So it kind of we ended up narrowing it down basically because there just weren't very many options. Um, but some of the feedback I think from parents relates to whether that was the right space and whether other spaces might have been better, and and it's definitely something I think that we would think about going forward. Um, but a lot of it was pragmatic, to be honest.

SPEAKER_03 16:36

It there was something about the controlled nature that Helen mentioned, the fact that it had a fence around it. Um, we were trying to minimize the women becoming really overwhelmed by anxiety. We wanted it to feel safe for them. Um, so it was the great it was the gradual, we had very small platforms to climb, for example, but it went all the way up to about six and a half feet, so we could gradually move up. We actually shut down parts of this play space on week one of the play experience and then opened it gradually over the weeks. It lent itself to that too. But it also had um some natural materials to play with as well. So there was logs, there was like industrial tubes that's not so natural that you could that you could climb through. So there was just that variation because it was a pilot study and no one's done it before. We wanted that space to be to improvise. Um, and it's worth saying at this point as well, we had wonderful support from Seren and the community, which is a charity in Cardiff, that provided provided playworkers. Um, and so they really warmed to the space too because they could see um the opportunities there. Because we weren't quite sure that whether the children would be very timid or already very good at climbing and being adventurous, and how we were going to be able to negotiate that through the through the play experience was really important. And and this fenced-in space really lent itself to that. And it's quite unusual, I'm finding with a tween myself to find play equipment that was almost seven feet tall, so it had that level for the children who wanted to jump off a high platform or use a fireman's pole, they could access that, and that's actually quite hard to find in Cardiff. You know, it's a lot of the play equipment is designed for much smaller children, so that was another reason that we went for this this play area as well.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

So, did you find? I mean, I'm sure this isn't a blanket answer, it must have varied with between them, but when you were in that space, oh I mean, I have so many questions, but this one, when you were in that space, um, did you find that the children were quicker to move towards pushing the boundaries of where their parents were comfortable, where the mums were comfortable? Or did you know, was it that was it kind of a fairly um steady growth together?

SPEAKER_03 18:43

Or so I suppose an important part of of the study was that I mapped out what we called the the play map for the mum, which was a really clear individualised plan for them on what they wanted to achieve from the opportunity. Because as you can imagine, with anxiety, for them to grow through the fearless experience, some mums needed to move towards play and get more involved because that uh to avoid their anxiety and overwhelm, they would back off. Other women were helicoptering, in their words, over their parent over their child, so they had to uh learn to move away from the play. So there was quite a complex interaction between moving towards and away from play with the parent. But obviously, as you as you know, with the child, there's some children who want to do novel things at speed and some who want to hold back. So, actually, over the weeks, we created what we called the play moves, and the playworkers knew too how to sort of titrate that to try and my priority really was that the woman didn't go too far out of what we call her window of tolerance because if they became too overwhelmed, then it takes them out of their body, and actually that did happen. Um, one of the most startling findings for me in that setting was just how intense the experience of anxiety was for some of the women. It was more akin to the trauma processing work that I do where people go almost non-verbal, it was hard to speak. And of course, I'm trained in supporting women with that, and we talked about that in advance, and that actually was a real moment for this one particular mum. Um, but that's how intense the anxiety experience can be for mums. But she said she did that in a normal playground, so that's what we call like ecologically valid, is that we were just bringing up what happens in her day-to-day life, but I was able to stand next to her and help coach her. So her, so some of the children were definitely keen to go and do more, but the playworkers knew that, so they would distract them. We had ground-based uh orbees and bubbles so that they could slow the child down if they wanted to, so that the child and the mum worked in a partnership. There was like symbiosis between them as they moved through the experience rather than the mum becoming overwhelmed.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

So the the children themselves, mix of genders, mix of ages?

SPEAKER_03 20:49

Yeah, the age range was uh four to seven, um, and we had a mix of we had a mix of genders as well.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

And you mentioned there about graduated risk. Helen, I don't know if you could maybe so I have my own perception of what that terminology means. Could you maybe give us a little bit of of what graduated risk is within the context of this pilot project?

