Academics to create record of children’s play during the pandemic

The research project, known as The Play Observatory, has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council’s Covid-19 rapid response call, to research children’s play during this unique time in history.

Yesterday (30 March), an online survey was released, inviting children, young people and adults to share examples of their play.

Researchers at UCL Institute of Education; the University of Sheffield and UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, have been documenting the many ways that children are playing from the outset of the pandemic onwards: by themselves and with others; indoors and outdoors; with and without screens.

Dr Kate Cowan, early years specialist at the Centre for Multimodal Research, UCL Knowledge Lab, told Nursery World, ‘We’re interested in new play that has emerged and how play has continued, changed or adapted.

‘We know play is important for children and young people – a way to relax, form bonds, fight boredom, explore feelings and express thoughts – but we don’t yet know the scale or the nature of how the pandemic has impacted children’s play.

‘We want to know what children have been doing or making, playing or saying for fun or to pass the time. This includes how they’ve played with people they can’t visit; new games they’ve made up and changes they’ve made to games they normally play. We’re also interested in games, sayings, jokes, slang, songs and stories to do with coronavirus (like quarantine, face masks, vaccination and hand-washing).’

The Play Observatory is keen to hear from children and adults across the UK and internationally, as well as schools and children’s organisations, and are hoping to get data from a range of communities.

Ms Cowan added, ‘We know that early years staff are experts in carefully observing and listening to young children and so would be particularly keen to hear about any interesting examples they have noticed. The more we can collect, the more we will learn about what the Covid-19 has meant to children and the power of play during times of uncertainty.’

Photographs, drawings, screenshots, videos and audio recordings, as well as descriptions, are all welcome and the team will also be carrying out online case studies, working with children and young people to create films about life in 2020-2021.

Future generations

One of the aims of the project is to help future generations understand young people’s experiences during the pandemic.

Research collected will be shared in several ways: there will be a searchable online collection of examples, with selected material deposited with the British Library to preserve a record of children’s play for future generations.

An online exhibition at the V&A Museum of Childhood, launched later this year, will showcase examples from the research and the team will also be working with the play team at Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital to develop play wellbeing ‘toolkits’, so that they can use findings from the study to support children during times of change or uncertainty, including beyond the pandemic.

The research builds on the team’s earlier studies of play, including Changing Play, which looks at the relationship between media, commercial markets and children's play in the UK between 1950 and 2011.

For more information, visit www.play-observatory.com

• This is not the first project of this kind. In November 2020, researchers at the University of Reading created an online Pandemic Play Archive where a collection of memories depicting examples of children’s play have been showcased at the Museum of English Rural Life.
  Professor Helen Dodd of the University of Reading told Nursery World, ‘We have received some wonderful examples of children’s play during the pandemic. Contributions are on-going and we are always looking for examples from practitioners working directly with children.’
  
  
• More information https://merl.reading.ac.uk/merl-collections/research-projects/pandemic-play/