[Designing Modern Childhoods: History, Space, and the Material Culture

of Children; An International Reader. Marta Gutman and Ning de

Coninck-Smith, editors. Rutgers University Press, 2007.]

This statement encapsulates the paradox of the modern discourse of

play. Enlightened societies take up the obligation to provide
children with the means of play, yet children do not posses play as
their right, as it is subjected, just like education, to the social and

Chapter 8

political designs of others. The adventure playground movement,

the subject of this chapter, sought to transcend this contradiction by

Adventure Playgrounds and Postwar Reconstruction

constituting play practices that appeared to be operating from the

inside of the subject, from the childs own free will. It intended to

Roy Kozlovsky

enhance and encourage children's own play rather than restrict or

shape it from without. Yet this permissive approach was not aimed

The history of the playground is marked by an irresolvable

to liberate play from being an instrument of policy, but rather the

contradiction: on the one hand, modernity has conceptualized play

opposite, to intensify the effectiveness of policy.

as a biologically inherited drive that is spontaneous, pleasurable,

Adventure playgrounds were promoted in England after World War

and free. It valorized the subjective experience of play as an

II as the playground for the future, in an explicit critique of the

attribute of the autonomous, individual self. On the other hand,

conventional playground with its four Ss: the swing, seesaw,

modern societies began to rationalize and shape children's play from

sandbox, and slide. An adventure playground has no readymade

the outside to advance social, educational, and political goals. Thus

play equipment and no predetermined agenda for what should take

playgrounds are very much about censoring and restricting types of

place in it. Children introduce content and meaning to the

play deemed undesirable and displacing them from places deemed

playground through their own action. Whereas the conventional

dangerous or corrupting, such as the street. This contradiction is

playground operates by inciting kinetic modes of pleasure, the

embedded in the 1959 Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which

adventure playground engages the child through a qualitatively

enshrined play as a universal right of the individual and, at the same

different kind of gratification. It induces the pleasure of

time, defined it as an instrument of social policy: The child shall

experimenting, making, and destroying. Yet while the conventional

have full opportunity for play and recreation, which should be

playground is designed to function without adult intervention, the

directed to the same purpose as education; society and the public

adventure playground is predicated on the presence of a play leader

authorities shall endeavour to promote the enjoyment of this right.

who administers the use of tools and materials and guides the

behavior of children to maintain safety and promote cooperation

Foucault the assumption that any social practice involves a relation

among them. Thus, while advocates claimed that play activity must

of power.6 In the case of the playground, power does not operate by

grow from inside and never be directed from outside,2 this type of

dominating or disciplining subjects who were previously free, but

playground required professional guidance, since children had to be

rather by activating subjects and making them aspire to be free. The

taught how to play and become autonomous and free.

point is to examine what kind of subjects and truths this type of

Promoters of adventure playgrounds heralded them as being more

power produces.

appropriate to the true nature of children and their play, as well as

Through the examination of play as a strategy of power, I argue that

providing a more pleasurable and meaningful experience than the

the adventure playground corresponds with what the sociologist

traditional playground, which they portrayed as boring and sterile.

Nikolas Rose identified as the shift from the contractual model of

Although its adherents portray the adventure playground as

citizenship to one that stresses the subjective aspects of citizenship.

radically different from the traditional playground, its critics tend to

In Governing the Soul (1990), Rose claimed that during the World

flatten the differences between them. Galen Cranz, a sociologist

War II, Citizenship . . . acquired a subjective form. From this point

who studied the history of park and playground design in the United

forth, winning the war, and winning the peace, required the active

States, argued that the two kinds of playgrounds perform the same

engagement of the civilian in the social and political process, a

ideological function, that of social control. According to her, both

shaping of wills, conscience, and aspirations, to forge social

playgrounds mask class inequalities and enforce social stereotypes

solidarity and individual responsibilities in the name of citizenship

by organizing the subjects of a politically weaker class in the

and democracy.7 Rose showed that this mode of power operated by

supposedly neutral biological category of age.4 David Cohen, a

studying, measuring, and governing the interiority of the population,

psychologist,

the

constituting a self-regulated, self-improving society made of

instrumentalization of play for social or educational goals. Cohen

individuals who internalized the obligation to be free. The adventure

argued that play ought to be promoted because it is pleasurable, not

playground demonstrates how this new form of citizenship

because it is useful.5 These positions frame play policies in Marxist

operated: it made the interiority of children observable and

terms as social control or in Weberian terms as the rationalization of

governable precisely because free play was conceptualized as a

pleasure. They presuppose that there is a prior condition in which

subjective realm of freedom requiring the participation of

play or subjects are free. Whereas these critics equate power with

consenting, active subjects.

criticized

the

adventure

playground

as

domination and compulsion, this chapter takes from Michel

3

Yet postwar play policy had a complementary symbolic dimension

Srensen to design a junk playground, as these playgrounds were

that accounted for its more unusual aspects, such as the

initially named, for the Emdrupvnge housing estate at the outskirts

legitimization of acts of destruction, the appropriation of junk and

of Copenhagen.

waste as desirable play materials, and the practice of establishing

That the idea came out of a landscape discourse rather than a

adventure playgrounds on bombed sites. This last feature is

pedagogical or psychological one marks the beginning of the

incompatible with our contemporary belief that childhood ought to

involvement of landscape architects in the design of playgrounds.

be sheltered from the violence and destruction of war. To account

This development had a contradictory influence on the form, layout,

for the interplay between play as a social technology and as a

and content of the playground. On the one hand, the impulse of the

narrative of reconstruction, I will examine the historical

modernist designer was to endow the playground with the aesthetics

development of this institution, from its Danish origins to its

of abstraction, as was the case with the artist Isamu Noguchi and the

dissemination into the English context of reconstruction.

architect Aldo van Eyck.9 This inclination toward the abstract and
the elementary grew out of the idealism of Friedrich Froebel, who

Beginnings: The Danish Junk Playground

offered children toys with simple geometrical forms that represented

a harmonic, perfect image of the world. But it also interpreted the

The Danish landscape architect Carl Theodor Srensen first

playground as a landscape, making art into a useful part of everyday

suggested the concept of the adventure playground in Park Policy

life.

