Changing the Way We Think About Play
By
Robert Lavelle

from a forthcoming book edited by Elizabeth Goodenough, Wayne State UniversityPress, 2007



I work in the emerging field known as public engagement. Let me state clearly that public engagement is not the same thing as public relations. In the field of public relations, the goal is to persuade people or to sell them ideas. In the field of public engagement, the goal is to help the public engage with complex issues and problems, to help them listen to each other and to new ideas. I’m an unlikely person to be so deeply involved in the field of public engagement. I’m not a very public person. I don’t mind being in a crowd, but I’d prefer not to address the crowd. I’m more “bookish” than “organizer.” But how I ended up in this field mirrors where we are today in terms of implementing change in our highly fragmented communities.

Over the course of twenty-five years, I’ve moved from the field of book publishing to public television and then to public engagement. I recognize that at heart, what I’ve been trying to do is to help ideas that I believe in have a substantial impact. As a book editor, the books I helped bring into the world were often serious, and thoughtful (and admittedly, usually unprofitable). I deeply wanted to have an impact, but the books came and went. After a few years, I learned of a project being developed in Boston --- it was going to be a major television documentary series on the history of the civil rights movement. I left publishing to enter the world of public television working on what would become the acclaimed series “Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years.” I wanted to work on something that would have an impact. “Eyes on the Prize” got more attention than I could have imagined. The companion volume that I helped produce hit several bestseller lists. The television series won numerous awards. I stayed with that production company, called Blackside, for over thirteen years. But during those years I witnessed the rise of cable television, satellite television, computer games, video games, the internet...and with each expansion of electronic communications technology, the ideas we presented on television and in books had a harder and harder time creating an impact. With so many options, it was difficult to get viewers’ attention; and with so much media coming so fast, it was even harder to turn viewers into active, engaged citizens. With my colleagues, I began creating ways of bringing community members together in structured settings for deliberation, using media as a catalyst. After Henry Hampton, the founder of Blackside, died, Martha Fowlkes (another Blackside executive) and I started our own company, Roundtable, which, as its name implies, is dedicated to bringing citizens together for discussion and action.

So what does this have to do with changing the way communities think about play? When I began in this field, I believed strongly in the power of a good idea. As though if we only had the right answer, things would fall into place, whatever the problem. As media production has surpassed our capacity to absorb it, good ideas are not all that hard to find. What is hard to find is the public will to implement those good ideas.


The Where Do the Children Play? project brings together several important elements that illustrate the situation we find ourselves in. We know that children’s universal access to natural spaces, to unstructured play, is deeply important to the development of healthy children -- physically, socially, intellectually, emotionally and in other ways. We also now know that that access has been diminishing significantly in recent years. The problem may be recognized by experts, but changing the public’s priorities to enable solutions to emerge is a challenge. There are numerous community problems that need our attention, that call for us to change. But change demands hard work, especially when it requires consensus and compromise. And change is made more difficult when we must rank this problem in relation to other social problems. It is far easier to sustain the status quo, or to convince ourselves that expressing concern or guilt is enough or to hold a fundraiser, answer a questionnaire, share our anger or frustration with like-minded souls and feel like we’ve done something systemic that will result in long term change. As I said earlier, good ideas are too rarely implemented. Rational arguments do not often result in change. But the Where Do the Children Play? project puts the issues of social isolation, withdrawal from our physical community, and the effects these changes wreak directly before us in the social, emotional and intellectual lives of our communities’ most vulnerable members, our children. This project is a perfect reminder that while we may be members of innumerable “communities of interest” (meeting in chatrooms, or posting on each others’ blogs) we actually live in a physical community. When we see our children more familiar with creatures in the phenomenally popular online game “World of Warcraft” than the creatures in the woods near the park, or when they spend more time IMing fellow gamers half way around the country (or world) than they do playing with their friends and neighbors down the street, we’re seeing a clear manifestation of the changes in childhood as well as in our communities.


Before Roundtable takes on a project, usually at the behest of a funder, an organization or perhaps a documentary producer or television station, we ask ourselves: Do we think this is a problem that affects a significant number of people? A problem that has possible solutions that can be implemented at the local level? And a problem that is of significant importance to warrant intruding upon existing local priorities and seeking attention and resources? If yes, we then set about creating tools – videos, print support, Web resources – that will help inform the targeted public and provide a structured space for local coalition building, assessment, discussion, and action.

