I had borrowed some money from my Mum and bought tickets, a hotel room and a place at the IPA USA conference in Baltimore in the early years of the 2000s. I don’t remember now why I had felt the need to do this, but I do recall that it was slightly cheaper to attend the conference if I were to present a workshop. So I sat down to write up stories from the Inclusive Adventure Playgrounds that I was running in London, thinking that these might make for a pleasingly interesting presentation.
I suppose that I had been naively thinking that The United States of America would be ahead of the curve when it came to play provision and that I might hear new and exciting thoughts and ideas.
What I actually learned was the under the Presidency of Bush the state of play was appalling .
There was little or no recess time in schools for children and the pressures of ‘No Child Held Back’ policies had led to adults organising educational or sports activities in the out of school hours that had traditionally been used for children’s free play.
Most of the stories I had prepared for the workshop talked about the play deprivation that we had seen our work in London playing for children with multiple and profound disabilities, their siblings and friends. These stories also showed the huge impact the introduction of freely chosen child led play had on the lives of these children.
In short the stories that I had thought would be mildly entertaining to an American audience took on a totally different quality.
Stories of play from a Playwork perspective were new to the ears of my audience.
At the end of my workshop I was approached by Joan. ‘I want to talk to you’ she said.
And my life changed.
She quizzed me about Playwork, about inclusive Playwork, about organisational structures supporting play in the UK, about funding and training.
We swapped contact details.
She said, ‘I will find a way to get you over here to do some work.’
I was flattered but thought little of it.
But I didn’t know Joan then.
Within months she had identified a district in Chicago, Franklin Park Parks district along with funding to cover my expenses and off we went on our first adventure.
I spent ages writing presentations and preparing training.
The presentations stayed, but the training had to be entirely re-thought and ad- libbed as the wonderful team, employed by Joe Modrich, realised what was missing from the life of their parks.
The experience was moving for all of us as the team realised that they had forgotten what free play was, and reached back into their memories to recover the spirit of what was lost.
Play ceased to be a Four Letter Word, and became the single most important goal for the parks team.
Joan and Ed (Miller) and I were stunned, shocked maybe, by what we had seen happen. We sat in a curry house in Oak Park and tried to work out what came next…. because none of use doubted that there would be a next. The intimacy and profound experiences that we had shared with this beautiful team had shown us all that change was not only possible but yearned after. We learned what we needed to do from them.
There was no squeezing back of the toothpaste into the tube. Joan had seen a way forward to ‘Rekindle Play’ and there was no looking back.
At this point I should mention some of the talents unique to Joan that are less well known than her tenacity, seeringly intelligent strategical nouse, phenomenal networking, unnerving instincts and doggéd hard work.
1 She could always find the parking space she needed.
2 She always found the best places to eat, that were never stupidly expensive, just exquisite.
3 She always made sure we had fun on our many road trips.
4 Fortuitous coincidences happened to her so frequently that she almost, but never quite, took them for granted.
So we found Frank Lloyd Wright Houses in Oak Park, and on almost every trip thereafter a theme of Frank Lloyd Wright visits and superb dining experiences became a subplot to our work and gave gracious backdrops to our precious reflective practice.
We spent an inspirational weekend delivering workshops at Sarah Lawrence. It was here
we met Nancy Barthold who was in charge of playgrounds and rec staff in the New York with the Parks Department. Together we introduced the idea of child led Free Play using loose parts as a viable alternative to highly structured adult led activities in all on the NY Parks. We presented our thoughts and plans at The Arsenal with Adrian Benepe adding his support (and showing us his collection of Sponge Bob Square Pants memorabilia. )
We worked with Rockwell in advising and testing out Imagination Playground blocks and loose parts with Marc Hacker, Cas Holman and David Rockwell himself.
We were present at the birth of the New York play coalition (‘please don’t call it nyc4play’) and spent beautiful time with Roger Hart and his team.
We travelled to the west coast to San Franscico to meet with Community Playthings who supported our work big style, to San Jose , which our GPS system could not find (do you know the way to San José?) to make a pitch to a Silicon Valley funding consortium.
We became frequent trainers at children’s museums and speakers at conferences, recorded a PBS documentary, ‘Where the Children Play’ in Flint Mitchigan, staying in Ann Arbor with the beautiful Dr Liz GoodEnough. We dined with Vivienne Gussin Paley, talk about a power lunch! I sat and listened in awe of the company.
We went to Philadelphia, to Bryn Moor, speaking there was like speaking in Hogwarts, but oh the people! Magical.