SPEAKER_02 21:11

Yeah, I guess the key thing in relation to this project is actually the graduated level of anxiety for the mum, as Sarah Louise uh said. So we want we wanted to hold parents within that window where okay, their their anxiety might be elevated a bit and it needs to be elevated a bit in order for them to be able to have opportunity to put into practice the tools that they've learnt with Sarah Louise. But we don't want the anxiety to get so high that it that it's overwhelming, that it's distressing for them. In general, when I say graduated risk, what I'm talking about is the level of risk that is that is objectively there, and therefore that the child is likely to experience and feel when they play on that equipment. Again, obviously it varies from one child to another, but you Kind of I think of it as as likelihood that a child is going to feel that thrilling, exciting adventure feeling in that with that piece of play equipment or in that play moment. So if a child is stood two metres from the ground and gonna launch themselves off onto a mat on the floor, probably they're gonna feel some level of of excitement, adventure thrill, right? If it's something which you know is like so Louise said, walking along a log, a lot of children wouldn't feel particularly excited and thrilling emotional, but some would. So it's kind of, I think it's probability that the child is going to get that that feeling. And obviously that varies between children in terms of their own temperaments, but also how old they are and also their physical ability. So if a child is a child who isn't very good at balancing and has a lot of experience of falling off things, then it's going to be more exciting for them to do those things which are which are lower risk. And we don't want children to go straight to something that's really, really risky because as we were saying with the parent, it then is is overwhelming, it's too anxiety provoking and it causes distress and that's not playful, right? That's not fun. The fun bit is when you're pushing the boundaries of what feels comfortable and where those boundaries are sits sit differently for different people.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

And I think managing that risk as well I mean it was I was at a a sort of community fair event a few months ago and there was a a child walking on a a log like a fallen tree trunk. It was quite large and it was one of those like oh that's a really typical fairly normal play experience of this child investigating. But it felt like that child wasn't as used to doing that as as maybe another child just based on the fact that they were in welly boots and they're in wellies and they're walking along and I was thinking that child's gonna slip and that's what happened. And then they were upset and it's kind of like well are they going to then associate it with that play experience or is it just that they just didn't have the right footwear on you know but the impact of that experience can change their approach to then feeling as capable and free to do those things.

SPEAKER_02 24:12

Yeah but also the the the the reaction to that experience matters as well right yeah so if if whoever's with them says oh dear rub you off let's try again how about I hold your hand this time get back up you do it again there's amazing learning opportunities there for the child right sometimes things go wrong but I can carry on versus oh why did you do that?

SPEAKER_01 24:34

You mustn't ever do that again or you must really hurt yourself.

SPEAKER_02 24:37

We should go home now because you've hurt yourself and that links to how the parent feels the parent's own anxiety the parent's own beliefs about what being a good parent means their responsibility beliefs so lots of what Sarah Louise is trying to um target in fearless I think relates ties into that even though it's not specifically about parent responses. If the parent is primed thinking something might go wrong and if it goes wrong that's the end of the world it's very difficult for them to have that more positive response when something does.

SPEAKER_03 25:08

And that's something that came up really was the moments where children did someone scratch their finger somebody fell over these are the moments that that mums had been desperately bracing and hoping would never happen. Part of the therapeutic experience often is encouraging them to to know that they are strong enough and capable enough to face that feared moment and for it to be okay. And actually when the children tumbled and bumped themselves that for some of the women was one of the most powerful moments to see them stand up again and for it to be okay because some of these children hadn't really had that experience. So I think it's that reparative moment when they do bump themselves that can actually be really powerful for the mum as well to realise that she felt really anxious but nothing terrible happened. And also in respect to the adults around her nobody batted an eyelid to that moment. In fact it was seen as an adventurous moment and not one that needed to be avoided at all costs.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:04

