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This one is special. Wem and I got to sit down with Dr Wendy Russell, independent play researcher, senior research fellow at the University of Gloucestershire, and 50 years into a career that started on an adventure playground apprenticeship in the 1970s. I came away from this conversation needing to go for a long walk and think about everything.
The first half covers Wendy's work on spatial justice for children, the politics of public space, and what it would actually mean to have a statutory play sufficiency duty in England. We talk about what play sufficiency means in practice, why Wales has led the way, and why politicians keep defaulting to playgrounds when the picture is so much bigger than that.
The second half goes deeper, into the relational capability approach to playing and being well that Wendy has developed with Mike Barkley and Ben Tawil of Ludicology. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre's production of space, Karen Barad's concept of intra-action, and the relational turn across academic disciplines, Wendy patiently walked Wem and me through a genuinely paradigm-shifting way of thinking about children, play, agency and wellbeing.
By the end, the playwork principles themselves come under scrutiny. The idea of play as "freely chosen and personally directed" gets unpicked in a way that I'm still sitting with.
Strap in. Press rewind as many times as you need. See you on the other side.
In this episode
How Wendy moved from adventure playground apprentice to academic researcher across 50 years in play and playwork
The politics of space and what spatial justice for children actually means
Why falling road casualty statistics for children hide a much more troubling story
Play sufficiency as a principle, what it is, what Wales has done with it, and why England feels like it's at a genuine policy moment right now
The tension between play's intrinsic value and what funders and politicians actually want to measure
Why post-occupancy evaluation of housing developments almost never happens, and what Diana Bournat's research tells us when it does
How repositioning a ball games area changes the way girls move across an entire space
The relational capability approach to playing and being well, resources, opportunities, and the conditions that allow children to play
The relational turn across academic disciplines and what it means to move away from the individual, atomised child
Karen Barad's concept of intra-action and why "interaction" doesn't quite capture it
What all of this means for forest school practice, the wind, the branch, the ants, and us
Following an object across a play session as a practitioner reflective tool (I am absolutely trying this)
Why "freely chosen and personally directed" is a useful definition and also, it turns out, a deeply adult-centric one
Links and resources
Wendy Russell's publications, University of Gloucestershire research repository (search "Wendy Russell Gloucestershire") or via her LinkedIn profile [add link]
Playing and Being Well, the Play Wales commissioned research review: playwales.org.uk
Play Wales: playwales.org.uk
Play England: playengland.org.uk
Ludicology, Mike Barkley and Ben Tawil: ludicology.com
UNCRC General Comment 17 on Article 31, children's right to play
Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space
Karen Barad, concept of intra-action
Tim Gill, children's independent mobility and road space design: timgill.net
Coming up at Children of the Forest
Pedagogy Immersion Weekend, 15 and 16 August 2026, Devon. If you're already qualified and you want to have the kind of conversation we've just had, this is the place. Tickets and nearby accommodation listings at children-of-the-forest.com
Level 3 Forest School Leader Training, Sunday cohort and intensive holiday block formats. Details and booking on the website.
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