(1931). Following his observations of children at play in

On the other hand, designers inclined toward functionalism, such as

construction sites and junkyards, Srensen proposed to enclose a

Srensen, sought to constitute the design of the playground upon the

space where children would be permitted to play in ways otherwise

analysis of play activity rather than upon formal or compositional

prohibited to them: Perhaps we should try to set up waste material

concerns. If the modernist imperative was to make play

playgrounds in suitable large areas where children would be able to

environments imaginative, it followed that the imagination at

play with old cars, boxes, and timber. It is possible there would have

play should be that of the child, not that of the architect. This

to be some supervision to prevent children fighting too wildly and to

understanding was in accord with the pragmatism of John Dewey,

lessen the chances of injury but it is likely that such supervision will

who privileged the childs present inclinations over an abstract

not be necessary. The idea was first tested in 1943, during the

conception of what he or she should be in the future, and valued

German occupation. The architect Dan Fink commissioned

5

learning through experience over repetitive performance of

to change its name to adventure playground precisely because of the

predetermined activities imposed from without.10

disruptive and degrading connotation of junk, especially after her

Srensen's original scheme employed abstract and symbolic forms

experience in launching the Clydesdale playground in 1949. The

that represented the basic elements of the Danish rural landscape

process was delayed for three years because of the intense

the beach, the meadow, and the grove. Yet childrens activities

opposition of neighbors who equated junk with hooliganism.13

inside the playground's premises did not correspond with the artistic

Although Srensens initial proposal did not require an adult play

status of the playground as a landscape. Hence Srensens

supervisor, the Workers Co-operative Housing Association

admission that of all the things I have helped to realize, the junk

employed one as part of its housing policy. This modification of the

playground is the ugliest; yet for me it is the best and most beautiful

concept of the junk playground may be gleaned from the play

of my works.11 The anti-aesthetic position of the playground was

practices initiated by Bertelsen and Agnete Vesteregn, who replaced

most pronounced in its appropriation of junk as desirable play

him in 1947.14 Bertelsen stressed that the purpose of the leader was

material. Emdrups first play leader, John Bertelsen, coined the term

not to govern children from the outside and direct their building

junkology to describe the activity of children. He defined it as the

activity toward a useful goal, but rather to act from within, by

inversion of social values where all pedagogical and occupational

allowing them to pursue their own projects. He argued that the

ideas were quickly turned upside down, becoming junkology.12

initiative must come from the children themselves. . . . I cannot, and

While Bertelsen appraised the creations of children, their towers,

indeed will not, teach the children anything.15 The hands-off

caves, and huts as evidence of a primordial human instinct of

approach had both a social and a political significance. First,

making and inhabiting shelters, akin to nesting, he also represented

children were allowed to play without intervention, so their activity

their work as a critical recreation of the world outside the

could come under observation as a way of gaining insight into the

playground. Emdrup may be seen as the realization of Dada

mind of the child and his various conflicts.16 Assuming that

aesthetics, in which the playful and collective reassembling of the

children had an emotional interiority points to the role of this

leftovers of a machine civilization presented an alternative

playground as part of welfare housing policy. Bertelsen claimed that

conception of dwelling, where the unmediated act of building is

material differences between economically self-sufficient tenants

seen as a direct expression of the values and desires of the subjects.

and those living on welfare had less impact on children's well-being

Yet the junk aesthetic was controversial, and the promoter of the

than differences in the emotional investment of parents. The

playground in England, Lady Allen of Hurtwood, found it necessary

playground provided these children what their homes appeared to be

lacking,

mainly

an

emotionally

supportive

and

nurturing

opposite. Children should not remain in this destructive state; they

environment.

need help to be brought out of it.18 Each of these strategies of

The second purpose of relinquishing authority was to foster

administering play had a corresponding architectural expression.

childrens self-responsibility and promote social skills such as

Bertelsens playground was nomadic, while Vesteregns was

resolving conflicts peacefully. The promotion of democratic values

sedentary, with permanent structures added to accommodate

through play coincided with the crystallization of a new educational

organized activities such as painting, clay modeling, and

program, which, to use the words of the progressive pedagogue

printmaking. Yet despite these differences, both attempted to

Inger Merete Nordentoft from the last months of the war, sought to

advance social policies by acting upon childrens interiority. The

make children into democratic citizens, humans who can think

subsequent history of the junk playground in England reaffirms this

independently, can be responsible and capable of showing tolerance

claim, while demonstrating the flexibility of the concept and its

towards others and have the courage and firmness to defend their

adaptability to local and historical needs.

17

own convictions.