Just to to go back right to the basis of all this you know why why is it because we want to keep our children safe we want them to succeed we want them to be vibrant connected human beings who are content satisfied know how to solve problems get a resilient why is risk and uncertainty important for children in that developmental process Helen I see you nodding though yeah so the simple answer to that is because the world is uncertain right so they can't live lives where they are not exposed to uncertainty. Uncertainty is part of our everyday life um and so to manage through life without feeling overwhelmed with anxiety we need to be able to tolerate uncertainty um there is a construct in the kind of psychological literature called intolerance of uncertainty which is exactly that is when an individual really struggles with uncertainty. Whatever it's about just uncertainty itself is problematic and when somebody is high in intolerance uncertainty they have very high likelihood that they will also be anxious, be worriers and we all know people like that or we identify in ourselves that some people just you know they want to know well who's going to be there and what time we're going to get there and they want all of those details and other people are like oh well we'll just see what happens and in general if you're worrying about all the details then your your anxiety is going to be higher. So children need to learn to manage uncertainty and to manage those things that happen those feelings that happen in their bodies when they feel uncertain. So the kind of you know maybe butterflies in your tummy might feel a bit sweaty sweaty palms might feel a bit warm your heart might be racing a little bit you feel a bit nervous a bit unsure um and to learn that these are just normal things that our bodies do. We don't they're they're no more than that. That they're not a sign that something's wrong there's not a sign that you know you're gonna have a heart attack it is just this is what our bodies do when we fear when we're exposed to uncertainty. And we want children to know that they can cope with those feelings and they can cope when the uncertain thing doesn't go quite to plan. So I'm worried that this might happen I don't know what's going to happen. If that thing happens then they need to know that they can cope and they can manage and that makes the uncertainty itself less threatening. So when children this is how actually I came to working on children's play because I'd been working on anxiety and studying these different constructs and ideas and understanding why children become anxious. And then I realized when you watch a child play in a way that pushes the boundaries of risk and the boundaries of their comfort zone they are learning all of those things in those moments right their bodies have all this physiological arousal going on they're feeling their hearts are racing they're feeling their butterflies in their tummies but in this really positive exciting context where they're in control where they're choosing. So it's providing these learning opportunities but through play it it gives them an opportunity to test out feeling uncertain right to test out coping. And if an adult whoever that might be steps in and says no that's too risky stop that get down we take away all of that all of that opportunity to learn is removed. And if we do that again and again and again how do we expect a child when they're 10, when they're 15 when they're 20 to have developed a good understanding of what happens in their bodies when they feel a bit nervous or that they can cope or an understanding of what uncertainty feels like and how you navigate it. Right. So we want children to have those learning experiences and what I think is and what I've written you know theories about is that in order for children to have them and learn in a healthy way they need to have opportunity to play in a risky way.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

So this brings me really beautifully to a very specific question about these environments. Now you talked about finding the right space obviously there were lots of factors in that consideration of where in terms of practicalities and locality and and many things but it really is a a key point that what you're saying is it was difficult to find a space that satisfied the criteria for your research but I would suggest that maybe it's quite difficult to find spaces where children can engage in these risky, challenging exciting experiences. And specifically our audience is you know predominantly they're interested in creating spaces for play. Timberplay that's what we do. So what what are the key uh takeaways from the lessons that you have learned and from the experience of going through this research and the previous work that you've done that you feel that people need to hear whether they're commissioning designing or or championing spaces for play whether that's a designated play area or just a streetscape what are the key lessons that you feel have been learnt from this experience? Dr Sarah Louise I'm going to put that to you right now. It's a really good question.

