The focus of this field study report is on the growing exclusion of children from previously open areas for exploration and play. The report also addresses ways in which children reconnect with and reappropriate those places from which they find themselves excluded. Children from three primary schools in the United Kingdom were actively involved in this study. They not only provided data, they also assisted in the planning and implementation of place-based investigations in areas near the schools, thereby taking an active role in shaping the direction of the research.
After several planning sessions with teachers in each school, the researchers then spent between one and two weeks working directly with the children for the majority of the school day. Much of this time involved investigating specific places of interest in the local area and reflecting on processes of change in those areas. Specific activities, supported by relevant practitioners (artist, storyteller, and ecologist), were used to generate extended reflections. These activities included story writing and storytelling performances about places of local interest; storybook illustration of folktales responding to the local environment; observation of small mammal activity in a local river followed by creative writing about the river environment; and creation of artworks in a local woodland.
Children's reflections encompassed ideas about the past and present use of places important to them. Development of the land was a key theme in children's reflections about the future. They saw the building of new roads and houses as a principal force transforming the environment, resulting in the loss of places of play coupled with negative ecological impacts.
Findings uncovered a “land-use conflict” between children and adults, with children experiencing spatial exclusion – that is, being told by adults that they were not welcome in certain spaces. Such messages were often expressed in two simultaneous forms of enclosure: the designation of spaces for development and of spaces for nature.
Findings also revealed active and creative ways in which children attempted to reconnect with and reappropriate those places from which they found themselves excluded. Both play and imaginative exploration played a role in this reappropriation. This study indicates that exclusion is not an end-point in children's relationships with place, as children find their own unique ways to rebuild relationships with places from which they are excluded.
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