Stumbled on a terrific article by Ben Highmore (Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex, no less) about the post-War history of adventure playgrounds and how bomb-sites found themselves the unlikely hosts of children as ‘junk playgrounds’ as they were described at the time.

Anyone familiar with the idea - or even the experience, which if you have marks you out as of a certain age - of a totally freeform (likely slightly dangerous, trespassed) space full of shoddy wooden constructions held together with ‘borrowed’ six inch nails and likely as not burnt to embers the following day will recognise the sheer delight these total unsuitable spaces brought. Especially when they was pretty nothing much else to do before you could get away with being old-enough-looking to get in the pub.

Apart from the Proustian joy the article delivered, his parting suggestion touching on the new dead spaces that the destruction that e-commerce has wrought on the physical landscape of retail enterprise:

“We no longer have bombsites, but we do have city centres teeming with empty shops. Could that same progressive spirit be harnessed to repurpose these spaces for free-range play?”

So, what about that? Clearly the idea of letting 12-year-olds drive nails into things and starting bin fires is probably going a bit far, but Ben also observed that a little anarchy can often be the spark the imagination needs. I can only think of one situation where this kind of ‘sanctioned’ take-over (of what might have ordinarily been prime retail real estate) is working is the Hollaway Studio in Folkestone, but this was purpose built. 

What if some of those bigger empty stores were opened up as junk playgrounds? I’ve certainly skated on a succession of rickety ramps in semi-squatted buildings. Nobody died. It was fun because it it was temporary and “permanence is not the criteria of success… a continual process of destruction and growth (is)” as the line in the September 1961 journal ‘anarchy 7 - a journal of anarchist ideas’ ran.  

If you’ve got this far and are thinking what I am - that this sounds like a right sack of idealistic, badly thought-through libiterian bullshit - do remind yourself you can’t just be against things, you need to stand up for something. 

If play, however contrived or how old or young-at-heart you are, and in whatever form it can take can inspire, then perhaps it is time to liberate our ideas about what some of those empty places could offer. 

Too (badly) borrow from the spirit of ’68, ‘sous les commerces, une plage’. Who’s up for that?