We went to zoos and museums in Chicago and in Providence, with Janice Mac Donald, Richmond when Pogo Park was still a drug and gun dealership.
We flew to Alaska after criss crossing the state in a tiny tiny plane, arriving in time for the first of 24 hour sunlight day; (‘Don’t go for a walk Joan. There’s a bear in the garden.’) We were visiting KaBOOM! to make film about play when Darel Hammond came back to the office and called everyone round to tell them that Marion Wright Edelman had just introduced him in a meeting to Michelle Obama who had listened and spoken passionately about children’s play. All of us felt emotional at the possibilities enshrined in that moment.
And again at a KaBOOM! conference where she left me sitting with a dear colleague Ingrid Kanics while she chased a Senator down a corridor to ‘have a word’ with him. (‘We won’t get this chance again ‘ she muttered.)
She seemed to know everyone, except the people she hadn’t met yet. And she soon put that right.
Everywhere we went we networked and listened and talked and were profoundly moved by each experience.
She got me to write The Playwork Primer. Ed edited it.
We called a Play Symposium of the most amazing and inspirational people from all across the states. It was held in the hall across the road from Joan and Clopper’s beautiful buttercup-lawn house. Joan did the catering and orchestrated the whole event. Such ideas, such inspiration gathered all in one place! I met her neighbours and their children, Clopper cooked The-Best-Pancakes-Ever using home milled flours. He also taught me about french gardens of the Roman era.
We drank coffee all over the states, most often in her niece’s flat in New York. But in so very many, many other places.
We had rows. We made up. We were inspired and inspired each other.
I met Joan several times in London, as she networked with new people, saw play environments, talked to playworkers. She never tired of seeing play spaces and hearing about Playwork and play, squirrelling away information that would be useful and sharing her reflections. No opportunity, no experience, no time was ever wasted with Joan.
The last time I saw her was, coincidence, in Baltimore. I was spending time with Free For All Baltimore doing some work with Courtney Gardiner and Ben Dalby. Joan picked me up in her car and took me on a tour of her youth, telling me stories I hadn’t heard before. She had decided where we would eat, we had never shared southern food…. uncharacteriically a parking space was not immediately outside the restaurant, so she turned up a side road. There we found waiting for us a treasure trove of quirky houses, chalked games on the pavements, toys in gardens and a signs that she asked me to take pictures of for her. We had stumbled on a playable street and it gave us joy. It seemed like a shred of hope in a bleak political landscape.
I met her in Greenwhich two years ago. She was poorly but we still managed to go and wonder at the painted ceiling of the Maritime Museum and have good coffee and a good meal.
We ate a great meal, then the tour of Joan’s youth continued to the house she had shared, the Waldorf School she had started and the exact spot where she and Clopper were married, she told me the stories. She was a great teller of true stories.
These last two visits were entirely times of friendship. The closeness we felt surprised us both. After the business and turmoil what was left was a joy of knowing each other.
She drove me back to my hotel and we sat with Courtney, Joan still networking and drinking a glass of wine in the roof top bar with the whole of the city laying like a map of possibilities beneath us.
We stayed in contact after that meeting.
Over the years she had prepared me, and many others I suspect, for her death. This was so characteristic. She wanted her work , our work, to continue. She wanted to make sure that we were in a good place. Wise and strong and determined.
The political landscape continues to dip and swoop and spiral with stomach churning vertiginous plummets.
More clearly than ever I hear her voice telling me that I ‘can’t just sit around knitting socks’, I feel the kick of a sensible shoe in the small of my back and a crocheted cap beating me over my head whenever I become complacent or feel things are hopeless.
I was writing an essay that was a rerun of one of our tour presentations from my home in France. It was about water running through our village and how this was a constant player in the lives of children and the people of the village. About how the river of play runs through us all. (Battram). I was writing it because I knew that there were experiences that had to be shared to support other folk to know that change is desirable and doable.
I finished the piece with Joan’s quote from that tour. ‘Play is like a spring that bubbles up from deep within a child.’
I finished writing those words, and knew that she was gone.
I am proud and happy to have known Joan. I doubt if ever again I will spend so much time with someone who made the world so very much better, and allowed me to help with this work even a tiny bit.
With love, and as we toast each other in the small water-flowing village in France, ‘Bon continuation!’
With love.
Photographs are from our day together in Baltimore, April 2019.
The first shows the shadows of Joan and I with her pointing out the places where the stories
of her life and work and marriage took place.
The second is of the sign she spotted in the quirky playable street which she asked me to photograph and send to her, because she wanted to share it.
Penny Wilson
July 29th 2019.
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