Adventure playgrounds

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In 1931 a Danish landscape architect C. T. Sørenson saw children playing with scraps in a construction site and saw the possibilities for "a junk playground in which children could create and shape, dream and imagine a reality."^[1]

The first of these junk playgrounds was built in 1943 near a housing complex in Copenhagen, with a stock of raw materials instead of fixed structures, and continues today. This idea was brought to England by Lady Allen of Hurtwood, who had been inspired by watching kids playing in sections of town that were bombed-out during the Blitz. Today, there are hundreds of "adventure playgrounds" worldwide. Their landscapes change continuously, as quickly as children can get together, make up their minds, and act. Some keep goats, rabbits and ducks, others have abandoned railroad cars.

Adults and parents are allowed to play as well, but in the spirit of the Copenhagen playground, as its first grown-up "play leader" John Bertelsen put it, "The children are sovereign and the initiative must come from them. The leader can make suggestions but must never demand. He must obtain the tools and material needed or requested by the children but must at any time be prepared to give way to new activities. To organize and arrange programmes is to stifle imagination and initiative and preclude children whose lively curiosity and interests constantly demand new outlets." ^[2]

As a visitor to the The Yard, an adventure playground in 1940's Minneapolis points out, "I doubt if I could have found 60 kids as happy as that anywhere else in Minnesota." Young people at The Yard started their own paper, The Daily Horn. They built igloos and ice skated all winter.^[3] “I come over here to play every night because I like it here. It’s fun.”^[4]