Lack of access to play has many commonalities across the nation, but the challenges posed at the local level are usually peculiar to that local environment. And so in our approach, we do not assume that our project is appropriate for every community in the nation. When it comes to adopting social changes we have found it useful to borrow from the field of public health. When some public health researchers are predicting whether or not an individual is ready to change his or her behavior, they often assess the individual and assign that person to one of four categories. We have found it useful to use those same categories to describe communities’ readiness for change. Some communities are just not ready to think about it (these we term the “preconceptuals”); others are at least ready to consider the need for change, to consider recognizing the problem (the “conceptuals”); some communities are further along on the continuum, have recognized the problem and are now ready to take action (“action-takers”); and some have recognized the problem, have taken action, and need support to maintain their change (“maintainers”). In a world of limited resources, in which we want to see our project have a measurable impact, we need to identify which communities are ready to take action, and we seek to enlist them in our campaign. Additionally, as a secondary goal, we hope to move other communities further along the continuum of change relative to their current position.

To determine which communities could benefit the most from involvement in the Where Do the Children Play campaign – that is, which are ready to take action – we’ll be taking a two-track approach. First, we listen to our project advisors, foundation program officers, staff of national organizations working in the field of play as well as field producers, and find out who is dealing with this issue in various communities across the country. Our advisors, national partners and funders have first-hand knowledge and provide consulting and financial resources to active groups and so are well aware of at least a portion of those communities addressing the issue. Second, we do a modest attempt at data-mining. By observing ballot initiatives, voting records, governors’ “State of the State” addresses, and scanning local and regional press sources, we try to identify additional communities that are addressing the issue of “universal access to play.”

After identifying appropriate communities, we will begin recruiting organizations within those communities to build a coalition with other relevant associations and institutions willing to address, in this case, the issue of increasing access to play. We provide educational videos to make sure all participants have a baseline of knowledge and then print and online tools to help guide the process in an inclusive, deliberative manner. The coalitions assess their local challenges and opportunities for change and come to an agreement on a year-long plan of action (varying from community to community based on local context). The action plan is often launched at an event...for which we supply an event video (excerpts from the documentary), often we’ll send a producer or advisor as a guest.


It is important to note that not every member of a targeted community needs to be recruited or engaged with the issue. For the Where Do the Children Play? campaign we are targeting formal and informal leaders, influential and active citizens and people who often frame the way communities consider new ideas. In the field of children’s play, these community members might include elected officials, journalists, educators, police officials, health and medical staff, child development professionals, academics from nearby universities, development executives, business leaders, park and recreation officials, and urban planners. And while bringing in local experts and decision makers is important, long term success requires that stakeholder-citizens be included in meaningful ways (parents, grandparents, caregivers and children). As local community’s form a coalition to address the issue of restricted access to play, it is critical that both the planning group and public participants include a variety of perspectives....those who tend to resist new community initiatives for financial reasons, those who are likely boosters, those who are disabled or have disabled children, senior citizens, and a meaningful representation of ages, incomes, races and ethnicities.

We live in highly partisan times where ideology has a tendency to become strident. This stridency is acute on a non-local basis. Ranting and raving on a blog or at a stranger’s houseparty where you’ve just watched a propaganda documentary, or phoning in to a reactionary radio program, or bombarding an offending newspaper with a wave of rabid email is very easy to accomplish. Individually, participants suffer no direct social consequences for their behavior. However, we live locally and such confrontational behavior or divisive behavior that seeks to squelch dissent is not sustainable in brick and mortar communities. The issues surrounding access to play must compete with a host of other issues confronting communities. It is helpful to humanize the issues and the opposition to resolving those issues by bringing together people who are not like-minded; including people who have divergent opinions and are looking at the issues from very different perspectives. When Roundtable helps coalitions undertake this activity, we make sure that all participants understand the need for listening, for civility, for being mindful of the difference of fact and opinion (both being welcomed). Democracy lives through deliberation and civic participation, not just voting, and a community’s ability to deal with problems demands that we put partisanship aside to work toward progress.

