How is Leeds City Council driving the play agenda? Ali Long, course leader of playwork and childhood development at Leeds Beckett University, talks to Leeds City Council’s playwork strategy officer, Jen Rutherford about the impact of Child Friendly Leeds, the opportunity for the sector presented by the Play Festival, the power of play streets and, of course, our wonderful students.

Ali Long

So this is our Playfest podcast episode with Jen Rutherford and it's really exciting to have Jen come and talk to us about the amazing work that she does. So I'm Ali and I'm from the child development play work team at Leeds Beckett University and I'm gonna let Jen introduce herself.

Jen Rutherford

I'm Jen. I work for Child Friendly Leeds and I'm the play strategy officer that's part of Leeds City Council.

Ali Long

Awesome. So will you tell us all about child friendly needs and what that's all about?

Jen Rutherford

Ali Long

So these are playfest little podcasts, and you talk to us then about having the playful wishes that come from children. So children tell us, I mean, we always say play is super important for childhood, for children's experience with their childhood, to make it good and fun and enriching and life affirming. And thenas all the people who see that play is valuable for developing children's growth and learning and all that, and we totally respect all of that. It's all wonderful stuff. But children themselves are saying they want more opportunities to play and that's what underpins the child friendly wishes, which is, which is awesome. So how does your role work in relation to all of that? How how does the work that you're involved in help Leeds become more play friendly?

Jen Rutherford

So what we've got now with the Child Friendly Leeds wishes is that each wish has a lead or some have more than one lead and they can be kind of anywhere across the Council and that person kind of champions that wish and kind of make sure that everybody is thinking about that, you know, it's a priority for children in the city. It should be a priority for you and and then each wish has an action plan which is kind of the short term goals and long term goals and it just makes sure that everybody's really, really focused.

Ali Long

Awesome.

Jen Rutherford

...around how can we move forward on this wish? So we on our last action plan we had a big wish around play streets and just raising awareness, improving the process and just getting out a bit more. So play streets is when residents can apply to the council to close their street on a temporary basis to just create space and time or play as their communities can come together. Kids can play. It's a really, really great project and I think what we although we've had play streets established for a long time, what we felt was like actually people still don't really know about it, and actually I think what often happens is people hear about it and go do that. That's amazing.

Speaker

Yes.

Jen Rutherford

So we did a big push around just trying to make that as straightforward as possible for people, and we had some great support from our child family leader team. We've kind of like comms around that. And that that was on kind of last years and we've seen that, that's just gone much more play streets as soon as people kind of know it's a it's a thing. So that was our focus from last year and we've got some new focuses for this year, but that is about trying to get everybody involved with the priorities for children.

Ali Long

Awesome. And I think that's a really important thing. Play streets are not just for children, are they? You know? Really, really, they're such wonderful knock on effect for communities. Relationships, social networks and communities, elderly people, intergenerational play and all that kind of thing have you found a lot of outcomes for that.

Jen Rutherford

Absolutely. And we actually had a play street relatively recently where there was some a, a lot of people really championing it. But then there was a few people who were a bit nervous about it.

Ali Long

Yeah.

Jen Rutherford

And it kind of when if that happens it tends to go to a bit more of an in-depth conversation about it. You see kind of like is majority in support of this. Yeah. And where it is the place you went ahead and actually the feedback that we got from that Play Street was just amazing and you know actually a small part of that case study was about the kids actually was like,the kids had a great time, but then some of the really amazing stuff that came out of it was people who were quite isolated and vulnerable, forming connections on the streets, some people with long term health conditions who really didn't get the opportunity to come out of the house much, got to come out of the house. You know, you're going, your destination is just your street is your doorstep, but much more manageable. What everybody's out and it's a kind of Fair type thing you.

But you know I Mean just like essence of a festival. Almost.

Speaker

Yes.

Jen Rutherford

All the community brought out food and shared food. And then there was lots of little practical things like, you know, we're all on a WhatsApp now together, we've all shared recommendations for traders...just that thing that is really about like. Strong communities, yeah.

Ali Long

Using the mechanism of play because it all starts with the children and their play and all of the added value that happens as a vote is, I think that's the wonderful thing about play streets. It's that's that intervention that way of working, getting people back out on the streets has it has so many additional benefits. And yet it all comes down to just getting the kids out to play. Exactly. And it's not only them that benefit, it's all of the community in so many different ways. It's awesome.

Jen Rutherford

And that's what I always think about when I think about play is actually like I can link play to everything.

Speaker

Yeah.

Jen Rutherford

Like you did me a thing and it's about play, really at the heart of it and like that kind of stuff about, So the with the play streets as well, it's massively about like community safety. So there's a lot of research out there and kind of make you mark ballots and everything that kids are feeding back is about like safety and not feeling safe, but I think play streets is about almost kind of like reclaiming that space for communities and for play. And you know, once you're not kind of retreating from that space and you're gonna bridge, then yeah, it's kind of like who is occupying that space? Is it the community who wants to play and socialise?

Ali Long

Yeah.

Jen Rutherford

Or is it?

Ali Long

Is it the cars or is it the cars? Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK.

Jen Rutherford

Which is so often the case.

Presenter

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Ali Long

So can I ask then play fest as a celebration of play and creativity in leeds? How does that help you with your just your work as a play play strategy officer?

