Play Conditions: A Framework

MUSEUM NOTES

Jeanne Vergeront

Vergeront Museum Planning

Photo credit: Vergeront (WonderTrek)

Play Conditions are a bit like Robinsyard. Robinsyard, you ask? 

When my nephew Matthew was 4 years old, he carried a small rolled up piece of paper tucked into a yarn belt that he liked to wear. I asked him what had he drawn on the paper and he replied, “Robinsyard.” I knew he had a friend name Robin, but I didn’t know what a Syard was. So, I asked, “What’s a Syard?” Matthew replied, “I don’t know but Robin has one.” After some mulling about what a Syard might be, I guessed that it was Robin’s Yard. The precise meaning is not so critical. What is important is that: 

 Play conditions are like Robinsyard: It’s hard to explain what they are, but we have them. And play conditions have meaning in children’s lives. 

We may not have precise terms for play conditions, a shared vocabulary, or a taxonomy for them. (We don’t really have a definition of play, either.) We do, however, have a sense of when play conditions are just right: when children are engaged actively, deeply, and joyously in play—play that they direct and find enjoyable. That’s when play conditions are well tuned. Conversely, when interactions are few, focus and attention is brief, conflict is frequent, children’s affect is flat, and ambience is bland, play conditions are out-of-whack with the intentions for the experience, the space, and those children. 

Play doesn’t happen independently of the conditions surrounding it. Since we think, in general, very little about the conditions that encourage exploring, playing, and learning, we are hazy about just what they are and how to harness them. For about the last 10 years, I’ve been exploring the idea of play conditions in planning work, learning frameworks, and master plans. Currently, I am part of a team at WonderTrek Children’s Museum, an emerging museum in north central Minnesota, working with play conditions in a collaborative question-driven, iterative process that explores, documents, and shares insights from children in play-based settings. 

This work is giving shape to a framework that helps get at the complexity and simplicity of

Photocredit: Vergeront (MIA)

 play and play conditions. Starting with working definitions, this framework acknowledges related concepts, identifies a set of play conditions, and frames principles that tell us something about the nature of these play conditions. 

While the framework focuses on play conditions, it is relevant to shaping spaces and experiences in every kind of museum as well as encouraging inquiry and learning. In fact, museum planners, developers, designers, and educators often draw on qualities and varied conditions in creating exhibits, environments, and programs that engage visitors— but they may not be doing so intentionally nor focusing on play. 

Play and Play Conditions 

Exploring play conditions relies on having a shared understanding of play among staff, team, or partners. This can be challenging. Affected by age, setting, and who’s controlling it, play is not always easy to recognize. It is connected to exploration and learning which children seem to move between seamlessly. Definitions of play are abundant as well. One I am drawn to places the child at the center and works across varied contexts. Play is freely chosen, personally directed, and intrinsically motivated. 

Viewing play conditions as the qualities or variables of the physical and social environments that are likely to encourage (or discourage) and support children’s play accommodates this definition of play and others. It also recognizes that there can be conditions that interfere with play. 

Photo credit: Vergeront (CMOM)

Play conditions share some qualities with the concept of affordance, the features or property of an object that define its possible uses or how it can or should be used. A chair’s properties afford sitting or standing on it. An affordance provides strong cues about the operation of things. It is an actionable and discoverable possibility. In some design contexts like user-interface, an affordance prompts users to take specific actions. 

While play conditions may include affordances, they are not limited to physical features nor are they directive. More than 3-dimensional space, physical design, furniture, or arrangement, play condition’s qualities are also temporal, social, and affective. They tap into all senses, give cues, and suggest possibilities. Neither a recipe nor a formula, nor a way of scripting children’s play, play conditions are as open-ended as play itself. 

Seven Play Conditions 

An understanding of play conditions emerges from what research, child development, play theory and museum practices suggest will encourage and support children’s exploration, play, and learning in informal learning settings. Dimensions such as space, materials, relationships, and provocations, salient to different aspects of play, help in understanding play conditions. Observations, imagination, and intuition add to this knowledge, filling gaps and inviting us to think together. 

