So impressed by our friends at play:ground - the incredible team of playworkers, alternative educators, performers, historians and parents who've established a true junk playground in New York City.
Check out the New York Times coverage here.
We wish the team a fruitful summer rich in play and can't wait to hear your reflections at the season's end. Bring on the kids!
Join us in supporting a new adventure playground in New York City! Play:ground's adventure playground at Governor's Island will serve thousands of local children and be a model for countless American cities. Wondering how to get an APG in your community? This helps! Normalizing free play and supporting a standard of professionalism for playworkers is a piece of our shared pie:
Our film THE LAND was launched through a successful kickstarter campaign and we know first hand how small pledges of support from $1, $5, $10, $100 -- whatever you can give -- MAKE the difference.
We believe in and support play:ground and hope you will too! Pledge today and play on!
Loose parts come in all shapes and sizes, many more tidy and beautiful than junk. Playworker and author Arthur Battram explains why at The Land, swings and slides are replaced by old tires, broken down treadmills, grocery carts, old toys, sticks, mud.... He answers the question, WHY JUNK?
Hats off to Erin Marteal and her amazing team at the Hands On Nature Anarchy Zone at the Ithaca Children's Garden for their work creating the very first Ithaca Day of Play! An inspiring gathering of smartypants and play aficionados, the curious and determined, all scheming about the future of adventure play in the US.
Thanks to everyone who attended and contributed to the good vibes and great ideas, and who has supported and inspired us along the way (looking at you, folks at The Land & Pop Up Adventure Play!) Onward! #playwork #playrev #anarchyzone
Spent the morning re-visiting the work American street photographer Helen Levitt. If you're interested in this film, I'll bet you could sink into her work as well.
Play is fun, the picture declares, but deeply serious. (more)
Levitt’s consistent and canny framing of play-scenes makes the picture itself into a space of play. (more)
Play on, all - in whichever form you choose!
Annibale Carracci (Italian, Bologna 1560–1609 Rome).
Was thrilled to see this risky moment at the MoMa recently. "Two Children Teasing a Cat."
The picture may well carry a moralizing lesson similar to our expression "playing with fire." One of the children will surely get scratched. (source)
Somehow I doubt the message was intended for the children depicted in the painting.
