Ways and means: Reclaiming our streets for children

My memories of childhood are distant but vivid. They take me back to a 1950s street of terraced houses. It was not a zinc-bath-in-front-of-the-fire childhood. We had a bathroom, but no central heating and no indoor toilet. However, it was a playing-out-in-the-street childhood. So, I was interested to meet Alison Stenning to learn about her campaigning efforts in North Tyneside to reclaim streets for children.

Alison’s involvement started in 2015 with a two-year pilot project covering ten streets. With a permit from North Tyneside Council, groups of local residents donned high-viz jackets, set-out lines of traffic cones and blocked off sections of urban roads. Local children emerged from their homes and street games ensued involving balls, bikes, skipping ropes and chalk. It was for only three hours and only once a month. It was not the same as the spontaneous, unsupervised play of my childhood, but it was a start.

This was followed by PlayMeetStreet North Tyneside in 2017, which spread to almost 100 streets. Some of these have played out just once or twice, but most have organised a series of play streets, and around 40 have been running monthly play streets. Alison estimates that in total, this resident led local initiative has enabled about 180,000 informal child-play-hours on the streets of North Tyneside. These numbers suggest that North Tyneside’s play streets scheme is one of the largest in the country, with only Bristol (where the scheme started) and London supporting a larger number of play streets.

Alison says reasons for getting involved in play streets include:

   To create safe space for children to meet each other and play on their doorsteps;

   To get to know neighbours better;

   To create a sense of community;

   To enable greater independence for growing children.

We can’t turn back the clock. During my childhood only 20% of households owned a car (and it was a lot less than that in my street), but now only 20% of UK households don’t own a car and many own more than one. Our streets are over-flowing with cars – parked at the kerb or driving through. It seems unlikely that will change, but the experience of Alison Stenning and others like her shows that we can find a way to reclaim our streets for children to play safely. It may be only for a few hours once a month, but it’s a start.

For more information go to PlayMeetStreet North Tyneside: What have we achieved? | researchingrelationships (ncl.ac.uk)

                                                                                                                   John Gowing