Building Playgrounds, Engaging Communities: Creating Safe and Happy Places for Children

2. You Can’t Make a Playground Gumbo without the Ladies

18 2 You Can’t Make a Playground Gumbo without the Ladies The secret to good playground design—and really any kind of design—is knowing, understanding, and embracing the people who will use it. The true experts in play are children; the true experts in the community that the playground will serve are the members of the community. Experts in playground design, playground installation, playground safety, and childhood development are necessary to ensure that the playground is safe, fun, accessible, and appropriate. The experts in playground maintenance are the people who are trained and experienced in this area. The experts in using the playground after it is built are children and professionals in child development and physical education. Input from all of these groups is critical for my college students who are starting their journeys to become proficient in engineering design. My student Brian Etier summed it up well when asked by a community partner what he learned from the playground design experience. He said, “I learned about the importance of perspective in engineering. I had to think like a child to design the best playground. I had to think like a parent to design a safe playground. I had to think as a member of the community to design a playground that reflected the unique aspects of the community. I had to think like a politician to sell the playground to potential funders.” You win with people. —Woody Hayes You Can’t Make a Playground Gumbo without the Ladies / 19 People are the key to everything. The work I have done with Baton Rouge and surrounding communities, mostly through public schools but also through organizations that serve children with special needs and organizations that serve survivors of hurricanes, has taught me so much more than play, history, and community relationships. Working with people, all kinds of people, representing very different perspectives, has taught me that differences are a fount of collective creative wisdom, that listening is an art that requires all five of your senses, and that taking pride in your community is an act that creates a living, breathing thing. A school is a living, breathing thing. So is a playground. And it is people who make it so. The people involved in the LSU Community Playground Project generally fall into four categories: the play experts (the children), the school staff (teachers and administration), my students, and other community members and players in the process. Here’s a deeper look at the people who together create a little slice of heaven in my community. Children: The Sparks Children are by far the biggest contingent in the playground design process . I have interacted with approximately 11,000 children in the context of playground design. As a group, kids are fantastic to work with because they freely share their ideas, dreams, and opinions—and not just about playgrounds . You’re just as likely to hear about siblings, Harry Potter, Zelda, or Spiderman as you are the games that the kids have created and regularly play, or the awesome obstacle course that Coach (the inevitable name for a good physical education teacher) organized last week during recess. Kids tell us all about play through their drawings, their writings, and through conversations. Some express basic wishes, like having a football or basketball or hula hoop to play with during recess. Sometimes the infusion of $500 to a school for these types of items transforms the play space and recess. In those cases, when you start with an open field that contains noth- 20 / Building Playgrounds, Engaging Communities ing, adding these types of items (called manipulatives) provides a platform for many types of play. Many kids express an interest in play equipment similar to that which they’ve experienced before in other places, such as swings, slides, monkey bars, soccer goals, and interactive gardens. Other kids have more elaborate ideas. Common themes along this line of creative thinking include a pool with a whale in it, a roller coaster and/or amusement park, a video game arcade, and a large penned space for the family pets to come to school and interact with their friends and their friends’ pets. Oh, and LSU’s live tiger mascot Mike is welcome to visit this penned space at any time. Some children remain indelibly etched into my consciousness. One early, defining moment in my playground travels occurred when a teacher at Villa Del...