Traditional games get a modern twist in today’s school playgrounds
Traditional children’s games such as Tag and “Ipi–dipi-dation” are thriving in 21st century school playgrounds. New research by the Institute of Education, the University of East London and the University of Sheffield, a ground-breaking website (www.bl.uk/playtimes) from the British Library, and a documentary film produced as part of the project all show that, rather than dying out as some fear, children’s play is in robust health.
Launched by former Children’s Laureate, Michael Rosen, the findings and outcomes of this two-year project, Children’s Playground Games and Songs in the New Media Age (report link - http://tinyurl.com/6cssrat), funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), will be unveiled at the British Library on the 15 March along with the Playtimes website which features unique recordings and footage of children’s games and rhymes from 1900 to the present day.
The research findings counteract the widely held belief that the media is destroying the imaginative play of children. By observing play over two years in playgrounds in Sheffield and London, researchers have found that games consoles, pop music and television actually enrich children’s pretend play; adding topical themes to fantasy scenarios as youngsters incorporate their favourite characters, reality TV stars, pop songs and dance moves into their make-believe worlds.
Today’s children act out the Jeremy Kyle Show, or Britain’s Got Talent, as well as engaging in play based on computer games, in which scenarios of combat, stealthy hunting, fantasy weapons and warriors, and computer consoles feature. Other media sources include contemporary pop stars such as Beyonce, musicals such as Mamma Mia and High School Musical, adventure films and novels such as Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, computer game characters such as Mario, and manga-styled animations such as Ben 10.
Professor Jackie Marsh of University of Sheffield said: “The project has shown how childhood is changing in a new media age. But today’s children have to manage an increasingly complex world of technology and information and the project has shown how these aspects of their lives are crucially important for their social, emotional and cultural development. The playground provides an important space for children to engage with how their culture is changing in a digital age.”
But children rarely simply copy what they’ve memorised; instead, they transform, recombine and subvert. One child involved in the study described a favourite game: “Some people play Dr Who by choosing characters from the show and then improvising. They travel to different places in the police box, fight villains and save the world.”
A new picture of children’s games is emerging and this research is joined by online access to hundreds of historic and contemporary recordings of children’s play reminding us of both changes and continuities from generation to generation. “Pretend play is still flourishing,” says Andrew Burn of the IOE, leader of the project. “Children have always enjoyed enacting scenarios from their home or school lives, as well as fantasy stories involving witches, zombies, princesses, martial arts warriors and other figures.”
So-called traditional games have always incorporated elements of children’s media cultures. In the sixties, seventies and eighties, folklorists Iona and Peter Opie documented how the games of the time included fragments of advertising jingles, pop songs, theme tunes, film stars and soap operas and this project builds upon their work uncovering an even wider range of media-related play. As part of the project, the British Library has digitised the Opies’ field recordings, making them available alongside older and newer recordings on the Playtimes website whose design was influenced by suggestions from a panel of children from the participating schools.
The British Library’s website is asking both children and adults to send in their own stories – in this way it will build an ongoing archive of recorded children’s play, following on from the Opies’ work. Children are being asked to recognise that their own culture is a fascinating topic for research – and are being encouraged to become researchers of their own culture.
In addition, the two schools feature in a 50 minute documentary film, Ipi-dipi-dation: My Generation, produced by Grethe Mitchell of the University of East London as part of the project, which is premiering at Tuesday’s event. Featuring unique footage highlighting the diversity and complexity of children’s play, and interviews with boys and girls aged six to eleven talking about their games, the documentary offers a fascinating insight into the world of the playground as seen by the children themselves.
The project has also brought traditional play culture into the age of new media, developing a computer game called the Game Catcher, which combines traditional clapping games with the latest videogame technology from the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Kinect. Grethe Mitchell, Senior Lecturer at the University of East London said: “Playground and computer games are normally seen in opposition to one another, but the Game Catcher extends the reach of playground games into the new media age, fostering a new form of electronic play and allowing games to be shared with children who are far away or perhaps because they are ill, cannot be present in the playground.”
-ENDS-
For further information, please contact:
AHRC - Arts and Humanities Research Council
Jake Gilmore – + 44 (0) 1793 41 6021, j.gilmore@ahrc.ac.uk
British Library
Miki Lentin, Head of Media Relations, + 44 (0) 20 7412 7112, miki.lentin@bl.uk
Julie Yau, Arts Press Officer, + 44 (0) 20 7412 7237, julie.yau@bl.uk
Institute of Education
Diane Hofkins, Interim Press Officer, + 44 (0) 20 7911 5423, d.hofkins@ioe.ac.uk
James Russell, Press Assistant, + 44 (0) 20 7911 5556, j.russell@ioe.ac.uk
University of East London
Chris Underwood, Senior Press Officer, + 44 (0) 20 8223 2062, c.underwood@uel.ac.uk
University of Sheffield
Shemina Davis, Media Relations Officer, + 44 (0) 114 222 5339, shemina.davis@sheffield.ac.uk
Spokespeople:
• British Library Website / Opie Archive – Laura Jopson, Researcher Children’s Play in New Media Age / Jonnie Robinson - Lead Curator Education and Sociolinguistics
• Report – Prof. Andrew Burn, Centre for the Study of Children, Youth & Media
• Computer Games & Documentary – Grethe Mitchell, Senior Lecturer University of East London
Notes to Editors:
Project Background
1. The two-year project received funding of £600,000 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of a wider programme called Beyond Text, which aims to uncover how cultural practices involve widely differing forms and media, and how these are employed in different cultural settings in today’s world.
