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A conversation about Play England’s future – an invitation to all
A conversation about Play England’s future – an invitation to all We are asking individuals and organisations to circulate this letter to your mailing lists and contacts. At Play England’s recent meeting entitled ‘Children’s Play – The Challenge Ahead’, a significant number of people agreed that now was the time to generate a wide-ranging discussion… Continue reading
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ASTM and Surfacing Standards – back again, so organise
As you will see from Tim Gill’s blog – Playground Safety: Troubling New Move From ASTM – and the quote below, there appears to be a renewed attempt to amend ASTM surfacing standards, albeit in what looks like a surreptitious way. ‘Overall, the proposal appears to focus on how surfacing is safety-tested once it has… Continue reading
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If Kids Company were a bank…
For the present, let me hold it to be the case that Kids Company did good work. I think it reasonable to make that assumption on these grounds: a study by the London School of Economics, authored by Prof Sandra Jovchelovitch, who, in the words of the Daily Telegraph, ‘heaped praise’ on Miss Batmanghelidjh. The… Continue reading
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The seductions of rubbish talk
It is perhaps a particular feat of our notionally advanced society that it has contrived to obliterate the possibility of communicating in a language which actually communicates what we wish to say, as distinct from what we think we must say. Adept are we at chucking words and sentences in one direction, and meaning and… Continue reading
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Making Places to Play – Is not Enough
Originally posted on Playground Guru: This article was first published in Playground Professionals Newsletter, July 20, 2015 As a child of the sixties I spent my teen years grappling with the issues of the Vietnam War, the free speech movement, and civil rights. Our generation wanted to do something to make the world a better… Continue reading
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Blog 22
Originally posted on Islington Play CEO: The numbers are lower at the adventure playgrounds. Parents are worried about letting their children out and children are worried about going out. Regular users and those children who are dropped off and picked up are coming but there are no passers by. Islington feels like a quieter, sadder… Continue reading
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A word in your ear: Sharing dismay
It’s been ringing in my ear recently. Like a tune stuck in one’s head, endlessly repeating itself. ‘Disciplinary society’, those are the words, that’s the discordant, repeating, tune. And the flipside of discipline, is punishment; or, in the more mealy-mouth words of official-speak, the flipside of discipline is ‘sanction’. In practical terms this is a… Continue reading
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After Standards’ reform: The sunny uplands of possibility?
As a topic of conversation, the role and scope of play equipment and surfacing standards[1] may appear somewhat dry and technical, a bit of a turn-off. But consider this: The playground equipment and surfacing industry here in the UK has an estimated annual turnover in the order of £170m – £200m, a significant proportion of… Continue reading
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Standards: Time for reform?
It’s often hard to predict what will generate an active interest in an issue. The issue may have been around for a good deal of time, indeed may have been a source of worry or irritation but, somehow, the matter appears impenetrable, difficult to grasp. Such, arguably, is how many play provision providers have felt… Continue reading
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Observations on Impact Attenuation Criteria for Playground Surfaces by Professor David Ball
I reprint in full an important and helpful paper by David Ball, Professor of Risk Management at the Centre for Decision Analysis and Risk Management. The paper, ‘Observations on Impact Attenuation Criteria for Playground Surfaces, discusses some of the questions and tensions that inevitably arise whenever risk management decisions need to be made. The paper… Continue reading
About Me
This is Bernard Spiegal’s blog.
I write mainly about Palestine/Israel and related issues; sometimes other stuff too
Bernard Spiegal 