Adventure Playgrounds

Description:Danish landscape architects and town planners became interested in the concept of adventure playgrounds, also known as 'junk playgrounds', in the 1930s, after observing children using building sites and waste grounds to play in. The first official ‘junk playground’ was opened in Copenhagen in 1943.^{<small>1</small>} After the Second World War, British planners began to promote adventure playgrounds as part of strategies for urban regeneration, often using bombsites or pieces of undeveloped land. Lady Allen of Hurtwood was a major advocate of adventure playgrounds, believing that they should be planned with the involvement of the community they were intended for, and would provide spaces for groups of children to play together in a more unstructured way.^{<small>2</small>} Supporters of adventure playgrounds also displayed similar anxieties about juvenile delinquency as those shown by Norman Chamberlain and other leaders of the Organised Games scheme in Birmingham before the First World War, and it could be argued that adventure playgrounds performed the same kind of social control as traditional play areas, as play was directed by professional play leaders.^{<small>3</small>}

Birmingham City Council members investigated the possibility of providing adventure playgrounds in the city during the early 1950s. An article in the Birmingham Gazette in March 1950 reported that a proposal to clear bomb sites to create children’s playgrounds was to be discussed at the next meeting of the Accident Prevention Council, which was keen to stop children from playing in the streets.^{<small>4</small>} The Education Committee and Parks Committee were also working together to discuss the use of open spaces in the parks for children’s play following proposals for the Education Committee to accept financial responsibility for the provision and maintenance of children’s playgrounds. The Chief Education Officer suggested that the Parks Committee could alter with grass and trees the ground level of areas of parks to create a landscape where children could play ‘adventurous games’.^{<small>5</small>} The Education Committee visited a number of recreation grounds, as well as other pieces of land belonging to the Parks Department and open spaces under the care of both the Education Committee and the Estates Department,^{<small>6</small>} and a joint meeting was held at the end of September 1953. At this meeting the Parks Committee responded that it already had a policy to leave some areas of the city’s parks undeveloped as ‘letting off steam ground’ for children, including the space near the brook in Cannon Hill Park, and the dells at Cotteridge Park.^{<small>7</small>} The Parks Committee was not able to spend money on providing further areas of parks for adventure playgrounds, but agreed to lease land to the Education Committee for experimental adventure playground schemes, or to administer areas of land or playgrounds on behalf of the Education Committee.^{<small>8</small>} Minutes from a meeting of the Parks Committee in April 1955 reveal that the Education Department had run a pilot adventure playgrounds scheme between June and October 1954 with a voluntary group of teachers supervising the playground, later appointing a male play leader.^{<small>9</small>} There is also a reference in February 1958 to a meeting proposed to discuss the layout of adventure playgrounds.^{<small>10</small>} It is likely that Parks Committee minutes from the 1960s and 1970s provide a more detailed account of these kinds of initiatives.


<font color="#666633"><small>¹ Roy Kozlovsky, 'Adventure Playgrounds and Postwar Reconstruction' in Marta Gutman and Ning de Coninck-Smith (eds.), Designing Modern Childhoods: History, Space and the Material Culture of Children; An International Reader (New Brunswick and London, 2007)
² Kozlovsky, pp.10-16
³ Kozlovsky, pp.2-3
⁴ Birmingham Gazette (1 November 1950)
⁵ Report of Chief Education Officer on the provision of adventure playgrounds, 6 June 1953
[BA&H: BCC/Education Department Files/Box 17/8]
⁶ Report on visits to playgrounds by members of the Education Committee, 19 September 1953
[BA&H: BCC/Education Department Files/Box 17/8]
⁷ Meeting between representatives of the Education Committee and the Parks Committee, 24 September 1953 [BA&H: BCC/Education Department Files/Box 17/8]
⁸ Meeting between representatives of the Education Committee and the Parks Committee, 24 September 1953 [BA&H: BCC/Education Department Files/Box 17/8]
⁹ Birmingham City Council Parks Committee Minutes, Meeting 4 April 1955 [BA&H: BCC 1 BO/1/1/31]
¹⁰ Birmingham City Council Parks Committee Minutes, Meeting 3 February 1958 [BA&H: BCC 1 BO/1/1/34]</small></font>