Everyday Playfulness
A New Approach to Children's Play and Adult Responses to It
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- Foreword
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Seeing play as an important and vital element of life for children and adults alike, this book addresses the ways in which practitioners take account of and act responsibly with moments of children's play and playfulness.
Working with the Playwork Principles, the book draws on alternative concepts to traditional approaches, including ideas from materialist and posthuman philosophy and human geography, to explore playing as process rather than product. Topics covered include play and wellbeing, play and space, and the micro-politics of playing, critical cartography and adult account-ability and response-ability. It concludes by considering the implications for professional practice and offering ways that professionals can develop practices that maintain and co-create favourable conditions in which children's play can flourish.
Working with the Playwork Principles, the book draws on alternative concepts to traditional approaches, including ideas from materialist and posthuman philosophy and human geography, to explore playing as process rather than product. Topics covered include play and wellbeing, play and space, and the micro-politics of playing, critical cartography and adult account-ability and response-ability. It concludes by considering the implications for professional practice and offering ways that professionals can develop practices that maintain and co-create favourable conditions in which children's play can flourish.
- Published: Dec 19 2019
- Pages: 256
- 228 x 152mm
- ISBN: 9781785920646
Press Reviews
Liz Jones, Emeritus Professor, Manchester Metropolitan University
This book is a 'must read' for those working/researching/studying the field of play/child/childhood. Stuart Lester puts into play Deleuzian posthumanist theories and in so doing he intellectually and practically departs from standard accounts of play and (professional) practice. The book exemplifies how change must and can occur so that normative, hierarchical and inequitable systems of organisation that currently circumscribe children's play can both be resisted and reconfigured.
Peter Kraftl, Professor of Human Geography, University of Birmingham, UK
In this skillfully-edited and wonderfully-crafted book, Stuart Lester outlines a critical cartography of play. Weaving empirical and applied insights together with theories of urbanity, enchantment, politics, space and far more besides, he offers no less than an exciting, open-ended, generative and typically generous theorisation of play. Ultimately, this book should interest anyone who wants to know more about why else, how else, and where else play matters.
John Fitzpatrick and Bridget Handscomb, Gwealan Tops Adventure Playground
This is an extraordinary book which encourages you to think differently about children, their play and playwork practice. It is a joy to take a nomadic wandering and wondering walk with Stuart Lester paying attention to small moments of play and playfulness. Covering a wide and diverse range of perspectives Stuart's is a voice that sparkles.