The use of anti-authoritarian methods was

understood to be a challenge to the occupiers Fascist ideology. At

The English Adventure Playground

the same time, pedagogues were alarmed that children became overidentified with the Resistance and its legitimization of violence and

The Danish experiment might have remained a local curiosity had it

disobedience, which threatened to disrupt the conceptual separation

not come under the attention of Allen, who identified with its ethos

of childhood from adult life. The permissive atmosphere in the

and became its ceaseless promoter. Like Srensen, she was a

playground provided a safe and creative simulation of lawlessness,

landscape architect, yet her influential role was more dependent on

where children could regain the trust in society through their

her social status and organizational skills in the voluntary sector

engagement with a play leader who acted as their advocate and took

than her professional authority. During World War II, Allen became

their side.

involved in child-centered causes, most notably the campaign to

Vesteregn advanced play practices that introduced children into a

reform the institutional care of orphans and abandoned children,

more stable, rule-driven society. Making an implicit critique of her

whom Allen defined as"children deprived of a normal home life."19

predecessor, she argued that the goal of an adventure playground

Her advocacy led to the Curtis Commission and the 1948 Children

was not "to make a mess out of everything, ruin things, fight, swear,

Act. This act endowed children with subjective rights, such as the

use rough language or be anti-social. The purpose must be quite the

right to happiness and a loving, supportive family environment.

10

After the war, Allen represented England at international

conferences that assessed the effects of the war on children. This
activity took place between the end of World War II and the
beginning of the Cold War, an interim period marked by
internationalism and an aversion to violence and nationalism in
Europe. Allen, who was associated with the antiwar movement
through her husband Clifford Allen, the leader of the Independent
Labour Party and a conscientious objector during World War I,
advanced the antiwar cause by constituting children as a separate,
vulnerable group that transcended divisions of class, nation, or
race.20 She promoted the establishment of the World Organization
for Early Childhood Education (1948) and served as its founding
president.
In 1946, as part of her international and pacifistic effort to constitute
early child education as the best way of creating peace-loving
citizens, Allen was taken to visit Emdrup. In her words, she was
completely swept off her feet.21 Allen began to promote the idea in
lectures, pamphlets, conferences, and most influentially in an essay
she published in the Picture Post in 1946. The abundantly illustrated
essay galvanized the English public by showing how the Danish
model could be used for postwar reconstruction (Figure 8.1).
The essay began with a critique of the conventional playground,
arguing that it failed to attract children and remove them from the
street. Allen claimed that this failure was literally a matter of life
and death:

11

Figure 8.1: War Games: Photo taken by Francis Reiss to illustrate Lady Allen of
Hurtwoods essay in Picture Post, November 16, 1946.

Juvenile delinquency and the death of young people in road

accidents both arise, in part at least, from the inadequate and
unimaginative manner in which local authorities try to meet the
need for creative play. . . . The best the Borough Engineer can
do is to level the ground, surface it with asphalt, and equip it
with expensive mechanical swings and slides. His paradise is a
place of utter boredom for the children, and it is little wonder
that they prefer the dumps of rough wood and piles of bricks
and rubbish of the bombed sites, or the dangers and
excitements of the traffic.22
12

articles, and committees. A five-day conference in 1948, sponsored

Allen presented Emdrup as a revolutionary playground that could

by the Cambridge House University Settlement, examined the first

resolve this crisis. The demand for a more creative and intensive

two experimental junk playgrounds, Camberwell and Morden,

play experience reflected the wartime anxiety that the nation's

which had been in operation for less than a year. Junk playgrounds

children, schooled in war and destruction, had become insensitive to

received extensive press coverage, demonstrating that their visibility

the amenities of playgrounds and parks. Alongside its preventive

was in inverse proportion to their quantity. This visibility was not

functions, Allen stressed the role of the playground in fostering a

accidental. The Lollard adventure playground was intentionally

democratic community. This goal was advanced not only by

sited near the Houses of Parliament. Allen, who chaired the

providing children with the responsibility for operating the

playground committee, intended it to be a demonstration playground

playground by themselves but also by designing it to appeal to all

for visiting members of Parliament (Figure 8.2).23

children irrespective of gender or age. Her pragmatic reason for this

inclusive approach was that working-class children were often
entrusted with the care of their younger siblings and could not play
in the playing fields and playgrounds that catered to a particular age
and gender group. Creating a variety of play opportunities allowed
all children to participate in a play community.
Although Allen provided the impetus for bringing the idea to
England, adventure playgrounds were promoted and operated by a
coalition of local, national, and international organizations. The first
playgrounds at Camberwell (1948) and Clydesdale (initiated in
1949, opened in 1952) were operated with the aid of the
International Voluntary Service for Peace. Other sponsors included

Figure 8.2: The Lollard adventure playground on the site of a bombed school. The
House of Parliament can be seen across the river.

the University Settlement movement, Save the Children Fund, local

From London the playground spread to other cities such as

councils, and the National Under Fourteens Council.

Liverpool, Hull, Coventry, Leicester, Leeds, and Bristol, where they

In the period after the war, children's play with junk became

were opened in blighted or blitzed neighborhoods as a component of

important enough to be the subject of conferences, newspaper

urban renewal. They were also built in the new towns surrounding

13

14

London, most notably Crawly and Welwyn, where they were

principles. The plan dealt extensively with the place of the child in

integrated

the city by dividing the metropolis into self-sufficient neighborhood

into

Hertfordshires

progressive,

child-centered

units organized around the school and the playground.25 Allen

educational infrastructure.

advanced the more modest suggestion that reconstruction ought to

be incremental and pragmatic. Yet her truly radical proposition was

Playgrounds on Bombed Sites

that reconstruction should be carried out with the participation of

What differentiated Allens presentation from the Danish precedent
was her suggestion that these playgrounds be built on bombed sites.
Following her essay, which was titled Why Not Use Our Bombed
Sites Like This?, the first junk playground in England was built on
the site of a bombed church in Camberwell, and the third was
opened on a destroyed residential property on Clydesdale Road,
Paddington (Figures 8.3). Likewise, the Lollard Adventure

the population. Adventure playgrounds were to be developed out of

local initiatives by parents and were to be built by children
themselves with the help of voluntary organizations. Playgrounds
operated as independent associations that were headed by
committees, whose members included residents, pedagogues, social
workers, local politicians and, in some cases, members of the local
clergy.

