Childhood Hills

Childhood's Domain

Where do children go and what do they do outdoors? How do they evaluate their own environment? What are their likes and dislikes? What would they like to see added or changed? How can the outdoor environment support healthy child development? How is the impact of the environment affected by its social and physical characteristics? How can its developmental impact be strengthened through public policy? These are some of the questions addressed by Childhood’s Domain, originally published in 1986, in which children, as ‘expert’ research collaborators, describe their largely unseen life outdoors. On field trips to secret play places around their homes, in streets, in parks, and in places laid waste and abandoned by adult society, they reveal both the pleasure and difficulties of play in the city. A central concept of the book is a new term, terra ludens, which represents the accumulated developmental support that each child receives from her or his personal play spaces. Terra ludens reflects the degree to which each child acquires an intuitive sense of how the world is by playing with it. Field research for the book was conducted in London, Stevenage New Town and Stoke-on-Trent. Neighbourhood sites were deliberately chosen to contrast and compare children’s reactions to the characteristics of ‘big city’, ‘new town’ and ‘old industrial city’ environments. The most interesting experiences were encountered with children in Stoke-on-Trent. Here, in former mineral workings functioning as ‘playgrounds’ equipped with relics from the heyday of the industrial revolution, in new open spaces reclaimed from industrial ‘wastelands’, and in older parks dating from Victorian times, children demonstrated the creative possibilities of a landscape of opportunities lacking in the other two sites. Even so, children in all three sites revealed great ingenuity in making do with whatever resources they could find to create viable play environments for themselves.

Elisiner

Little Madnesses

'Little madnesses' are our most deeply felt enthusiasms, investments and attachments in the sphere of culture. The term was coined by the child psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, whose work on transitional phenomena grew out of his naming of the transitional object, and extended into preliminary explorations of the crucial role played by cultural experience in a life that feels satisfying. In our socially and culturally sanctioned little madnesses, everyone can find relief from the burden of having to maintain a clear boundary between inner and outer worlds, fantasy and reality, because it is in the space between them that we can find the enthusiasms and passions that excite our creative imaginations. This idea offers intriguing pathways towards understanding how we can engage effectively with the world at a public, social level without setting aside our inner lives, our emotions and our most deeply felt attachments. In Little Madnesses, writers, artists, scholars and experts in a range of fields and disciplines explore the idea of transitional phenomena and consider its potential to extend and deepen our understanding of cultural experience in mental and social life, focusing on the importance of space, place and boundaries in cultural experience; on how we can negotiate media use and cultural identity; and on the aesthetic and creative aspects of cultural experience. Topics covered include cult films, computer use, installation art, trips to the cinema, museums and galleries, the agony and ecstasy of making art and the significance of life stage in cultural experience.