RELEASE THE WOLVES

COLIN WARD „ WRITING IN 1978 / REPUBLISHED 1990»»»>

“Park and playground designers who usurp the creative capabilities of the very children who are intended to use their work by building play sculptures instead of providing the materials for children to make their own, or who have earnest conferences about the appropriate type of fencing to use, should pause and think about the implication of Joe Benjamin’s remark that ‘ideally there should be no fence; but when we reach that happy state we will have no need for adventure playgrounds.’ For the fenced-off child-ghetto sharpens the division between the worlds of adults and children, while Benjamin’s whole case is that we should share the same world. ‘No matter how we might consider play potential in our present and future designs, children will continue to interpret this in their own way. The point is that the streets, the local service station, the housing estate stairway, indeed anything our urban community offers, is part of the natural habitat of the child. Our problem is not to design streets, housing, a petrol station or shops that can lend themselves to play, but to educate society to accept children on a participating basis.’ This is why it was possible for Dennis Woods of North Carolina State University to deliver a paper with the title ‘Free the Children! Down with Playgrounds!’’