Q&A July/August – Using Imagination
The first Imagination Playground in a Box, a new play space designed by New York architect David Rockwell, was introduced in July at the Brownsville recreation center in Brooklyn, N.Y.
The portable play area — an offshoot of the permanent Imagination Playground concept that is scheduled to break ground later this month — was installed in partnership with Kaboom, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting play space.
The design includes a variety of loose pieces to promote flexibility and allow children to use their imagination to design the play area. Children can transform the playground to suit their needs, as was the case at the introduction ceremony when a water feature incorporated into the play area was manipulated with a series of connected tubes.
Darell Hammond, chief executive officer at Kaboom, spoke with School Construction News during a phone interview.
Q: How did Kaboom get involved with the Imagination Playground?
A: Kaboom is probably the largest purchaser of playground equipment in the country. We watch meta-trends and try to get involved with good ideas and spread them. We think the concepts behind Imagination Playground are a great solution to a problem. We were excited by it, but we also felt we had an obligation to expand the concept.
Q: What was the problem?
A: I think kids are not as creative, engaging or collaborative and they are a lot less fit than they used to be. We have to get them outside and get them moving more. They need to be involved in more child-directed and child-initiated activities, instead of team sports or directed events and activities.
Q: How does Imagination Playground help facilitate that?
A: There are three components to Imagination Playground. The first is the manipulative environment that includes sand and water.
The second component is loose parts. It’s about kids building stuff and tearing it down. They can direct their own play and every time they come to the playground they can do something different.
The third piece is the play associate, which is the stage director for the site who helps maintain the loose parts and anything else. All three components in the same place at the same time make Imagination Playground unique.
Q: Do you think the play-associate component could be prohibitive for some jurisdictions or facilities?
A: It’s definitely a new way of thinking and it is going to require some changing of mindsets. But, when you look at the outcome of more engaged kids who are playing longer and wanting to come back more frequently, I think it’s a trade-off that people will make.
Sometimes there is already staff at a school or center, so this is just an extension of what they would be doing. Volunteers with some formalized training could also monitor the playground.
We need to have broader adoption of all of Imagination Playground’s concepts. There has been a movement around liability and safety that has taken the risk out of play environments.
All of the moving parts have been moved out of playgrounds so there is no maintenance.
This is going to require a different conversation about what is best for our kids, not necessarily how we are going to have to pay for or maintain anything.
Q: Do you think liability concerns are too excessive?
A: I think liability has been the prevailing factor that has driven us for the last decade. It has frankly taken innovation and fun out of the design and taken risk out of the equation.
Fortunately, I think there is a movement afoot to say, “We have to put play and fun back into playgrounds, and we have to have a different tolerance for risk.” With risk, there may be injuries or accidents and that’s OK.
Q: You just introduced the first Imagination Playground; what is the next step?
A: We’re definitely still in a pilot phase and we are going to take all the data and information we get from observing children at the Imagination Playground to have a more expanded understanding of how to roll it out and scale it.
We are going to look at configuration of parts, size and the number of pieces. We are also going to look at the storage box to see how easy it is to roll and maintain. We’ll learn all of those data points from the site and then use that as part of a larger rollout plan.
We’re planning do some pilots this fall in a couple of cities across the country so kids are able to play on it and we can generate some interest. By the first and second quarter of next year, we hope to be able to sell the playgrounds at schools and daycare centers and the larger destination parks across the country.
Children play with the moveable components at the Brooklyn playground.
Q: What has been the biggest challenge for you?
A: With Imagination Playground, I think the biggest challenge is learning a whole new operation to support it. When we started building playgrounds 13 years ago, not as many people were using volunteers and community labor to build and install playgrounds.
We had a hard time convincing people that volunteers could do an equally good job as paid professionals. We’re quite proud of the fact that, 13 years later, Kaboom is building volunteer-built playgrounds, along with the rest of the industry.
Now we think we can have the same sort of lever with the concepts of Imagination Playground, but it’s going to require adoption of new concepts that are different from the trend around maintenance, personnel and allowing kids to get dirty and sweaty.
We are looking at how to get the playground at a price point that is attractive so it can spread and be affordable. We are also looking at how to source the loose parts that David Rockwell designed.