SPEAKER_03 31:29

I think uh off the back of Fearless play the things that I observed is you could have the most beautifully designed play space and play equipment but if the caregivers and the parents involved in the play experience are flooded with anxiety and the children are tuned in as they biologically are wired to be to their parents' reaction there is going to be a barrier to play that goes on there. And I think for me based in Wales we're like leading the way with play sufficiency priorities and principles there is a proportion of the population that aren't going to get sufficient play whilst the emotional response to play isn't tackled in the parents that stand around the playground. So I think that's one thing for me. Another thing is what the exact thing that we were manipulating in this pilot was the exposure to risk. I'm sure most playgrounds are designed with this in mind but quite often to me as an untrained eye it seems quite binary. There is toddler play and then there is slightly older play but I think having a better range of exposure to height and movement and speed would really encourage people who perhaps hopefully might hear about this kind of work might want to challenge themselves and their child to be able to do that in a play space. And one of the things that was really poignant about what we observed in the playground was just how powerful the experience of play was between the parent and the child and I know that one of Timberplay's priorities is making sure that parents can access the play equipment and as a mum over six foot that's a challenge to me. I actually I try but I can't get on a lot of play equipment so I think um for that level of accessibility for adults is so important and we know from the attachment psychological evidence that reciprocity between parents and children is very calming on a nervous system. So if parents can have that experience with their child they can also rewrite their own play experiences or lack of as they do it together. And finally I think something about sight lines really matters because a lot of what we were manipulating was moving towards and away from play in a safe sense. So somehow demarcating that around a playground of where you can be seen from so that they can get that real data on how much a child's enjoying the play space but also that a parent can withdraw from it and somehow perhaps being able to encompass that play culture of it is okay to feel a bit nervous. It is okay to get dirty in your play experience because I think some of that's being lost to parents like me the acknowledgement that actually I learnt from the playworkers that you shouldn't lift a child onto play equipment because maybe they can't climb up some of these basic play principles aren't really spoken about anymore as we move more and more towards sanitized play experiences of ballet classes or or football pictures or astroturf. So having those spaces where that's a little bit more apparent but also more free play available for children who are tweens and above to be able to access because again that's not something that's available locally to my family.

SPEAKER_00 34:29

Yeah absolutely I mean I think there's not just one answer to this conversation about you know that the culture that we live in the way in which people engage with things differently the changing attitudes towards risk and indeed towards children. So Professor do you have anything else to help us with with this work in terms of creating these spaces that not only support the adult who often are the enablers of children accessing play these days in this culture where children aren't just out there freely playing how do we support these adults but also what are the what are the design aspects or the approaches to design we can take so that we we move this dialogue forward and we don't keep restricting it.

SPEAKER_02 35:17

Yeah so I totally agree with with what Sarah Louisa said and and that discussion around understanding that there's lots of different bits to this so one solution on its own is is never going to solve the whole issue. But if there are not spaces for children to play in an adventurous way that's appropriate for their age then they won't right and so in that sense yes we need to support parents and that's part of what's come out of this work is that parents are anxious about their kids getting hurt and they some parents will need some support for managing that will need to learn some of the tools and tricks for for how do you cope as a parent when you feel that sense and that that urge to step in and say no get down right um but if there are not good spaces that are built that are designed to support children to play in this way then they can't as you know the government have recently provided 18 million pounds for playgrounds in England um which is great it's very welcome then if you think about how much money that is per child or per playground um it's not very much so it's absolutely a step in the right direction and is welcome but when we're thinking about making sure that every child has access to interesting play spaces that work for them it it's only a step in the right direction. It isn't going to be a solution to the problem. Thinking about the built environment is really really important um so that is about can they do doorstop play immediately outside in front of their house together with other children can they walk or ride their bikes or scoop to a local playground when they get there what does that playground look like does it say to them that it's for them you know if you're a 12, 13 year old boy in particular playgrounds generally don't feel like they're for you um so we need to have these places for children to go to play that work across the full age range and across the full ability range and ideally support that creative open ended play rather than being really prescriptive that there is this bit of kit here and this is how you play with it. Right. There's a reason that children climb up slides even though as adults we design slides for them to go down. They climb up them because they want to push right they want to explore they want to use things differently they want to be creative that's what children do. So we need to design spaces that support that that they can interact with in lots of different ways that they can climb up that they can jump off that they can hang from so when they're little it might be that they're just sitting on it or balancing on it. It might be then as they get older they climb higher it might be then when they're in that kind of tween range that they start jumping off it. So thinking about designing equipment that that isn't prescriptive that is open-ended that allows that graduated risk that we talked about earlier. And then but also thinking about that whole system around it. So when are children getting those first play experiences how are they getting to these play spaces um and then there is this kind of society thing about the value of play. So when we talk about risk sport lots of sports are riskier than risky play right so rugby for example is a sport which is objectively riskier than play and yet as a society if somebody says oh my child's joined the rugby club we think oh yes isn't that great wonderful that this child is playing in a rugby team we don't think oh they're going to get injured but because we don't value play in the same way we immediately go to oh got to keep injury low low low mustn't let them get hurt. So there's also a kind of messaging thing there I think around what the value of play is and why it matters and why it's okay for kids to take risks when they play and what are they going to learn when they do so because I think for some of these parents that we're working with they feel this sense of responsibility about play that they maybe don't feel when they take their child to somewhere where another adult looks after and organises what it is they're doing. It's a sense of responsibility that this is on me that happens with play. So I think there's a whole messaging thing there that I think you know that you know I try and contribute to and lots and lots of other people are contributing to in terms of play matters. Play is really really important for children and we need to value it as a society and understand why kids need those opportunities to take risks in their play.

