Special Event! Day 1 Enriching Childhood Through Play...

Dr Wendy Russell

Wendy is a Senior Lecturer in Play and Playwork/Professional Studies in Children’s Play at University of Gloucestershire (UK) and a consultant on children’s play and playwork. She has worked in the play and playwork sector for over 35 years, initially on adventure playgrounds and then in development work, research, education and training. She has worked with local authorities, the private sector and local, national and international voluntary organisations. Her research interests include children’s play, playwork, the politics of space, social policy and ethics. She is a member of Editorial Board for International Journal of Play.

Stuart Lester

After many years working on adventure playgrounds and community play projects in the North West of England, Stuart is now Senior Lecturer in Play and Playwork/Professional Studies in Children’s Play at the University of Gloucestershire, UK. Key research interests focus on the nature and value of children’s play, playful production of time/space through everyday encounters and the conditions under which children’s (and adults) playfulness may thrive. This has led to a number of small-scale research projects exploring play in museums, schools, and adventure playgrounds. Stuart has also worked with Wendy Russell to study the implementation of the Welsh Government’s ‘Play Sufficiency Duty’ and findings from this have been used to shape further potential research projects in Wales and the North West of England

Day 1: Enrichment and Enchantment - play as a very ordinary magic
To be held at Manningham City Council, Doncaster, Melbourne

How might we imagine what it is to enrich childhood without a starting point that positions children as impoverished and adults as providers of interventions to address a lack? Our ‘common sense’ ways of understanding childhood can become embedded in our institutions and habitual practices in ways that perhaps obscure other possibilities. In this presentation, Stuart Lester and Wendy Russell explore other ways of thinking about enrichment and children’s right to play as expressed in article 31 of the UNCRC and in General Comment 17. Drawing on their research on the Welsh Government’s statutory Play Sufficiency Duty and also on concepts from philosophy and geography, they propose that we as adults have an ethical and political responsibility to support conditions in which moments of playfulness can emerge. In doing so, they take a step sideways from the predominant focus on the universal, the rational and the technical to see what ideas of enchantment, everyday magic and the nonsense of playing might have to offer and how ‘collective wisdom’ can support children’s right to play at an everyday relational level.

Members of Play Australia, Community Childcare Care and Network of Community Activities receive a discount on the ticket price.

Members Price $55
Non Members Price $99.00

Members will be emailed a discount code to apply at Registration.