Playground (19551960) was built on the site of a bombed school,

and was informally known as the ruins. At the end of the 1950s
most of the ten playgrounds operating in London on bombed sites
were closed when the properties were returned to their owners for
redevelopment.
From the perspective of urban reconstruction, the temporary
conversion of bombed sites into playgrounds was part of a broader
debate about how to rebuild London, as well as to plan for the return
of more than a million evacuated children.24 This policy went
against the grain of the dominant planning ideology, epitomized by
Patrick

Abercrombies

1943

County

of

London

Plan.

Figure 8.3: The Clydesdale Playground, 1952

Abercrombies proposal conceived the blitz as an unprecedented

opportunity to rebuild London according to rational, functionalist
15

16

Such a model for reconstruction reflects to a unique historical

child away from the tolerance and approval of that destruction

moment when English planners experimented with grass-roots

which is associated with the war. The child of nine or ten makes few

democratic planning, most notably the 1946 Middlesbrough

moral judgments. . . . It lies in our power to assist him in choosing

rehabilitation plan. In The Middlesbrough Experiment: Planning

what is socially desirable and morally right.27 Photographic

from Within, the planner Max Lock argued that a participatory

representations of Camberwell stressed the constructive and

planning process would facilitate the acceptance of the plan because

cathartic aspect of play on bombed sites. The caption describes the

citizens, including children, were involved in the process. He also

children as postwar builders providing a metaphor for

stated that the plan would meet the citizens personal and social

reconstruction as a redeeming act (Figure 8.4). Why then was it

needs such as an outlet for leadership, for creative action, and for

deemed desirable to promote children's play on the ruins of their

the satisfaction of the deep-lying desire for significance, dignity,

neighborhoods?

and freedom. For in supplying such needs, may we not be

approaching the heart of the post-war problemthe problem of
minimising the occasion for the exercise of the totalitarian spirit
which arises wherever lives are frustrated?26
Lock's statement demonstrates that reconstruction assumed a
psychological and civic dimension beyond that of repairing material
damage. Participation has a preventive dimension, as an antidote to
totalitarianism as a form of political delinquency. In a similar
fashion, the adventure playground was aimed at promoting an active
and egalitarian mode of citizenship through the activity of play, as
an antidote to collective and individual misconduct. George Burden,
the chairman of the Camberwell playground committee and a
psychiatric social worker at King's College Hospital, explained the

Figure 8.4: Camberwell Junk playground on the site of a bombed church. Times
Educational Supplement, 5 June 1948.

rationale of building playgrounds on sites of destruction and its

relation to citizenship and delinquency: Playgrounds such as ours
set in a district which has suffered much during the war can lead a
17

18

Play, Citizenship, and Violence

criminology conceived the criminal act as the result of the subjects

rational choice and sought to deter it though punishment. Biological

In her article, Allen stressed the preventive function of the

playground as an antidote to juvenile delinquency. This is, of
course, not a new claim, as the prevention of delinquency was one
of the main reasons initially used to justify the playground. Yet the
adventure

playground

redefined

the

relationship

between

delinquency, democracy, and play. The new role of play may be

gleaned by comparing the adventure playground with its English
forerunner,

the

turn-of-the-century

play

center

movement.

University settlement houses sponsored play centers in slum areas

as child-saving schemes.28 The preventive strategy was to constitute
a separate space for play in order to dissociate working-class youth
from the street and its demoralizing influence. Its promoters hoped
to install in these children the discipline, character, and vocational
skills needed for a respectable way of life. With the enfranchisement
of the working classes and later of women, play practices were
modified to initiate these populations into a liberal mode of
democratic citizenship, encapsulated by the concept of fair play.29
Yet the play center functioned as a protosocial work institution. It
employed play superintendents to manage and direct children's
behavior, and more significantly, to observe children's play and
evaluate it in relation to the socioeconomic conditions at home, as a
method for revealing the underlying causes for poverty and crime.30
Play practices evolved with the growing influence of psychology in
understanding

and

treating

juvenile
19

delinquency.

Classical

criminology explained it in hereditary or organic defects. The new

psychology constituted criminal behavior as a mental illness and
sought its etiology in the subjects biographyin unresolved mental
conflicts occurring at critical stages of childhood development.31
From the 1920s onward, English social workers and psychologists
working in child guidance clinics began to observe and interpret the
unregulated play of children as a way of accessing and assessing the
psychic structure of the delinquent.
Moreover, with the advent of psychology, play assumed a
therapeutic function. Sigmund Freud argued that the pleasure of
play lies in repeating a traumatic experience and mastering it, often
by taking revenge upon a substitute.32 Play, as catharsis, was
believed to purge disruptive emotions and provide a safe outlet for
dangerous instincts. But the stakes for play were set higher, as
psychoanalysis

established

an

analogy

between

individual

aggression and collective political violence. Anna Freud observed

the effects of the war on children at the Hampstead War Nursery,
reflecting that: The real danger is not that the child, caught up all
innocently in the whirlpool of the war, will be shocked into illness.
The danger lies in the fact that the destruction raging in the outer
world may meet the very real aggressiveness, which rages in the
inside of the child.33 During World War II, children were no longer
conceived as innocent creatures traumatized by the violence of
history, but rather as subjects who might identify with it. This
20

pessimistic conception of the childs nature contributed to the

an account of this experiment in Branch Street: A Sociological

revision of the function of playground.