By separating and clustering these dimensions, we discover examples and possibilities, and begin to examine and manipulate play conditions in intentional and new ways. Seven play conditions are summarized below. Each is characterized by the general role it plays, its valued qualities, and a small sample of possibilities. 

• Image of the Child is about the child’s strengths and capabilities and means engaging children at their highest level of ability; and making their strengths and capabilities visible. 
• Valued qualities are: children’s curiosity, capabilities, social disposition, caring and empathy 
• Possibilities that support and reflect the child’s capabilities: choices for one child and different choices for different children; traces of children’s thinking, doing, and making; focus on shared interests, etc. 

• Context or Setting is about both physical and social space, ranging from macro to micro, where children can explore, play, and learn. 
• Valued qualities are: safe, welcoming and accessible settings 
• Possibilities for shaping settings: different scales, large and small spaces; light and sound; recognizable features; wayfinding clues; edges that define and differentiate areas, etc. 

•  Invitation to Explore is about arranging selected elements to provoke or encourage children to notice and wonder, explore ideas—without giving too much direction. 
• Valued qualities are: sparking curiosity; the child taking the experience where it needs to go; offering something worth noticing and discovering 
• Possibilities for encouraging exploration: something fascinating; questions incongruities; multiple provocations; a sound walk, etc. 

• Materials and Objects is about loose parts, tools, phenomena, art materials, digital media, etc. that give children agency and choice; encourage exploration and experimentation that is physical, social, emotional, cognitive, and linguistic; that generate new possibilities; and reveal new perspectives and insights about the world. 
• Valued qualities are materials that support children’s agency, promote noticing and wondering; change with use and generate new insights; work at multiple ages
• Possibilities for materials: engage some and sometimes all the senses; are real stuff; can be carried, lined up, and moved; change with use, etc. 

• Relationships is about children and adults engaging with others; feeling a sense of

  

  Photo credit: Vergeront (Madison Children's Museum)

  welcome, respect, and connection 
• Valued qualities foster social connections, value the individual and the group, are collaborative 
• Possibilities for connecting: exchanging ideas among children; scaffolding; conversation; multiple places and positions, roles or seating, etc. 

• Content is based in children’s interests and what is fascinating and meaningful to them about the world 
• Valued qualities are interdisciplinary content; implicit content from child development; meaningful connections for the child 
• Possibilities for engaging with content: comes through the senses, is embedded in the world, is released through interactions, can be experienced from different points of view, etc. 

• Time is about a sense of open and unregulated play; time to direct play, follow an activity to a satisfying moment, and find enjoyment
• Valued qualities are children deciding when play starts and ends; play stretching out over time
• Possibilities for opening up time come from discouraging distractions and interruptions; allowing experiences to come to a natural end 

 A set of play conditions with examples helps us move away from predictable approaches towards deliberately thought through play set-ups. Working with play conditions nudges us into thinking in the languages of space, materials, relationships, and provocations and developing new ways of thinking. Considering possible play conditions slows us down from leaping to a finished idea or design. We see how play conditions, like children’s play, lean into and interact with one another, virtually seamlessly. We realize, for instance, how Materials are instrumental in creating an Invitation to Explore; how Materials prompt conversations which support Relationships; and how the Image of the Child and Time can’t be separated from other conditions. Finally, play conditions tell us as much about inviting rich play as they do about getting out of the way of children’s play. 

Ten Principles of Play Conditions 

Bringing a play conditions approach into creating opportunities for play takes time. It can be a new way of thinking. Integrating the approach into existing practices can involve problem solving and collaboration, backing up and starting over. Tailoring specific play conditions, these or others, to your context, whether for indoor or outdoor play, is always an on-going process. Paying attention to the following 10 principles along the way will provide support and add to your insights. Play conditions: 

1. Are always present, whether we are aware of them or not, and whether they are favorable to play or not.  

2. Impact children’s agency in their play. Play conditions can let the child direct the play, allow children to make of their play what they need to—or play conditions can interfere with play. 