Jen Rutherford

It massively helps with my work. I think it's because we have incredible organisations, people, artists, businesses in leeds who are doing just so much around playing and when we did our play sufficiency research, which we might come to later, but when we did research around play, what a lot of kind of organised, playful organisations said to us was. You know we love the job we do. We love the work we do. We absolutely know the value of play, but we feel like we work in isolation. And so I think this festival of play is great because it it brings everybody together. Yeah, and I think it’s just, you know, given the situation we're in, in terms of finance and those kind of challenges in the council, it's about everybody coming together and a positivity and you know, we're all doing amazing work and how can we build on that and really kind of growing leeds. And so I think that's been really important and I think also just the coming together of organisations cause I think you know. We have amazing organisations that do that, provide really, really high quality play opportunities and that is massively important, but I think also in Leeds, you know, they're a massive part of that strategic advocating for play bit as well and about that securing the commitment to it as a city. So I think coming together just makes all that so much stronger and and I think it's great and we've had these amazing conversations through the festival that it's about, you know, maybe like lesser known organisations who are doing brilliant work and through the festival we're able to really kind of come together as a community and spotlight on them. You know, like go and see this because this is brilliant, you can look what this person is doing and it allows for like connections. Lots of people and that that helps my job because that is like high quality play across the city, more children playing and people playing more of the time.

Ali Long

And and the process of working together and coming together just means that there's probably gonna have it a catalyst effect, doesn't it? Because people get to know people that they might not have had those links to it. Because when. We when I had the lovely opportunity of working with you with the for the play enabling grant project, I was amazed how many launch such organisations exist across the city that I wasn't aware of and of course play enabling grant the money allocated from the local authority to secure opportunities for children to play. Amazing that Leeds City Council still offer that funding, but for children's play in the current financial climate, what you were saying before, you know, finances are difficult for everybody, local authorities included. But the fact that the local authorities, the local authority, can still carve out a bit of money for play is quite wonderful, and of course we had that lovely opportunity to look at all those, but I can't. I mean, we looked at how many applications did we see..it was 31, but there was a lot, there was a lot, wasn't there. And yet, you know, there's not enough money to go around. But all of those organisations that exist that are quietly just making inroads into improving children's opportunities to play that just, you know, work in their little communities and work with their partners locally. And and this, I suppose, Playfest brings those guys together as well.

Jen Rutherford

Absolutely. And. And that's that kind of real is that local impact that a lot of the time as well is that they are doing that work on the ground, they understand what they a community wants and needs, and they can then influence about, you Because a lot of the time it is around the built Environment or spaces, And and that kind of work.

Ali Long

That's been really exciting for our students to participate in, because I know that when you come to do your talk with our final year students. One of the things that they get from working with in partnership through yourself with these voluntary sector organisations to help them find funding that is one of the things that I think they really gain from is I working when they work with these voluntary sector organisations, when they get the opportunity to look at, to look at how voluntary sector organisations work and and how they source their funding and so on and when they do their little funding project with the the organisations it just really opens the students’ eyes to how grassroots can be, you know, reliant on often volunteers or small committees and or small groups of paid people that are making a massive difference to the lives of their communities. And I think that the work that you've done with us has been really wonderful for enabling our students to have access to the wider play community, you know, because we've got, we've got the team here and of course you come in and see the students and we have lots of other practitioners who come in to see the students. To enable the shoots to go out and see actually the grassroots, what's happening on the ground, the play work that happens in the little community pockets is really wonderful for them and it just helps them see the complexity of funding and how those little communities are directly responding to very, very specific local community need and but all the demographics and how those communities exist, and I think that's been really exciting.

Jen Rutherford

And I think that and the feedback from the organisations has also, it's just been like a really great partnership and that's been a really great thing I think yeah, I think having that experience with like here's the real life bit of it. And hey have brought so much I think to those organisations as well in a real kind of it has been very much like a a partnership and in an exchange of ideas and learnings, they also bring a lot of that kind of really real understanding of play, where some of the organisations are ind of are doing it and I always want to learn, but that kind of like that learning bit as being a really great kind of partnership.

You know the play work kind of side of things as well. So it's been that's been really, really exciting and I know that there's partnerships that have lasted long beyond that.

Ali Long

Yeah.

Speaker

Yeah.

Jen Rutherford

I'm just really exciting for the potential of kind of just building up that workforce around play because, yeah, I've just loved working with them. They've been absolutely amazing and brilliant, and I know I've had student on placement. Yeah, and that was really great for me as well. And that student kind of really came a great place of knowledge when it came to play and you know, I am not.. ‘Imposter!’ but so that that was really, really great for me as well. I think just really, really great reciprocal learning experience. So now I've loved it.

Ali Long

Ohh my gosh, you're in such a lot like massive demand as a placement supervisor now.

Jen Rutherford

Like you know, it might. Not be that exciting, guys.

Ali Long

No, no, my gosh the value I mean the quality of that placement for our graduates and for those who want to go int community development work, play development, work, project development work. It's just so invaluable. And yeah, your name is like banded round our little group of amazing students has been there. The Oracle of play for leads.

Jen Rutherford

I want them all.

Ali Long

You don't say that we'll send them all your way. Absolutely.Right. OK, Jen, I I could talk to you for a very long time, but I'll show up for a bit. And so I want to finish the podcast asking you about what your aspiration is for playing leads. You know, if everything went to plan, all of the things, your massive workload, if you could get through it all, what would you want to achieve?

Jen Rutherford

Ohh my days. I think I think a a big part of it is that we've kind of been on this wonderful, playful campaign that has actually just really instilled a culture of play in the city. And so it is just what we do. All the permissions are there for it. The green spaces are full of play, intergenerational play communities that come together, and there is an opportunity to do whatever and however you want to play. And I think nature would probably be a big part of it and and the way we design spaces is just done through the lens of play, like how can we kind of Foster and encourage that playful interaction for whole communities. i think they would lives better.

Ali Long

Me too. Right. We'll leave it there. Thank. You.