Study (1944).
Paneth dealt with extreme manifestations of aggression, including

Branch Street: Play as Catharsis

stealing, destruction of property, and sexual abuse of female

volunteers, by taking what she called the non-resistance line. The

The discourse that equates collective and individual manifestations

rationale behind her refusal to counter or punish violent behavior

of violence, and the idea that violence could be healed by returning

was twofold. Paneth interpreted the violence directed toward her as

to the scene of destruction, frame the work of the Austrian artist and

the transference of aggression that was addressed to others. Paneth

pedagogue Marie Paneth. During the blitz, Paneth managed play

assumed that the root cause of delinquency was in traumatic

centers in London's air raid shelters. I will examine her project at

childhood experiences brought about by overcrowding, poverty, and

length, since Paneth provided an exact blueprint for the adventure

punitive childrearing techniques. Observing rather than suppressing

playground, including the use of bombed sites and self-building.

destructive play provided the play leader an indirect access to the

Her proposal thus illuminates the strategy of power implicit in

secrets of the home. The refusal to condemn or judge worked as a

adventure playground practices, and positions it in relation to the

strategy for winning the children over and gaining their trust. She

war.

directed her staff, mostly conscientious objectors, to grant the

The immediate context for her work was wartime anxiety over the
34

children full license to act out their aggression until they become, in

This anxiety reflected

her words, sick of their own method, after which they could start

the need to single out those who did not identify with the collective

life at the new place with rule and order.35 The outcome was that

war effort, and the concern that the wartime weakening of parental

the children destroyed the play center, and her staff resigned. This

authority would inevitably lead to collapse in discipline and

failure brought about a revision of her methods; Paneth began to

morality. Childrens misbehavior became a problem in air raid

work with the children on their own turf and accepted their culture

shelters and evacuation centers, and the government was compelled

of street play, which appeared to diminish their aggression. This

to introduce play centers to keep the children occupied and content.

development led Paneth to conclude her account with a proposal for

From 1942 to 1943, Paneth managed a play center for so-called

a new type of play center, where such children would be provided

slum children who were too violent to be evacuated. She provided

with a bombed site to build their own play center and in the process

apparent increase in juvenile delinquency.

heal themselves: It is a damaged bit. Its very existence is a

21

22

reminder of damage and destruction. A sore spot and harmful to all

marginalized and damaged subjects could integrate themselves into

of us. But it could be put to good use even before the war is over. It

society. Paneth provided an alternative to both the contractual mode

seems to me it could have a very healing effect if one were allowed

of citizenship based on a rational model of the subject and the

36

to build upon the very spot where damage has been done. Paneth

model of citizenship based on group identification with the nation or

concluded her proposal by claiming that slum conditions as existing

the leader, as both models were brought into crisis by the mass

in Branch Street provided the recruiting grounds for fascism: We

appeal of fascism. Although children resisted any form of authority,

should also remember that the horde which Hitler employed to carry

they were patriotic and idolized Churchill. A critic from the Times

out his first acts of aggressionmurdering and torturing peaceful

Educational Supplement was satisfied with this proof of loyalty to

citizenswas recruited mainly from desperate Branch Street

the nation and doubted if Paneths principle of freedom and

youths, and that to help the individual means helping Democracy as

autonomy was desirable for the slum population; he assumed that

well.37

they wanted a leader whom they could follow.40 But such a

The wartime press extensively reviewed her publication, because

libidinal tie with the leader was precisely what Paneth was opposed

childrens violent behavior assumed a political significance during

to, as her goal was to make her subjects accept the responsibility of

this period of conflict. Paneths study coincided with the wartime

freedom rather than delegate it to others.

exposure of poverty in surveys such as the 1943 Our Towns report,

Branch Street illuminates the rationale behind the domestic activity

which made the welfare of children a national concern. Such

that often takes place in adventure playgrounds, such as making

surveys contributed to the formation of the wartime consensus that

fires, cooking midday meals, and dwelling in self-made homes and

the state should assume responsibility for providing welfare.38 Even

tree houses. Although these phenomena are all too readily explained

Churchill, who otherwise sought to postpone the discussion of

as an expression of the child's desire to imitate the world of adults,

social services until after the war, was nevertheless compelled to

Paneths work suggests the strategic purpose of defining the

define children's well-being as the foundation of any future social

playground as a second home. Examination of the daily reports

policy.39

submitted to playground committees on the play activities of

Branch Street is an account of using play to build communities on a

children, such as the one filed by Clydesdales play leader Peter

participatory model of creative citizenship. The act of building

Gutkind, demonstrates that the second home allowed the social

playgrounds on bombed sites established a correspondence between

worker to access the first, and to pin the pathologies of the slum

the narrative of reconstructing the nation and the self, by which

child in inadequate mothercraft: Today one little girl complained

23

24

bitterly about her mother who "has no love for me, she always kicks

considered negligent, at best. But in 1946 it was possible for Allen

me out." We might say that as they have no place to play inside in

to claim, even the hammer is an education. The need to intensify

the happy setting of a home they develop a certain antagonism

the subjective experience of play raised the problem of managing

against

then

risk. Allen convinced underwriters at Lloyds to insure the

By reenacting childhood in a permissive and

Clydesdale playground by reasoning that children who were deeply

supportive environment, children's attitude toward society and

engrossed in their own play were less likely to have accidents than

authority could be rescued from being a projection, a repetition of

those driven by boredom to use conventional playground equipment

their resistance and aggression toward the imperfect parenthood

in ways it was never intended.43 Allen critiqued functionalism as too

they experienced at home.