3. Span all scales. From the full volume of a space, to the smallest loose parts, to open sight lines, to the ambiance of a space, play conditions are all sizes and proportions.

 

4. Are more than objects and more than space, more than the architecture, design and decoration. They are tangible and intangible.

 

Photo credit: Jim Roe (SMM)

5. Interact with one another as well as with children making the conditions fluid and dynamic. There is no one, or right, way to create play conditions. 

6. Induce something to happen, not by removing choices, but by creating the conditions that will increase the chances that children will engage deeply in play. 

7. Balance intentions for the experience with opening up possibilities, creating a place between what we think might happen and what we don’t yet know is possible. 

8. Require imagining to build a picture of what might happen if...; how a particular possibility might interact with other qualities and how children might engage with it. 

9. Come into clearer focus over time. Children are teaching us about play conditions all the time. We can learn by observing, listening, imagining, and reflecting on what they show us. 

10. Are more than the sum of their parts. 

What Happens When… 

Working with play conditions is, fundamentally, forming a hypothesis, or a succession of hypotheses about the relationship between children’s play and ways to support the place and processes of play. While not causal, relationships are operating. And while we don’t know what’s going to elicit play, with practice we can be more attuned to these connections and, increasingly, use them deliberately. 

Prompted by an exploratory question or experiential goal, play conditions help us in shifting from our hopes for play in general to lived experiences of deep, enjoyable, play that engages children’s bodies, minds, and feelings. We begin with conjuring up openings for play with our wonderings. How might we engage children in investigating properties of found objects and using them in their play? What materials might encourage children to change their physical space? How can we support children in setting challenges and taking risks? How do children share their ideas with one another? 

As we interrogate the content of play conditions, reflect on past experiences, observe children 

Photo credit: Snarkitecture

at play in varied settings, we have new hunches, generate possibilities, find fresh combinations, and ask another “what if?” question. We begin to discover, and hypothesize about, connections between the presence of certain features and children’s play. We build theories—temporary explanations—that express what might happen when particular qualities or variables of the physical and social environment are brought together. These hypotheses and mini-theories about places for play help us keep track of this world we are creating with children for play. 

Over time, we test, improve, and edit our understandings of the conditions that encourage the kind of play that we hope children will enjoy—rich, flexible, and full of possibilities for them to discover. 

Museum Notes 

• Experimental Mindset
• Experience Goals for Exhibitions
• Listening to How Children See Their World
• When Play’s the Thing 
• The Museum Environment as Teacher
• In Between Research, Theory and Practice 

Children as Placemakers and Worldmakers

MUSEUM NOTES

Jeanne Vergeront

Vergeront Museum Planning

Place means something to children discovering their world, who they are, and where they belong. Sensitive to their surroundings, children’s encounters with spaces and places are immediate, multi-sensory, physical, emotional, and full of information. Place, whether it is small or large, familiar or new, invites children to explore, discover, make meaning, and learn. It shapes their understanding, experiences, and ideas. A powerful way for them to know and understand themselves and their world, place calls to them to climb, check out new perspectives, pour water over sand and see what happens, stack sticks, use their whole bodies to measure a space, and hypothesize about what happens here.

Children are natural and active placemakers. Their placemaking is an open, exploratory process of transforming a space through play, imagination, stories, and friendships that brings new meaning to it, builds their knowledge of the world, and expands their sense of self.

Children’s constructions are the most obvious expression of their placemaking and initially what placemaking suggests to us. Images of forts, hideouts, and dens come to mind, hiding places tucked into a hedge or behind the curtain of low spreading boughs. Found across many settings, special places may also be under tables, nestled among sand dunes, in the attic, enclosed by sofa cushions, or deep in the woods. Sometimes ephemeral, children’s places may also be where they return physically and in different seasons. Special places are sometimes enduring and remembered throughout life. 

