Loose parts.
For years We didn’t have a name for the Things.
I worked on an inclusive Adventure Playground. Every year we had to take the whole playground to pieces and make way for the Chelsea Flower Show. The process of dismantling and reassembling the playground took so long that we lost almost three months of play at the most beautiful time of the year.
Eventually, we came to realise that we could manage without the big structures and focus our playing around grassy slopes and overgrown perimeters and sand and water and The Things.
It turned out that as we got better at understanding the role of The Things we saw that they had a much richer and more inclusive offer than the built structures had ever had.
We didn’t buy much. Most of The Things were found or donated. We bought fabric though. All different sorts of fabric.
What we were seeing played out in front of us was The Things used as voices or symbols.
We did our reading and learned from Margaret Lowenfeld about her work with sand trays and objects, Things, loaded with meaning by children who hadn’t yet the linguistic capacity to express themselves in words.
We learned from Winnicott about Transitional Objects and Mirroring and discovered ways to use The Things to triangulate relationships with children diagnosed as being on The Autistic Spectrum. We had conversations through the mirrored slapping of wet sand, the dripping of water or the scrabbling of soil or ripped paper confetti.
We noticed where children liked to play at certain times of day and positioned fluorescent plastic buckets to hang from the bushes so they glowed with the low afternoon river bounced sunshine caught bursting in them, waiting, ripe to be plucked for play by the passing child.
Things became favourite play mates, going on adventures together with a single child or a group. The Thing would be dressed up or be given Things of its own.
The Things would be whatever the children needed them to be in their playing
Years later Playwork adopted the term ‘Loose Parts from an article written by Simon Nicholson. Things now had a jargon and a theory. Soon the world beyond Playwork discovered ‘Loose Parts’ as well and they became big business. Companies started to manufacture wooden ‘open ended’ toys in the shape of people and houses and cars and trees… or blocks… or collections of cotton reels and dolly pegs that you could buy on line. In imitation of Regio Emilio glass beads, pine cones or wood rounds , stored in beautiful woven baskets or waxed wooden bowls started to appear in early years settings and called ‘educational Loose Parts’.
Somehow the stuff of childhood, The Things, had been invaded and colonised by Adult theories and aesthetics and business.
Nicholson’s description of the play behaviours of children was forgotten somewhat… the finding of a seashell or a water shiney pebble of the beach which then become powerful talismans or weapons or magical pockets of noise or dinosaur poo; the finding of beads from a long burst necklace or sequins dropped on tarmac the small objects which catch and hold light and colour and are treasured amongst the pocket fluff, The ‘Precious’ Things all these subtleties and nuances had been swallowed up by ( cynical? willfull?) misinterpretations.
When we began PlayKXr we based our work entirely on the use of Loose Parts and Playworkers.
We knew that with The Things made available to them children would have a rich play experience, much richer than one that could be afforded by a cumbersome built structure that didctates to the children that play should be and will be a physical excersize above all else. A physical playground like a child gym, with little to manipulate to ones own being, instead having to adapt your own body and mind at play to the repertoire laid down by the physicality of the play Structures .
We gathered ropes and pegs and tarpaulins, intensely vibrant and shimmering lengths of organza to take to the breeze like sweet wrappers. We tried to chose Things with a light environmental footprint. We tried to chose Things which adults would see in use and understand how cheap and how never endingly possible….. how anything can be anything.
As time moved on we got bigger and bigger and scoured charity shops for things to dress up in or Things with no apparent purpose that we though may be of interest. A cheap garden urn became a hearing hat, reinvented by every child who picked it up. A tangle of beige wool is always some sort of a pet or a nest or a wig or a monster or a pillow. In the winter we made dozens of pom poms with left over yarn, we thought we would have snowball fights, but they were collected in buckets and fed to them animals’ or carefully pulled apart strand by strand to make worms to feed to the toy hen. Emergency foil blankets are landscapes and cloaks and crowns and den walls and robes and ripped up they are gold or oil or petrol or treasure or just something joyous to throw into the air or knot into butterflies and float like sycamore helicopters.
There is no single preordained use for any Thing. There is no fixed use of any Thing. We do not expect a single outcome or product, but a chattering bubbling stream of possibilities, none of which come from the adult, all of which are within the control of the child. Things can be used to be precious or scary, as a functional building resource or an embellishment.
With two trolleys of Things we roll infinite variety out to play.
Nothing is fixed in purpose or place. The possibilities of our space and place are constantly shifting, waxing and waning, ebbing and flowing creating liminal places of possibility like the sea shore. Children explore what they can do with the stodginess of a blue block, the light as air sheen of organza, the sleek slip of a tarpaulin and the rough hand burning rope.
The Things all move differently, offering play cues to the children through their potential character. A foam noodle can slap the floor and make a huge sharp sound or can be fitted with a curl toed slipper and wobble sedately.
Things, Loose Parts have a reciprocal call and response relationship with children.
They offer themselves to the child as The Thing That Can Be Anything They Need In Their Playing and the child will reinvent themselves,for the first time ever in the whole of their history creating the Hearing Hat, that has been invented for the first time ever a hundred times that morning. In turn the child may see a Thing move or imagine it moving and the Thing will suggest a playing and the two will meet and something new will happen.
Old things happen too. Children will remember the object that had a particular resonance for them, and will seek it out visit after visit in a ritual recapping and episodic play narrative. These Things should be noticed and respected by the adults, without a word to the child. The Thing should just be there for them. (Sometimes. Often times, Things need Playwork help to be in the right place at the right time.) Like the triangulated relationships between Playworkers Things and children diagnosed as being on the Autistic Spectrum, we need, sometimes, to relocate Things so they can be discovered or elevated. Maybe we need to give them a suggestion of movement so that their animation becomes obvious. Sometimes Playworkers will do something obvious, release organza into the breezes of the park, pull a scramble of scaffolding net out to its full length so that it become enormous and tug-of-warable, or wearable as an Egyptian mummie or a caterpillar. But mostly Playworkers need to be invisible and unobtrusive, deferring to the playing relationship between children and Things, which left to their own devices, meld into a self choreographing improvisation within the space.
Like a flowing river, it’s never the same twice.
Margaret Lowenfeld http://broughttolife.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/people/margaretlowenfeld
Winnicott https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=the+good+enough+playworker&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari
The Playwork Primer http://www.imaginationplayground.com/images/content/3/2/3239/playwork-primer.pdf
Simon Nicholson https://media.kaboom.org/docs/documents/pdf/ip/Imagination-Playground-Theory-of-Loose-Parts-Simon-Nicholson.pdf
Bob Hughes .in conversation. See also ‘Evolutionary Playwork and Analytic Reflective Practce ‘ Routledge
Scrap store https://www.playpods.co.uk
Playkx Instagram @playkx
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