Not just playgrounds 

Why play should be a central focus of the Pride in Place programme

Guest blog by Professor Alison Stenning, Newcastle University

In September 2025, the Starmer government launched the ‘Pride in Place’ programme, focused on investing in and accelerating change in nearly 300 urban communities. The programme will target some of the UK’s most marginalised communities, ‘doubly-disadvantaged’ by high levels of economic and social need.  

The power of play: revealing and tackling injustice 

Pride in Place’s three objectives are to build stronger communities, create thriving places and empower people to take back control .  

So, where does play fit into this? 

A substantive and broad play lens matches the aims of the programme extremely well. But it also has the potential to push Pride in Place further, by centring questions of social, spatial and environmental justice. 

Much of this reflects not only my research and advocacy on play on streets and in neighbourhoods, but particularly on collaborative ongoing play and play sufficiency research in Jarrow since autumn 2023, before and during the town’s engagement with the Long-Term Plan for Towns (announced in late 2023) and Pride in Place. 

Photos: Play under threat in Jarrow (images provided by Professor Alison Stenning)

Play and Pride in Place 

• Uneven geographies of play can be a good indicator of neighbourhood need. The quality and maintenance of playgrounds, pollution in and around play space, for example, all reflect wider patterns of inequality. 

• Play is community development. Play supports family life and connections within communities. Research and activism around play holds “that children and their play are not separate from other aspects of community life” and that “more people playing out more of the time in more places can improve community cohesion and strengthen intergenerational relationships”.  

• Play animates communities. It often transforms urban environments into spaces full of colour and mark-making, while making space for emotion and care. Play can animate streets and draw adults out, as they care for their children. Where children play, adults meet. 

• A play-friendly neighbourhood is a neighbourhood that’s better for everyone. Policies and practices that support play also support a wider sense of accessibility, safety and community. It’s often noted that child-friendly environments are also positive for older people and for those with compromised health and mobility. 

• Play opens our eyes to the spaces and qualities of our streets and neighbourhoods. The very act of trying to play in our neighbourhoods forces us to notice and document, implicitly and explicitly, the injustices we encounter – whether that’s about the dominance of motor vehicles or the everyday juggling of those living on the street. 

• Play enables public conversations. It makes space for neighbours – of all ages – to share information, concerns, perspectives. Play can enable creative ways to engage communities that are more inviting and accessible than meetings in community centres or online surveys. Play sufficiency approaches allow meaningful engagement with children and young people. 

• Space for play is social infrastructure.  Play spaces – formal and informal – are sites of sociality, for children and their carers, and can facilitate encounter and care, often between generations.  

• Play engenders a sense of belonging, and a right to claim neighbourhood space, for play and more. For a start, “play is the principal way in which children participate within their own communities”. Children who grow up with a sense of connection to their neighbourhoods are more likely to be “active in forging and maintaining community relations and engaging with others living or working locally”. Indeed, we could argue that play (broadly defined) is how children and young people develop pride in their places. 

• Play is prefigurative – it literally plays around with ideas and with environments. It can prefigure a different kind of urban world, reflecting the needs and desires of children, and their families and wider communities. 

In all these ways, we can see play supporting Pride in Place’s three overarching aims as well as bringing wider benefits. 

Photo: A child plays on a rope swing in Jarrow (image provided by Professor Alison Stenning)

A broader approach to play 

Some ‘first phase’ Pride in Place programmes are already beginning to identify play as an important aspect of their work, and key actors – such as councillors and MPs – in other communities are both championing the need for investment in play and noticing how often play arises in community conversations.  

But, in many of these, the focus is on playgrounds – either redeveloping rundown playgrounds or calling for the creation of new ones – a focus reinforced by the £18 million playgrounds fund (announced in 2025). 

Playgrounds are important, but they can never be the only spaces for play in a neighbourhood. 

So, what broader approaches to play might Pride in Place engage with to achieve more? These suggestions emerged from our Jarrow work. They offer ideas for engaging with play to explore the foundations of Pride in Place and possibilities for thinking more expansively about play and community. 

• Use play as a lens to pay attention to the quality and safety of neighbourhood public spaces, from doorsteps, to paths, parks and town centres. 

• Create neighbourhood public spaces that are safe and comfortable in all weathers and seasons, enabling them to be used in bad weather and in the dark. 

• Enable safe and accessible routes between playable spaces, in turn creating good routes throughout the neighbourhood. 

• Demonstrate a concern for the quality of public space by repairing and maintaining the playgrounds, benches, paths, etc. used by playing children. 

• Fund playworkers and youth workers to create more opportunities for public play and support the animation of public space by play. 

• Build adventure playgrounds. 

• Recognise the value of community play spaces (such as adventure playgrounds) as hubs for wider social action (safeguarding, food banks, family support, etc.) 

• Develop a play streets programme, allowing ordinary residential space to be safely reclaimed for play. 

• Improve facilities such as toilets and access to drinking water to enable children and young people to play for longer more comfortably. 

• Integrate play into child poverty strategies to support families, financially and in other ways, to facilitate their children’s play 

• Remove No Ball Games signs and address resident concerns about the possible negative impacts of play in other ways, including by championing the critical value of play. 

• Develop a pro-play policy at neighbourhood board or council level to underline the premise that play should be permitted. 

• Adopt a play sufficiency approach to map play and develop a strategy for more, better play. 

• Ensure that more children with additional needs, children from migrant and refugee families, and others with protected characteristics are equally able to access space to play. 

While it’s far too early to say what might happen with play and Pride in Place, it’s clear that there is much that could happen in this space – and I’ll be watching closely. 

This is an edited version of a blog that was published on the researching relationships blog (original here).

The research in Jarrow that supported the arguments in this blog post was carried out with Paula Turner, Michelle Trotter, Jackie Boldon, Gemma Lockyer Turnbull, and Gerard New, with the support of various small grants from Newcastle University.