Social Engineers on the Swings: The changing environmental and social landscapes of children's play in British and Canadian parks, 1918-1939

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AHRC : Jonathan Winder : AH/L50 3861/1From international UN initiatives to special editions of academic journals, the creation of child friendly cities has been the focus of both scholarly and public interest in recent years. Despite this, there has been little dedicated research into the history of public landscapes designed specifically for children in either Canada or the UK. Jonathan's research in the UK has identified evidence of early twentieth-century links between British and Canadian notions of childhood and playground technology. A placement at the University of British Columbia (UBC) will provide unique opportunities for him to collect archival data that would otherwise be impossible from the UK. It will also provide intellectual and practical support from award-winning Canadian scholars across a number of disciplines, including environmental history, histories of childhood, and landscape architecture. Having already held preliminary discussions with academics across Canada, he is well placed to develop these relationships further and explore opportunities for international research collaboration.Central to this project is the idea of recreation as a socially and politically mediated activity, one that communicates important historical reflections on social control and identity politics. As such, a key objective will be to explore how play spaces were created to contain, control, nurture and nourish, as well as the extent to which authorities perceived children's use of these spaces to be appropriate or subversive. In addition, the project will investigate the processes that were involved in the movement of ideas and playground technology between the UK and Canada and how they were adapted to local social and cultural contexts. Preliminary archival research using online catalogues has shown that there is a significant amount of relevant material in the Canadian archives.The research project will make an important and original contribution to public and academic discourse and will help to address social challenges facing Canada and the UK. Uncovering the historical development of play spaces, as well as children's place in the urban environment more generally, will provide important context for the work of both national and international initiatives in both the UK and Canada. It will make an important contribution to both academic knowledge and professional practice in relation to the development, management and sustainability of play spaces specifically and green spaces generally. The project will benefit Canada by providing research capacity to undertake original archival data collection and facilitate an exploration of an under-researched area of Canadian history. The project will benefit the UK by improving the skills and international networks of UK-based researchers. It will also help to address pressing social challenges facing both countries by providing important contextual information for the work of British and Canadian local governments involved in the UNICEF's Child Friendly Cities Initiative, as well as the work of the UK's Parks Action Group. If this project does not go ahead, there is a significant risk that efforts to make our cities more child friendly will lack the historical context necessary for improving the urban environment in sustainable, inclusive and meaningful ways.