Photo credit: Vergeront

 

Seemingly empty spaces­–under the stairs, the corner of a lot, behind the garage, the depths of a snow pile–summon children and invite them to explore their potential; they fill in with their imaginations. Qualities of space–openness, enclosure, height, scale, shape, fragrances, sounds and silences, different textures, even drops of water–suggest possibilities for what a space might become. An old, old tree, a distant view, a rise in the landscape, a remembered story can envelop a space and make an ordinary spot extraordinary. Likewise, something fascinating may call out to a child or pose a question. The blurred pathway that crosses a clearing, a place of brilliant light changing to deep shadow might inspire placemaking.

Placemaking-possibilities may be triggered incidentally: stumbling on an old wooden crate, digging up pottery pieces, discovering a dented hubcap, finding traces of past activities, or remembering the fragment of a story or song. But the power of a place is itself a compelling invitation. Sunlight, lacy shadows, or cool shade can summon placemaking. Subtle, unusual, and capricious environmental conditions–wind, mist, springs, echoes–are qualities that can add drama, mystery, and possibility for shaping space and supporting exploration.

The open-endedness of placemaking supports a wide range of activity. Children hunt for and gather materials; they build and modify their space; and they embellish it with finds and treasures. They climb, chase and challenge one another. Stories live in the dens and hideouts children create. New narratives about events of daily life, movies seen, the lives of dolls, action figures, and cherished animals enter and enliven life inside. Groups form and friendships grow in the shelter of a camp, fort, or snow cave.

Play and placemaking are closely connected in many ways but are also not the same. Clearly the forts, dens, and hideouts created during placemaking become places for play, contexts for pretend play, and backdrops for games. But, at the same time, placemaking is the serious work of children exploring, testing, understanding, and making their mark on the world.

More than Building

Placemaking goes well beyond building forts and hideouts. In this dynamic process of exploration, change, and discovery, children are making a place for themselves in the world. They are mastering materials, building confidence and competence, forging relationships, and shaping a sense of self.

German social intellectual Walter Benjamin noted in 1928,

Children are irresistibly drawn to the detritus generated by building, gardening, housework, tailoring, or carpentry… In using these things they do not so much imitate the works of adults as bring together, in the artifact produced in play, materials of widely differing kinds of new, intuitive relationships. Children thus produce their own small world of things within the greater one.

Photo credit: Vergeront

Children use materials and objects, their knowledge of how the world works, and ingenuity in placemaking. Loose parts, found objects, and discarded building materials are instrumental in transforming a space. They use what’s at hand: bricks, boards, boxes, and blankets; clay, cloths, crates, and cushions; sand, seeds, sticks, stones, string, and stumps; Legos, leaves, and license plates. 

Random as they might be, collected objects and materials contain valuable and actionable information about altering a space and realizing a vision. When they gather, move, and arrange materials; when they dig holes; when they drag a piece of sheet metal, children experience properties such as weight, mass, strength, and rigidity. They discover what different materials can do. Sticks help outline boundaries; some sticks bend while others are brittle and don’t. Blankets, burlap, and branches span a distance; stones can weigh down a blanket; carefully stacked stones become a tower. 

In exploring places, hideouts, and landscapes, children are constructing an understanding of space and themselves. They measure space, size, and dimensions using their bodies, hands, eyes, and voices. Through their movements, they know the prepositions of space: under, above, inside and out, through, between, and on top of. Being in or out, up, down, or underneath, children encounter distant views and unusual perspectives, uncover new routes, and make connections to another time or place. With playmates, they work to make something big happen together. They share secrets, make-up ideas, negotiate how to work together, make up stories, layer in rules, and take on roles.

