Love Outdoor Play?

[DanielRavenEllison]

On Tuesday we are launching a campaign and it would be great to have your support and to hear your thoughts on it.

The manifesto is simply:

"Having the freedom to play outdoors improves the well-being of children and their communities.

Together, we are building a visible community to support reasonably safe exploration, adventure and play.

Wherever you see a Love Outdoor Play sticker or symbol, you?ll find people who welcome play and are looking out for young people."

We are crowd funding stickers which can be put into windows.. visibly showing support for outdoor play.

Like the idea or not?

We are at www.loveoutdoorplay.net

Don;t really understand it yet...

Still don;t get it I'm afraid. Who are 'crowd'? Where does the sticker money go?

I don't get it either.

I don't get it either exactly what the stickers are doing, what is the project going to do? Is it just to encourage parents to take their kids outside or are you offering more opertunities for outside play, new playareas or something??? But I'm sure it's good, outside play is v important and in some areas I think it would be good just to make people aware of the facilities nearby such as my borough alot of people live in flats, dont know hardly anyone with a garden so we need to know and use the local parks and outside facilities which are provided in the community. Is that the kind of thing you are focusing on?

We are concerned that not enough children are allowed to play outdoors. Outdoor play is really important for physical and mental health and also creates opportunities for children to develop new skills. I am sure you will have seen one of the near weekly news items about this problem.

Judging levels of safety for children to play outdoors is really important (age of children, what they are like and your local geographies all come into this) but currently the potential costs are all too often seen to outweigh the benefits.

Another issue that came up in recent Play England research is that:

• 37% parents are concerned they will be judged by their neighbours if they let their children play out unsupervised

• 28% of children say that, when they are playing, adults tend to think they?re up to no good

• 55% of parents worry that the noise of their children playing outside will upset their neighbours

We are asking people to take a very simple action. Make or get a Love Outdoor Play sticker and put it up where you live or work. By putting a sticker up you not only show that you support outdoor play but can start a conversation about how play can be improved for children where you live.

Part of this is definitely about creation of reasonably safe places for children to play.

In terms of the crowd funding that's all explained here: loveoutdoorplay.net/stickers/get-stickers/

Does that make more sense?

"- 37% parents are concerned they will be judged by their neighbours if they let their children play out unsupervised"

Out of interest, at what age do you feel its ok to let a child pay out unsupervised?

My neighbours let their kids play out unsupervised and I DO judge them. We live about four houses away from a very very busy dual carriageway with no barriers between path and road.

I'm all for outdoor play but in appropriate places with an adult in hearing distance (not helicoptering but around).

My DS loves to play outside and he definately benefits from it.

I think that all too often the conversation gets shut down because of generalising.. This is why I said about local geographies and individual children making a big difference. One street may be good to play on and another not.. the same street may be suitable for one kid but not another.

Where I live I am more than happy for my 7-year-old to explore up and down the path on our side of the road and to take advantage of the bushy alley to the back. I am worried about the road because cars park on both sides and unless you are tall enough to look over the cars it is dangerous to cross. In another year or so he should be able to make it to the local park with a friend or two. We will have to see how he and our area changes over that time.