Imagine this: a heap of colourful plastic buckets stacked on top of each other to form a climbable bridge, monolithic bluestone boulders holding up a contorted slide, a pile of concrete demolition debris moonlighting as a resting spot.

At every point, children can be seen swinging their bodies from warped, dented monkey bars and balancing along rope-webs strung between stones.

Would you let your kids come here and play?

This new playground in Melbourne’s Southbank is the work of artist Mike Hewson. The project can be confusing for the public. Is it a playground? A sculpture? Or an unfinished piece of infrastructure?

Hewson’s playable public art parks in Sydney and Melbourne are known to be “risky” – but risk means different things to different people. And it’s exactly the risks his art takes that makes it so valuable.

The risk of no risk

Urban play has long been synonymous with the cultural life of art and the city. In the decades of Europe’s baby boom, new playground concepts emerged with a focus on “free play” (distinct from earlier playgrounds resembling open-air gymnasiums), as one of children’s fundamental needs.

“Tufsen”, Egon Möller-Nielsen’s unusual sculpture was the first unscripted free play sculpture of its kind, created in 1949, bringing together abstract art and play in a public space.

This new approach generated a boom in playground sculptures.

Researchers Jonathan Haidt and Pamela Paresky suggest contemporary society “mollycoddles” children. The risk-of-no-risk is a question of resilience – not only physical but also, perhaps more importantly, psychological resilience.

Psychological resilience is the capacity for adaptation in the face of tragedy, trauma, adversity, threats or significant stress. Put simply, resilience is the ability to “bounce back” from challenging experiences.

Based on this premise, Hewson’s “risky” sculptural play environments can bolster, fortify and increase psychological resilience among children.

Source
The Conversation