When it comes to adopting change, we’ve developed a version of the classic framework laid out by Everett Rogers in his survey book, “Diffusion of Innovations. ” In that book he notes that change is adopted by groups to the extent that it has the following characteristics [note, text in italics are from Rogers’ book]:
• Relative Advantage…the degree to which an innovation is perceived as better than the idea it supersedes. The degree of relative advantage may be measured in economic terms, but social prestige, convenience, and satisfaction are also important factors. It does not matter so much if an innovation has a great deal of objective advantage…the greater the perceived relative advantage of an innovation, the more rapid its rate of adoption will be.
• Compatibility…the degree to which an innovation is perceived as being consistent with the existing values, past experiences, and needs of potential adopters. An idea that is incompatible with the values and norms of a social system will not be adopted as rapidly as innovation that is compatible. The adoption of an incompatible innovation often requires the prior adoption of a new value system, which is a relatively slow process.
• Complexity…the degree to which an innovation is perceived as difficult to understand and use. New ideas that are simpler to understand are adopted more rapidly than innovations that require the adopter to develop new skills and understandings.
• Trialability…the degree to which an innovation may be experimented with on a limited basis. New ideas that can be tried on the installment plan will generally be adopted more quickly than innovations that are not divisible.
• Observability…the degree to which the results of an innovation are visible to others. The easier it is for individuals to see the results of an innovation, the more likely they are to adopt it. Such visibility stimulates peer discussion of a new idea.

With those characteristics in mind, we work with the video and print materials and online resources at hand to present the benefits of change.

One project, even a year-long project with multiple media components, rarely affects substantial change. But if a project aligns itself with existing and emerging trends at the local level; is respectful of local needs, promotes change in stages with the benefits of change being shared and made obvious, a single project can help further progress in the field substantially and measurably. Not in isolation, but in concert with other programs, projects and initiatives. Recently Roundtable launched a national dialogue and action campaign called “The College Track: America’s Sorting Machine.” The project sought to highlight the importance of all children being prepared to succeed in post-secondary education, especially in the emerging economy. The project also brought to light the fact that most communities continue to track students based on income, race, ethnicity, and whether or not their parents went to college (though today it is rarely openly called “tracking.”) The project consisted of a three-part documentary series that we produced for public television, a “Community Connections” campaign to build coalitions in targeted communities and help them address the issues of access and equity in readying all students for success in college; and a “National Awareness Initiative” which recruited formal and informal leaders in our participating communities to take materials – video, print, audio – to the offices of local decision makers or to luncheon meetings or roundtable breakfasts to highlight the issues and solutions at the local level to people in a position to help set local agendas or allocate resources. The results were remarkable. Over 150 communities launched year-long projects seeking to improve the middle-school through college degree pipeline. Mayors, school superintendents, state legislatures, business people, and most importantly parents, students, and the numerous organizations and associations that in one way or another were already working on the issues surrounding inequity in access to higher education came together and formed over 110 new coalitions. Each region and community identified the issue or issues related to the project that they wanted to work on. The issues varied at the local level from communication (New Hampshire set up a new toll free number to guide families to helpful resources) to mentoring (communities such as Cincinnati and Seattle established new mentoring programs) to identity issues (in Alaska, Inuits who had completed college were brought back to visit middle and secondary school students to demonstrate that one can retain tribal identity and go to post-secondary school). Most of the efforts were supported by additional media programming on the radio or in print, and most are committed to continuing their work together.

The issues surrounding access to play for children are many, including: universal access for the disabled and underserved populations, crime, education, health, safety, sidewalks and transportation, urban planning, zoning, and scheduling. Fortunately, there are numerous organizations, associations, and informal groups working on these issues. We are hopeful that we can help these organizations, associations, volunteers and formal and informal leaders make progress. They are undertaking the important work of helping all children from all walks of life – urban, suburban, rural, able-bodied and those who have some disability, those from well-resourced communities and those from communities working through the myriad issues of poverty – to grow through playing in the outdoors and in unstructured settings. We are convinced that a national project with local applications that harnesses the human resources in communities concerned with increasing access to play can have a significant impact. The time to launch such an initiative is now.