Children come to know something about themselves as well through placemaking. They

Photo credit: Chicago Children's Museum

test themselves against the space, undertake feats, push their limits, and explore their identity. Can I pull myself up on this branch? Can I make my idea happen? Who am I in this space? What can I be here? They search for risk and the promise of challenge perhaps in building small fires, sharpening tools against a rock, or testing the ice for thickness. Moments of fear and triumph sweeten the experience.

As placemakers, children are experimenters, agents of change in charge of transformation. They find a spot that is undefined or open to being redefined and dictate its meaning. As they incorporate new materials and ideas, they continue to modify the space, its qualities, and meaning. This opportunity, ordering the physical surroundings in ways that express their own ideas and interests, is rare for children, but it engenders a feeling of competence and satisfaction. That anonymous patch of dirt transformed into a place with an original identity, yields a tangible, lasting sense of accomplishment.

Often children find something in a space that speaks to them of possibilities and invites them to investigate their connection to the world. In working that space, they develop a relationship with it and come to know it, from its smell, sounds, or silences and from what has taken place there. A special place can stay with children even when they are not there, over time, into their adult lives. Who doesn’t remember a place from childhood, created or found; a shelter for play, friendship, hiding; visited through changing seasons; and revisited over time in our memories?

Related Resources

• Place Matters
• Planting for Play
• Placemaking in Museums
• It's a Great time for Making Forts
• Play and Place: Transforming Environments
• Inspiring Young Place-makers
• Children's Special Places: Exploring the Role of Forts, Dens and Bush Houses in Middle Childhood
• Dialogues with Places

Originally posted March, 2018

Children as Placemakers and Worldmakers

Place means something to children discovering their world, who they are, and where they belong. Sensitive to their surroundings, children’s encounters with spaces and places are immediate, multi-sensory, physical, emotional, and full of information. Place, whether it is small or large, familiar or new, invites children to explore, discover, make meaning, and learn; it shapes their understanding, experiences, and ideas. A powerful way for them to know and understand themselves and their world, place calls to them to climb, check out new perspectives, pour water over sand and see what happens, stack sticks, use their whole bodies to measure a space, and hypothesize about what happens here.

Children are natural and active placemakers. Their placemaking is an open, exploratory process of transforming a space through play, imagination, stories, and friendships that brings new meaning to it, builds their knowledge of the world, and expands their sense of self.

Children’s constructions are the most obvious expression of their placemaking and initially what placemaking suggests to us. Images of forts, hideouts, and dens come to mind, hiding places tucked into a hedge or behind the curtain of low spreading boughs. Found across many settings, special places may also be under tables, nestled among sand dunes, in the attic, enclosed by sofa cushions, or deep in the woods. Sometimes ephemeral, children’s places may also be where they return physically and in different seasons. Special places are sometimes enduring and remembered throughout life. 

 

Seemingly empty spaces­–under the stairs, the corner of a lot, behind the garage, the depths of a snow pile–summon children and invite them to explore their potential; they fill in with their imaginations. Qualities of space–openness, enclosure, height, scale, shape, fragrances, sounds and silences, different textures, even drops of water–suggest possibilities for what a space might become. An old, old tree, a distant view, a rise in the landscape, a remembered story can envelop a space and make an ordinary spot extraordinary. Likewise, something fascinating may call out to a child or pose a question. The blurred pathway that crosses a clearing, a place of brilliant light changing to deep shadow might inspire placemaking.

Placemaking-possibilities may be triggered incidentally: stumbling on an old wooden crate, digging up pottery pieces, discovering a dented hubcap, finding traces of past activities, or remembering the fragment of a story or song. But the power of a place is itself a compelling invitation. Sunlight, lacy shadows, or cool shade can summon placemaking. Subtle, unusual, and capricious environmental conditions–wind, mist, springs, echoes–are qualities that can add drama, mystery, and possibility for shaping space and supporting exploration.