2. The project has updated the picture of children’s play and games by researching over two years in playgrounds in London and Sheffield. Researchers observed children’s play over the two years, filming, recording, note-taking and interviewing. They also involved panels of children in the research, giving them high-definition video cameras to record their play.
3. A 50 minute documentary film was made as part of the project, featuring a wide range of playground activity found on the two playgrounds in Sheffield and London and interviews with boys and girls aged six to eleven talking about their play. A 30 minute version of the film will be premiered at the March event at the British Library.
4. The project ran a special conference for children in Sheffield on February 15 at the Showroom Cinema, hosted by performance poet Ian McMillan. The children explored play and games through the British Library website, played with the computer game produced as part of the project, viewed excerpts from the documentary film, and made presentations of their own research.
5. The outcomes of the project will be of interest to various sectors. Educators will be able to use the website within the curricula for literacy, music, dance, citizenship and humanities. Policymakers will be able to use the findings of the project in considerations of play provision, and the design of play spaces and playgrounds. Scholars of play and games will be able to use the website and archive for future studies. The documentary provides the general public with insight into the current world of children’s play and the computer game prototype will interest scholars, players and producers of new technologies.
Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC): Each year the AHRC provides approximately £112 million from the Government to support research and postgraduate study in the arts and humanities, from languages and law, archaeology and English literature to design and creative and performing arts. In any one year, the AHRC makes approximately 700 research awards and around 1,300 postgraduate awards. Awards are made after a rigorous peer review process, to ensure that only applications of the highest quality are funded. The quality and range of research supported by this investment of public funds not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic success of the UK.
The Beyond Text research programme aims to support a multidisciplinary community of scholars and practitioners drawn from Higher Education, museums, galleries, libraries, business, policy, media, technology and the law to explore the ways in which communication is articulated, transmitted, received and controlled. It also aims to enhance the connections between those who make and preserve works, and those who study them. Beyond Text centres on five thematic, interdisciplinary areas: Making and Unmaking; Performance, Improvisation and Embodied Knowledge; Technology, Innovation and Tradition; mediations; Transmission and Memory. These themes provide a framework to investigate the formation and transformations of performances, sounds, images, and objects in a wide field of social, historical and geographical contexts, tracing their reception, assimilation and adaptation across temporal and cultural boundaries. The programme has a budget of £5.5 million over 5 years and runs from 2007 to 2012. www.beyondtext.ac.uk
The Institute of Education is a college of the University of London that specialises in education and related areas of social science and professional practice. In the most recent Research Assessment Exercise two-thirds of the publications that the IOE submitted were judged to be internationally significant and over a third were judged to be “world leading”. The Institute was recognised by Ofsted in 2010 for its "high quality" initial teacher training programmes that inspire its students "to want to be outstanding teachers". The IOE is a member of the 1994 group, which brings together 19 internationally renowned, research-intensive universities. The project was led from The Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media, which has a long and distinguished record of research in the cultures of childhood and youth (www.childrenyouthandmedia.org.uk). The Centre is based at the London Knowledge Lab, a research facility jointly run by the IoE and Birkbeck College, focusing on the integration of education and new technologies.
The University of East London (UEL) is a global learning community with over 23,000 students from over 120 countries world-wide. Our vision is to achieve recognition, both nationally and internationally, as a successful and inclusive regional university proud of its diversity, committed to new modes of learning which focus on students and enhance their employability, and renowned for our contribution to social, cultural and economic development, especially through our research and scholarship. We have a strong track-record in widening participation and working with industry.
University of Sheffield - With nearly 24,000 students from 131 countries, the University of Sheffield is one of the UK’s leading and largest universities. A member of the Russell Group, it has a reputation for world-class teaching and research excellence across a wide range of disciplines. The University has won four Queen’s Anniversary Prizes (1998, 2000, 2002, 2007). These prestigious awards recognise outstanding contributions by universities and colleges to the United Kingdom’s intellectual, economic, cultural and social life. Sheffield also boasts five Nobel Prize winners among former staff and students and many of its alumni have gone on to hold positions of great responsibility and influence around the world.
The University’s research partners and clients include Boeing, Rolls Royce, Unilever, Boots, AstraZeneca, GSK, ICI, Slazenger, and many more household names, as well as UK and overseas government agencies and charitable foundations. The University has well-established partnerships with a number of universities and major corporations, both in the UK and abroad. Its partnership with Leeds and York Universities in the White Rose Consortium has a combined research power greater than that of either Oxford or Cambridge. For further information, please visit www.sheffield.ac.uk
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and one of the world's greatest research libraries. It provides world class information services to the academic, business, research and scientific communities and offers unparalleled access to the world's largest and most comprehensive research collection. The Library's collection has developed over 250 years and exceeds 150 million separate items representing every age of written civilisation. It includes: books, journals, manuscripts, maps, stamps, music, patents, newspapers, photographs and sound recordings in all written and spoken languages. Further information is available on the Library's website at www.bl.uk