rigid to accommodate the agency and will of the user, claiming that

the

home
41

delinquency.

and

later

follows

boredom

and

imposing authority from without through the design of the play

Adventure Playground as Experiment in Anarchy

object inevitably led to resistance. The stress on context rather than

essence provides an alternative political reading of the experimental

Paneth employed the strategy of anarchy to allow violence to reach

nature of the adventure playground. If human behavior was not

catharsis. Yet Burden provided another conceptual foundation for

predetermined by human nature or laws of history, but derived

promoting anarchical play practices, noting that A bored child is a

empirically in relation to a situation, then everything became

menace to the community, especially if he has intelligence, for

depended on how the event was set up. The playground assumed the

42

boredom and inactivity almost inevitably lead to delinquency.

status of an experiment.

This strategy implies that social workers began to conceptualize

This led English critics in the 1960s to regard the adventure

delinquency as a contextual reaction to a given situation, an

playground as a political experiment. For Colin Ward, a left-wing

expression of a lack in the environment to engage and stimulate the

activist and urban theorist, the adventure playground provided a

subject. This approach is radically different in its empiricism from

demonstration of how subjects govern themselves when they are not

the stigmatic notion that delinquency has its roots in a social or

controlled, directed, or limited. To Ward, it provided an

individual pathological trait. It implied that play had to be more

experimental verification of the feasibility of an alternative social

intense and pleasurable than the transgressive experience of

order in which the absence of external rules and authority allows a

delinquency. In our present-day stress on safety, the idea of handing

more egalitarian and democratic order to arise organically out of the

children hammers and axes in public playgrounds would be

needs of the situation. The playground community was seen as a

25

26

free society in miniature, a demonstration that the demand for the

life."46 The role of the play leader is to be there, as his or her mere

free access to the means of production was realizable.44 This

presence provides the legitimization for children to act out their

discourse conveniently disregarded the crucial role of the play

desires, their imagination, and become active citizens. Their

leader in making anarchy work and the usefulness of anarchy in

employment of power is much more subtle, since it is predicated on

making the interiority of the subjects observable and known.

activating rather than limiting childrens agency. The ideal is never

to say no in order that the child would not identify the play leader

Play Practices: The Indirect Method of Governing Subjectivity

with parental or pedagogical authority, but would adopt the modern

project of self-betterment as its own.

The two practices of anarchy just discussedthe libertarian and the

psychoanalyticare rooted in different conceptions of human
nature and citizenship. However, they both illuminate the strategy of
power implicit in the adventure playground in which the internal
resources of subjects and their propensity for play are mobilized to
constitute their subjectivity. Jack Lambert, a seasoned English play
leader, provided a frank account of the use of indirect power to
pursue social aims: One of the great paradoxes in the art of playing
with children is that you know you are doing well when you are
doing nothing. Doing nothing is one of the hardest things of all. . . .
I felt I succeeded in Welwyn because by that time I had found ways
of building in controls without the children recognizing them as
such. They felt free.45

The significance of making play an object of observation and

knowledge rather than a subject of direct intervention is
demonstrated by Lamberts account of the techniques he developed
to deal with aggression. Lambert stated his dilemma in terms of how
to accommodate the inclusive and nonauthoritarian ethos of the
playground to the problem of rough kids who bully weaker children
and destroy their creative work. At first, Lambert expelled them
from the playground, after moralizing and reasoning failed. The act
of exclusion in itself produced resistance and retaliation, expressed
in the dramatic destruction of the playground, and it kept out those
who needed it the most. In the next playground he managed,
Lambert developed a technique for incorporating the lads, as he
called them, by insisting on addressing them as individuals, since

It is not that play leaders do nothing. In that case, they would be

redundant. In 1955, play leaders, meeting at a professional
conference, defined the adventure playground "as children, a site
and a play leader. The play leader makes all the difference. He is the
humanizing element, the person who brings the whole thing to
27

most kids need the gang identity to give them confidence to be

aggressive and violent.47 He then positioned them as helpers with
responsibility for managing playground activity. Another technique
was to adjust organized play to their interests. Lambert provided an
account of a rough group he was compelled expel from the
28

playground. He followed them home and observed their intense

Yet the adventure playgrounds democratic and participatory model

interest in a broken scooter they were unable to fix. He initiated a

of collectivity, as well as its pacifism, was rooted in a psychological

scooter club, where the lads salvaged and fixed discarded scooters.

notion of political citizenship. The policy of autonomous free play

This activity became the central attraction of the playground,

was predicated on the not-so-liberal notion that society has the right,

demonstrating that the openness of the playground to childrens

even the obligation, to know and govern the interiority of its

interests and what they find pleasurable constituted a productive

subjects, since social cohesion and stability were deemed dependant

strategy for allowing social services to penetrate even the most

on the emotional equilibrium of each individual member.. In this

alienated social strata. Inciting children to appropriate and master

respect, the adventure playground confirms Roses claim that the

space, to make it their ownto identify with it, because it would

welfare state governs subjects from the inside, by inducing them to

be theirs48was intended to attach children at risk to the social

change their everyday conduct to act as active citizens, ardent

body by providing them with a sense of ownership and agency.