Q: Are you actively looking for manufacturers to work on the project?
A: Yes, we’re looking for manufacturers and we’re trying to understand the product liability associated with this. We are also looking at the product itself to see which parts kids use more than others, if they are the right sizes and textures, what type of distribution system is needed, and how to get park and recreation directors and school facilities folks to know about the project as a recess solution. We’re also looking at how to enter the daycare market. It’s business planning 101, soup to nuts.
Q: What were you doing before Imagination Playground?
A: Over 13 years, Kaboom raised more than $130 million and built 1,400 playgrounds at daycare centers, homeless shelters, battered women shelters, boys and girls clubs, YMCAs and charter schools using our signature community-built process.
We have the kids design the space and the parents and corporate sponsors bring out volunteers to construct these like an old-fashioned Amish barn raising.
We primarily focused on private child-serving organizations, and not as much on public parks or schools. We think the concept of Imagination Playground is squarely suited for public parks and schools.
It’s an exciting new market for us. Schools have facility, recess and after-school programming and more schools are starting to open up their schoolyards on weekends, after school and on holidays. It is important to have equipment that is engaging and fun.
Children used the playground’s components to channel a water feature at the playground.
Q: What is the significance of volunteer-built playgrounds?
A: It’s neighbors who live right next to the property, with volunteers who don’t live there who come in with the corporate sponsor. It creates a sense of pride and accomplishment. People start to think: If we can build a playground in a day using teamwork, imagine what else we could do in our communities for our kids and seniors if we collaborate to tackle some of society’s most pressing problems.
Q: It sounds like your organization matches Rockwell’s philosophy — you are attempting to create communities and forge community ties.
A: Absolutely, we’ve learned so much about Rockwell’s understanding of sense of place and how senses of place encourage people to gather and congregate. When people gather and congregate, they start to collaborate and communicate and so forth. I think Kaboom is going to evolve from just being playground builders to builders of play environments. The play environments are going to be much more multiplatform instead of just pieces of playground equipment and benches. They will include multi-sensory environments including loose parts, water, sand, art, sculpture and murals.
Q: What else is important for you?
A: Schools and facilities people play such a vital role in the community. They really have to think about their obligation and responsibility from a maintenance perspective and a child-development perspective.
What they build should reinforce what students are learning in school, and how to get them involved with more physical activity while they are on school grounds. How do you add splashes of color? How do you add multi-textured environments? How do you incorporate nurture and nature into your schoolyards?
I think those types of textured environments are what the future of schoolyards is starting to look like: more community grounds, open 24 hours a day, and classroom lessons.
Q: How does the Imagination Playground support learning and lessons from the classroom?
A: We say a happy child is a dirty child. While I was at the Imagination Playground opening, I saw kids collaborating, using imagination and creativity, and exploring and testing limits and boundaries without anybody telling them what they couldn’t do. Imagination Playground is the opportunity to invent, create and build off something instead of having somebody telling them, “No.” It allows them to test their creativity and test their limits.
Q: What other projects are you working on at Kaboom?
A: We just completed Operation Playground 100. We set the goal after hurricanes Katrina and Rita to raise $8.5 million to build 100 playgrounds along the Gulf Coast, which we’re quite proud of.
We also know and recognize the work is not done yet and we will continue to be in the Gulf Coast as long as there is a need for play environments. We have built at a lot of schools in Mississippi and New Orleans that have become an extension of the communities, which was new for us.
We don’t traditionally build at schools, and I think we built in every recovery school district in New Orleans and each one has a community-built playground.
Q: How much work is left on the Gulf Coast?
A: We’re on our 104th playground now, but we’ve still got another 40 or 50 applications. We’re still out there fund raising and as soon as a different school comes online — this August five more elementary schools are going to come online — it continues to create more demand. I imagine it’s going to be like that for the next five to 10 years.
We’re also trying to build an online community of people interested in play, design and Imagination Playground. We’re launching an expanded version of our play space finder tool later this year, which allows communities to map their play spaces with photos. They can then invite parents and community members to rate those play spaces, which will ultimately create different lists of most unique features and cleanliness.
It’s will be user-generated content that builds the platform, but it also informs us of innovations and what’s interesting and unique — new concepts that can be spread.