The open-endedness of placemaking supports a wide range of activity. Children hunt for and gather materials; they build and modify their space; and they embellish it with finds and treasures. They climb, chase and challenge one another. Stories live in the dens and hideouts children create. New narratives about events of daily life, movies seen, the lives of dolls, action figures, and cherished animals enter and enliven life inside. Groups form and friendships grow in the shelter of a camp, fort, or snow cave.

Play and placemaking are closely connected in many ways but are also not the same. Clearly the forts, dens, and hideouts created during placemaking become places for play, contexts for pretend play, and backdrops for games. But, at the same time, placemaking is the serious work of children exploring, testing, understanding, and making their mark on the world.

More than Building

Placemaking goes well beyond building forts and hideouts. In this dynamic process of exploration, change, and discovery, children are making a place for themselves in the world. They are mastering materials, building confidence and competence, forging relationships, and shaping a sense of self.

German social intellectual Walter Benjamin noted in 1928,

Children are irresistibly drawn to the detritus generated by building, gardening, housework, tailoring, or carpentry… In using these things they do not so much imitate the works of adults as bring together, in the artifact produced in play, materials of widely differing kinds of new, intuitive relationships. Children thus produce their own small world of things within the greater one.

Children use materials and objects, their knowledge of how the world works, and ingenuity in placemaking. Loose parts, found objects, and discarded building materials are instrumental in transforming a space. They use what’s at hand: bricks, boards, boxes, and blankets; clay, cloths, crates, and cushions; sand, seeds, sticks, stones, string, and stumps; Legos, leaves, and license plates. 

Random as they might be, collected objects and materials contain valuable and actionable information about altering a space and realizing a vision. When they gather, move, and arrange materials; when they dig holes; when they drag a piece of sheet metal, children experience properties such as weight, mass, strength, and rigidity. They discover what different materials can do. Sticks help outline boundaries; some sticks bend while others are brittle and don’t. Blankets and branches span a distance; stones can weigh down a blanket; carefully stacked stones become a tower. 

In exploring places, hideouts, and landscapes, children are constructing an understanding of space and themselves. They measure space, size, and dimensions using their bodies, hands, eyes, and voices. Through their movements, they know the prepositions of space: under, above, inside and out, through, between, and on top of. Being in or out, up, down, or underneath, children encounter distant views and unusual perspectives, uncover new routes, and make connections to another time or place. With playmates, they work to make something big happen together. They share secrets, make-up ideas, negotiate how to work together, make up stories, layer in rules, and take on roles.

Children come to know something about themselves as well through placemaking. They test themselves

against the space, undertake feats, push their limits, and explore their identity. Can I pull myself up on this branch? Can I make my idea happen? Who am I in this space? What can I be here? They search for risk and the promise of challenge perhaps in building small fires, sharpening tools against a rock, or testing the ice for thickness. Moments of fear and triumph sweeten the experience.

As placemakers, children are experimenters, agents of change in charge of transformation. They find a spot that is undefined or open to being redefined and dictate its meaning. As they incorporate new materials and ideas, they continue to modify the space, its qualities, and meaning. This opportunity, ordering the physical surroundings in ways that express their own ideas and interests, is rare for children, but it engenders a feeling of competence and satisfaction. That anonymous patch of dirt transformed into a place with an original identity, yields a tangible, lasting sense of accomplishment.

Often children find something in a space that speaks to them of possibilities invites them to investigate their connection to the world. In working that space, they develop a relationship with it and come to know it, from its smell, sounds, or silences and from what has taken place there. A special place can stay with children when they are not there, over time, into their adult lives. Who doesn’t remember a place from childhood, created or found; a shelter for play, friendship, hiding; visited through changing seasons; and revisited over time in our memories?