consumers, enthusiastic employees, and loving parents, as if they

are realizing their own intimate desires.49 The playground was one

Conclusion
The analysis of the adventure playground as a strategy of power and
a narrative for reconstruction uncovers the contradictions of the

of these institutions where children were made into subjects,

precisely because in play they felt themselves to be autonomous and
free.

postwar welfare state. The playground was originally part of a

utopian project to reconstruct a peaceful and more stable postwar
society through policies and practices directed toward each
individual child, in his or her capacity as a future citizen. It was
predicated upon investing play with the capacity to heal society and
purge itself of the wartime manifestation of violence. Postwar
society was fascinated with the play of children in ruins and put
play on display as a metaphor for regeneration, all the while
affirming a tragic and mythical conception of violence as rooted in
human nature.
Figure 8.5: Crawley Adventure Playground, 1955.

29

30

Notes
Roode (Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, and Rotterdam: NAi Publishers,
2002), 6667.

. Principle 7, Declaration of the Rights of the Child, General Assembly

Resolution 1386 (XIV), UN doc A/4354 (1959).

10

. Dewey criticized Froebels use of geometry in education as the

imposition of a priori forms. He wrote that for Froebel, It is not enough
that the circle is a convenient way of grouping children. It must be used,
because it is a symbol of the collective life of mankind in general. John
Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: Free Press, 1966), 58.

. John Bertelsen, The Daily Round on a Junk Playground, Danish

Outlook 6.6 (1953): 690.

. In the 1960s, American public opinion was hostile to the conventional

playground, and newspapers described it as Neanderthal, hideous, or
disgraceful. Michael Gotkin, The Politics of Play, in Preserving Modern
Landscape Architecture, edited by Charles A. Birnbaum (Cambridge,
Mass.: Spacemaker Press, 1999), 64.

. Galen Cranz, The Politics of Park Design: A History of Urban Parks in

America (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982), 192.

11

. Carl Theodor Srensen, Junk Playgrounds, Danish Outlook 4.1 (1951):

314.

12

. Bertelsen, The Daily Round on a Junk Playground, 688.

13

. Petition to the Town Clerk from March 1950, "Clydesdale Road

Playground: correspondence and papers 19521956," CB 3/310, Public
Records Office [PRO hereafter], London.

. David Cohen, The Development of Play (New York: New York

University Press, 1987), 3233.

. I draw upon volume 1 of Michel Foucaults The History of Sexuality,

Volume 1: An Introduction (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), which
bears on the topic of conceptualizing liberated play as a confessional
strategy of subjectivization. I also build upon Foucaults essay The
Subject and Power, where he states that power, in distinction to violence,
is not about dominating or destroying others or taking away freedom, but
a way of acting upon one or more acting subjects by virtue of their acting
or being capable of action. Power is productive, it incites, it induces, it
seduces. See Michel Foucault, The Subject and Power, Power:
Essential Works of Foucault 19541984, vol. 3, edited by James D.
Faubion (London: Penguin, 2000), 341.

14

. Bertelsen and Vesteregn had been married to one another.

15

. John Bertelsen, Early Experience from Emdrup, in Adventure

Playground, edited by Arvid Bengtsson (New York, Praeger, 1972), 20.

16

. Bertelsen, Early Experience from Emdrup, 21, 19.

17

. Quoted in Ning de Coninck-Smith, Children, Play, and Democracy: A

Contribution to the Designing of Modern Danish Childhood 19431960,
paper presented at Stories for Children, Histories of Childhood,
Colloque International du GRAAT, Tours, France, November 2005, 6.
This statement had its English equivalent in the 1945 Labour Party
election manifesto: Above all, let us remember that the great purpose of
education is to give us individual citizens capable of thinking for
themselves. See F.W.S. Craig, ed., British General Election Manifestos
19001974 (London: Macmillan, 1975), 129.

. Nikolas Rose, Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self
(London: Routledge, 1990), 32.

18

. Coninck-Smith, Children, Play, and Democracy," 14.

. Lady Allen of Hurtwood, Planning for Play (London: Thames and

Hudson, 1968), 9.

19

. It is telling that Allen became aware of the problem upon encountering a

group of institutional children who never seemed to join the others in
the playground. The absence of play became a signifier for deprivation.
Marjory Allen and Mary Nicholson, Memoirs of an Uneducated Lady:
Lady Allen of Hurtwood (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975), 171.

. Noguchis unrealized Play Mountain (1933) established the

playground as a sculptural landscape. Van Eyck designed more than 700
playgrounds in Amsterdam from 1947 to 1978, using the formal
language of de Stijl. Gotkin, The Politics of Play, 62; Francis
Strauven, Wasted Pearls in the Fabric of the City, in Aldo van Eyck,
the Playgrounds and the City, edited by Liane Lefaivre and Ingeborg de
31

20

. In the aftermath of World War I, Save the Children Fund was established
as a challenge to the policy of blockading the defeated nations, on the
grounds that it had an irreversible effect on the health of children. Save the
32

Children sponsored the first English junk playground at Camberwell in

1948.