SPEAKER_00 39:53

All of the guests that we've had on play attention we're we're all speaking to this same need for this it's almost like a rebrand the idea of play it suddenly becomes this you know frivolity but you you've talked there about open-ended non-prescriptive and that's definitely the design approach that Richter Spilger to take when they're designing their equipment I mean Julian Richter Sr. who was one of the founder partners within the company he talks about as much play value as possible as much safety as necessary within the equipment and then at Timberplay it's very much about well how do we also extend that into the landscape that's why landscape architects are within the design team rather than just looking at things on a kind of CAD plan basis. It's about how do we respond to the environments that already exist how do we maximize that challenge in that play that already exists but I think what's really pertinent is when you started talking about how the the Fearless play project came together it was about those conversations it was where you two saw the bridge between the work that you already did. And I think these bridges between talking to the the planners or the urban designers or the policymakers or the strategists or the mental health teams or it's these conversations that are so much wider because play is fundamentally an essential part of all of our lives.

SPEAKER_02 41:20

We all benefit so with this pilot project you're at a point now where you're publishing the results are you are you ready to sort of tell the world your results of your work or we've finished everything and we have all the data we're analyzing the data hopefully yeah over the next couple of months we'll have a paper that that will be ready to to share with the world um but we haven't yeah we haven't quite got it finished off yet okay what what would you like to see this pilot then go on to become so this is a seed of some really great thinking you've you've clearly got some you know really clear results from it and a an understanding and a learning what would you like to see the next steps of this of this pilot be?

SPEAKER_00 42:08

Where where do you want to take it next Sarah Sarah Louise?

SPEAKER_03 42:11

I would like more more families to be able to access it to be honest um we'd like to make it briefer and cheaper and more accessible um I had a conversation with a couple of mums who said I had no idea that there could be support for someone like me who finds play difficult because it's just play but actually through this process I've realised that it didn't stay in the playground what I learnt about my emotions and my relationship with my child I first experienced in the play space but it's transformed how I interact in my relationships. I've asked for some work changes um medical appointments went different differently it didn't stay in the play space and that is why we're wired to play because we process our emotions we grow in that moment um but I would love people to have access to that so it's just continuing to think creative really about how we can fund that and how we can make that happen and we can plug the gap for these families that can't access beautiful play spaces because of the intense anxiety that it gives them and and I think it's more frequent than we might know of at this point.