Related Resources

• Place Matters

• Placemaking and Museums

• Planting for Play

• Play and Place: Transforming Environments

• Inspiring YoungPlace-makers 

• Children’s SpecialPlaces: Exploring the Role of Forts, Dens and Bush Houses in Middle Childhood 

• Dialogues with Places 

Play and Playground Resources: Recent Finds

As the conversation around play in children’s lives expands and gets livelier in schools, in the media, and in museums, new resources and approaches to play appearing on the play landscape are worth noting. I am familiar with and appreciate resources like the American Journal of Play, U.S.Play Coalition, PlayCore, and KaBOOM! among others.

And I’m always on the look out for more play-related resources that inform, extend, and challenge my understanding of play. Of particular interest are resources that consolidate sources of information; relate play to broader issues like community engagement, well being, and learning; look at play across the lifespan or cross-culturally; incorporate international perspectives; connect theory, research, and practice; and contribute to a visual vocabulary for play environments. 

With any resource, familiar or new, I am interested in recent research, in better understanding how play and learning connect, and in promising strategies for supporting and extending a wider range of play in museums. Finally I simply enjoy the pleasure of play well-explained.

Even as I am pleased to keep encountering new resources, I am also surprised I have never heard of them before. Below are several resources I have come across recently. 

• AnjiPlay, an internationally-recognized early childhood play curriculum developed by Chinese educator Cheng Xueqin, has been tested over the past 15 years in 130 public kindergartens in Anji County (China) serving more than 14,000 children from ages 3 to 6. A play curriculum in Chinese preschools may not seem to translate readily to museums. When described as “sophisticated practices, site-specific environments, unique materials and integrated technology,” however, AnjiPlay does seem to have something in common with museum environments for children. In fact, many of the guiding principles of AnjiPlay, love, risk, joy, engagement, and reflection could be found in a list of values for many children’s museums.

• Play & Playground Encyclopedia is where you will find a Child’s Outdoor Bill of Rights; books like American Playgrounds, Revitalizing Community Space; descriptions of types of play, toys, and play environments (including children’s museums); and profiles of play advocates like Lady Allen of Hurtwood. The Encyclopedia is a collection of over 600 listings that relate to issues around children’s play, playgrounds, health and safety, including the people, organizations, and companies that contribute to children’s play and well being. The listings include links and citations to make P&P a veritable portal to the world of play.

• Voice of Play is an initiative of IPEMA (International Play Equipment Manufacturers’ Association) that promotes the benefits of children’s play by providing information and resources to encourage the quality and quantity of children’s play and the use of playgrounds. Its coverage of the benefits of play, playground safety, the science of play, and its checklist for access are most relevant and helpful to museums. Results of its 2017 Survey on Play provide information on parents’ attitudes towards play behavior and frequency and is also a resource for building public awareness about play in communities and with stakeholders.

• Dezeen's Pinterest board on playgrounds From 2013 – 2016, Paige Johnson posted about interesting and varied play environments on Playscapes, from playgrounds on New Yorker covers to futuristic playgrounds of the past. (http://www.play-scapes.com) Without her posts, finding play environments that reflect an experimental mindset about children’s play environments and that break the mold in their design is sporadic. While not everything I could wish for on children’s play environments, Dezeen’s Pinterest board fills a noticeable void and will hopefully grow in the range and variety of what it highlights by artists, exhibit designers, architects, and landscape architects.

• The Association for the Study of Play (TASP) The broad focus of this academically-oriented organization of play scholars reflects its interest in interdisciplinary research and theory construction related to play throughout the world. Mirroring the multi-disciplinary nature of play itself, TASP brings together perspectives on play from an impressively broad range of areas including anthropology, education, psychology, sociology, cultural studies, recreation and leisure studies, history, folklore, dance, communication, kinesiology, philosophy, and musicology. The Association’s annual conference and its publications (a newsletter, 3 issues of the International Journal of Play, and an annual volume of Play & Culture Studies) focus on sharing and disseminating information on the study of play.

More to add to the list? What resources on play and play environments would you like to share? In what ways are they valuable to you?