“Look! This is a hiding place,” a 6 year old says pointing to a narrow opening. Two
small barefoot boys climb on top of a scale model of a tent and slide down. Four
girls join hands, move in a circle, sing and kick their feet. Two girls flop
down on the wavy chair and pretend to swim along its curves. A boy drags
benches into an alcove and starts telling jokes.
Where
is this? The Backyard? The playroom or playground? The museum? No, these
children are playing in stores: a fabric store, an outdoor recreation gear
store, a clothing store, and a bookstore.
Perhaps
as a child, you remember standing inside the hinged mirrors and closing them
around you to create your very own infinity box. Did you cruise the shoe department
looking for high-heels? Then sling a purse over your shoulder and clomp around?
In bookstores did you gallop up and down the long aisles between towering
bookshelves? Did you bounce on mattresses? Were the nuts and bolts coins and
treasure?
Adults typically
view stores as places to do errands and attend daily tasks. They buy groceries,
pick-up gardening supplies, take screens for repair, purchase books, and look
at furniture. For store owners, managers, and cashiers the store is a commercial
setting, designed to display and sell merchandise, answer customer questions,
and move them through check-out.
For
children, however, stores are natural places to play. Yes, there are some
stores like LEGO, Kapla blocks, and American Girl dolls designed for children
to play with and hopefully buy toys. On the other hand, as multi-sensory
environments full of props and intriguing spaces, stores offer attractive
possibilities for play. The spatial cues, fixtures, lighting, and objects that
entice adult shoppers are often interpreted differently by children. Furthermore, children are taken
along on innumerable shopping trips that involve lots of waiting. Children sit
in grocery carts while pushed up and down aisles; they hang around as a parent compares
products; and they wait some more while items are scanned and bagged. It’s not
surprising that children find play opportunities in stores.
What does this tell us about
children’s play?
While
found play experiences in stores are, admittedly, short play episodes, they
nevertheless possess key qualities of rich, authentic play. We see children
claim the space, fixtures, and props and direct their play in stores. With shelves
and racks of clothing, these settings surpass the box for costumes and
dress-up. Networks of pathways meander and intersect hinting of maps, roadways,
rivers, or escape routes. Aisles lead to racks loaded with multi-colored
clothing, bins are chock full of giant sponges, and low platforms are stacked
with rugs. Enclosed and semi-enclosed spaces are perfect for ducking into and hiding
in a quick game of hide-and-seek. Relatively movable fixtures like benches can
be dragged and arranged to serve as a stage or an obstacle course. Mirrors
punctuating the walls add special effects. Distinctive lighting spotlights the
action.
Children play where they find
themselves. While
stores afford many opportunities to play, they have few, if any, rules about
play. Adults are otherwise engaged or have simply not given thought to children
playing in the store. Left on their own and inspired by displays, clothing
racks, aisles, enclosures, and accumulations of merchandise,
children enter new
worlds, invent games, escape from imagined bandits, and fashion adventures. Imaginative
possibilities open as coiled hoses become snakes, bolts of cloth become mummies,
pillows are icebergs, and tents are slides.
In
store play, children come together with other children similarly expected to
wait. Playmates are siblings, friends, and, often, new acquaintances. Even in short
play episodes, issues about who can play, roles, and rules arise, are hashed
out, and resolved. Play is reconfigured with the departure of a child called by
a caregiver.
While perhaps
not obvious, learning as well as fun is part of these found play experiences in
stores. In negotiating play rules and spaces, children use social skills, solve
physical problems, interpret spatial cues, and test memory. They incorporate categories
of things displayed together into their play. They use vocabulary to name and
describe objects; they listen and speak in discussing rules, and are they likely
to read an occasional label and price tag.
What does children’s play in
stores suggest about places for play in museums?
Unwittingly hospitable to play, store settings offer clues about appealing spaces
for play and exploration in museums. It’s not that museums should create more
store-like environments or more store exhibits. Rather, museums may do
well to look at stores (and other settings) where children play spontaneously
to identify qualities that are often missing in spaces planned for play. Features and qualities that are present–and absent–in store settings are needed to
support children in directing play, using their imaginations, engaging in
open-ended activities, and problem solving.
Children
take charge. A
largely unscripted environment is a powerful companion for fashioning worlds
and concocting adventures. As children shape experiences by and for themselves,
their ideas, motivation, and competence are apparent. They
are masterful at taking advantage of features such as height, movability,
form, texture, and color to advance and extend their play.
Too much adult-driven design interferes with children discovering ways to rearrange,
recombine, and repurpose elements for their exploration and amusement. The flexibility
and movability of shelves,
rolling racks, carts, and benches that facilitate changing
displays also allow children to experiment with forms and modify
spaces in meaningful
ways–sometimes working together to manage bigger and bulkier items.
Imaginations
at play. When a
rack of clothes becomes a spaceship and the narrow space between two hanging jackets
becomes an arrow slit in a castle, we know children’s imaginations are alive
and lively. Simple, suggestive forms invite multiple interpretations and reflect
many opportunities in contrast to the overly-defined forms typical of many designed
play environments. Literal forms like trees, castles, and houses dictate the
meaning of a form, substituting a dominant idea for yet-to-be-discovered
possibilities.
Novelty unleashes
imaginations as does juxtaposition and complexity. Children’s imaginations are inspired
by unfamiliar objects and materials, enormous quantities, and unusual
combinations of objects typical of stores. Hundreds of light fixtures, towering racks of
jewelry, yards of chain, and an ocean of mattresses spark fresh ideas compared
to several of one thing or almost anything at home.
Engaging
in open-ended activities. In play, children are unlikely to give themselves a defined outcome,
seek rules from adults, or give themselves a test. Right answers are virtually
irrelevant in most types of play. Children have ideas that they are interested
in exploring and play suits their purposes. Play confers a kind of freedom to
experiment. In a setting like a store that is unconcerned with (and unintended
for) children’s play, children follow and negotiate their interests and ideas.
The “what
if” possibilities of store shelves bursting with books, pegboards loaded with whisks,
a wall of paint samples, and tables with bolts of fabric are unlimited. And so
are any spaces that are rich with information about the
world, open to changing and modifying through play, and limited by few rules.
Perhaps
this reflection suggests an opportunity beyond observing play and play
environments. Less than obvious settings and everyday places are sources of useful
information, lessons, and insights on delivering services, experiences, environments,
and interactions to museum visitors and communities. What places are truly
welcoming? Where do people feel in control? Where is customer service excellent? Where does inclusion and access feel authentic? Where are barriers
to participation low? In what settings are processes efficient, warm, and personal? How can we extend our curiosity and
awareness about what we care about that is done well and differently by others?
Related Museum Notes Posts
My favorite line: Too much adult-driven design interferes with children discovering ways to rearrange, recombine, and repurpose elements for their exploration and amusement.
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