SPEAKER_02 43:14

Yeah and I think for me similarly so I have a PhD student called Brooke Oliver who's just approaching the end of her PhD and she's been doing some work just talking to parents about the experience of feeling this kind of anxiety and where they look to for support, what kind of support they would want she's still finishing kind of wrapping that up but some of the early findings from that suggest that parents similarly want that sort of graduated approach. So you know going to see Sarah Louise and doing you know one to one sort of sessions is quite high up that that ladder. And not all parents will need that. We want to make sure the parents who get there have access to it. Some parents will have kind of lower level anxiety It will be a little bit annoying, be getting in the way a little bit, but probably doesn't need that intensive support. So I think one of the exciting things for us is to think about how we can take some of what we've learned from working with these parents and translate it into things which might be a bit more accessible for people who are kind of lower down in the anxiety sort of threshold. Um, to try and turn it into kind of things that people could could pick up and apply to help them manage anxiety in such those situations. Maybe something that ends up on some signs in some play areas, just as signals or as cues to help parents manage. But that's not a straightforward thing to do because Act is a complex therapeutic approach. So we need to think about how we can, what have we learned from this that we could realistically make accessible to people so it reaches a broader range of people and people who who wouldn't necessarily be at that level where they would be needing that level of support. So it's lots for us to talk about and work out where we go from here. But for both of us, the motivation is that that we know that anxiety is getting in the way. Yeah. So what can we do with what we know now from doing this project to try and help more parents manage their anxiety better?

SPEAKER_00 45:14

And if there was a magic wand where you could maybe make some changes to where the perceived barriers might be to making the, you know, because if there was amazing funding, if there was a real kind of drive for this, then then this would be a a kind of easy win, wouldn't it? So so where, you know, if you could, I'm giving you the gift of being able to make some really big changes here, Helen. Where where would those changes be? What would be the steps that you would take to make this a much more easy transition to get this sort of help and this work out there?

SPEAKER_02 45:51

Am I allowed to wave it more than once, or do I have to pick one thing?

SPEAKER_00 45:53

You wave it as much as you like.

SPEAKER_02 45:55

Wave as many times as I like. Amazing. Okay. So I would like interesting play areas accessible for everybody and places for children and families to play together. And I would also like the value of play to be appreciated across society so that parents can really see the value in it, which I think in itself will help manage some of the anxiety because when you value something more, you're more willing to manage some of those emotions. And I would like parents to have somewhere that they know that they can go to get what they feel is reliable, informed, sensitive support when they think, ah, other parents are okay with this, and and I just can't do it. And that means that I'm avoiding doing stuff with my child or stopping my child from doing something. When you have that feeling of like, oh, I just don't feel comfortable with this, but that you're worrying about it, to just have somewhere that you can easily access to get some support, to overcome that so it doesn't become something which goes on and on for years and years and years, they would be my three things, I think.

SPEAKER_00 47:04

Sarah, we're gifting you the wand now.

SPEAKER_03 47:07

If I had the wand, um I think it's really essential to remember that as parents we can only take our children as far as we've been ourselves. And if we haven't had the opportunity to feel safe in our own bodies and minds and overcome our anxiety and step out of um the productivity loop we find ourselves in to enjoy play, play isn't going to happen as much as we'd like it to. We've never lived in a more uncertain time in terms of society. There's a lot of anxiety, and as AI continues to soldier on, being able to access open outdoor spaces as part of school would be great. But outside of that, for for women and and men to be able to access space where they can learn how to regulate themselves through movement, through nature, through therapy if they need it, I think that if I had a magic wand, I'd create a space for that. So I think the people say that knitting and sewing is not no longer passed down in the same way, but I do think in years to come it might be that accessing outdoor spaces, putting up potent, lighting a fire, knowing how to climb a tree, they aren't going to be passed down. So I think creating spaces where we continue to engage with the nature in the outdoor spaces would be really helpful if I had a magic wand.

SPEAKER_00 48:19

So with that in mind, I'm gonna say thank you so much for your time today. Thank you, Professor Helen Dodd, Dr. Sarah Louise Hurst. You have been you've been really helpful for us understanding the work that you've done, and it's great to hear about the work that you're doing, championing. Please keep in touch, we want to know about the next steps, and um, it'd be great to talk again. But thank you for your time today.