Timmins, the English welfare state was the intellectual product of the
settlement movement: William Beveridge, Clement Atlee, and Richard
Tawney all served at Toynbee Hall. Nicholas Timmins, The Five Giants:
A Biography of the Welfare State (London: HarperCollins, 1995), 12.

21

. Allen and Nicholson, Memoirs, 205. Emdrup validated Allen's earlier

thoughts about playground design. In 1938 Allen delivered a paper, "The
Future of Landscape Architecture, where she described a park in Wales
where children were allowed to dig and dwell. She posed it as the ideal
playground for children, as it made them "blissfully happy and
engrossingly occupied." Allen's child-centered conception of play was
advanced as part of her program to democratize the profession of
landscape architecture as a "national service, affecting the character of our
people and even our political democracy." MSS 121/HO/7/1/3, Modern
Records Centre [MRC hereafter], Coventry.

29

. Walter Wood, a barrister and play theoretician, stated, Women have not
the civic virtues of loyalty and surrender of self to a common cause. . . .
Civilisation however, is coming to require more and more the civic virtues
from women, and this is one reason why we should encourage team games
amongst adolescent girls. Walter D. Wood, Childrens Play and Its Place
in Education (London: Kegan Paul, 1915), 187.

30

. With the institution of the juvenile court system in 1907, the first
probation officers were recruited from play center workers. Kevin
Brehony, A Socially Civilizing Influence? Play and the Urban
Degenerate, Paedagogica Historia 39.1/2 (2003): 103.

22

. Lady Allen of Hurtwood, Why Not Use Our Bomb Sites Like This?
Picture Post, November 16, 1946, 2627.

23

31

24

32

. Allen disclosed in a memorandum that Lollard was "well placed for use
as a demonstration project, since it is within walking distance, across the
river, from the House of Parliament." Lollard Adventure Playground,
MSS 121/AP/3/5/14, MRC.
. The legislation for converting bombed sites into playgrounds was
initiated in 1944 by E. H. Keeling in response to the wartime increase in
child fatalities in road accidents. Childrens Playgrounds: Local
Authorities to Make Suitable Bombed Sites Available 19441948, HLG
51/905, PRO.

. Claire Valir, Psychoanalysis and Crime in Britain during the Inter-War

Years, in Selected Papers from the 1995 British Criminology Conference,
Loughborough, vol. 1, edited by Jon Vagg and Tim Newburn (September
1998), 67.
. Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (New York: Norton,
1989), 16.

33

. Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham, War and Children ([New York]:
Medical War Books, 1943), 24.

34

25

. The American sociologist Clarence Perry developed the concept of the

neighborhood unit in the 1920s to constitute self-sufficient communities,
in which the size and layout of residential development was determined by
the centrality of services catering to the family, especially the school.
English planners applied the concept in postwar new towns and housing
estates.

. The sociologist D. C. Marsh argued in retrospect that the statistical rise in

delinquency was caused by wartime intolerance toward minor infractions
of public order, rather than any real surge in criminal acts. D. C. Marsh,
The Changing Social Structure of England and Wales (London; Routledge
& Kegan Paul 1965), 257259.

35

. Marie Paneth, Branch Street: A Sociological Study (London: Allen &

Unwin, 1944), 35. Paneth was influenced by August Aichhorn, an
Austrian who introduced psychoanalysis into the institutional treatment of
delinquents. Aichhorn allowed his subjects to act out their aggressiveness
to the point of explosion, since when this point came, the aggression
changed its character. The outbreaks of rage against each other were no
longer genuine, but were acted out for our benefit. August Aichhorn,
Wayward Youth (London: Imago, 1951), 175.

26

. Max Lock, The Middlesbrough Experiment: Planning from Within, in

Architects Yearbook 2, edited by Jane Drew (London: Elek, 1947), 41.
Emphasis in the original.

27

. George Burden, The Junk Playground: An Educational Adjunct and an

Antidote to Delinquency, The Friend 1029 (December 3, 1948): 4.
28
. The university settlement movement provided an institutional framework
for the middle class to study the realities of urban poverty while offering
the working classes educational and cultural programs. According to
33

36

. Paneth, Branch Street, 120.

34

37

Ibid

38

. John Welshman, Evacuation, Hygiene, and Social Policy: The Our

Towns Report of 1943, Historical Journal 42.3 (1999), 806. Allen was a
member of the committee.

39

. Slum Life in Cities: Social Conditions Revealed by Evacuation, Times,

March 29, 1943, 5; Mr. Churchill on Post-War Policy: Four Years Plan
for Britain, Times, March 22, 1943, 5.

40

. Town Life at its Worst: Social Problems of the Immediate Future,

Times Educational Supplement, July 29, 1944, 362.

41

. Peter C. W. Gutkind, "Report to Clydesdale Road Playground

Committee," entry from May 13, 1952. MSS 121/AP/3/2/7, MRC.

42

. Burden, The Junk Playground, 4.

43

. Allen, Memoirs, 243.

44

. Colin Ward, Adventure Playground: A Parable of Anarchy, Anarchy 7

(September 1961): 194, 201 This issue was dedicated to the adventure
playground.

45

. Jack Lambert, Adventure Playgrounds: A Personal Account of a Playleaders Work as Told to Jenny Pearson (London: Jonathan Cape, 1974),
65.

46

. National Playing Fields Association, "Play Leadership on Adventure

Playgrounds," April 27, 1955. CB 1/67, PRO.

47

. Lambert, Adventure Playgrounds, 112.

48

. Lambert, Adventure Playgrounds, 56.

49

. Rose, Governing the Soul, 258.

35