Knowledge transfer partnerships and organisational development
We work alongside partners to make sense of evidence and develop practical responses. Depending on the commission, this may involve research, strategic advice, practical tools, training, facilitation or longer-term support.
Improving children’s opportunities for play often requires changes in organisational thinking as well as physical provision. We help partners examine how policies, procedures, leadership, professional cultures and everyday decisions affect children’s time, space and permission for play.
This work can include play-centred policy development, Play Sufficiency Assessment, organisational reviews, mentoring, partnership development, action planning, implementation support and play and risk-management frameworks. We help teams build shared language, interpret evidence together and develop the collective wisdom required for sustainable action.
Our approach is concerned with both account-ability—taking account of how adult decisions affect children’s play—and response-ability: developing the capacity and willingness to respond. This can involve local authorities, schools, visitor attractions, charities, community organisations and multidisciplinary partnerships.
Learn more about doing play sufficiency and explore our knowledge-transfer and organisational-development work.
Play research, spatial planning and design
Good policy, practice and design begin with credible evidence about children’s lived experiences. We undertake children’s play research and consultancy at neighbourhood, organisational, local-authority and national levels, combining quantitative, qualitative, participatory and spatial methods.
Our work can include surveys with children, teenagers and parents; creative mapping; go-along walks; focus groups; play-route mapping; policy analysis; spatial auditing and GIS-supported analysis; evaluation; and co-production of findings and action plans. Particular attention is given to differences between places and groups of children so that headline averages do not conceal inequalities.
We also support planning and design processes by using children’s play as a lens for understanding how streets, routes, green spaces, public places, institutions and neighbourhoods support movement, encounter, belonging and sociability. The aim is not simply to add play features, but to cultivate places that are more hospitable to children’s everyday lives.
Explore examples of our play research and spatial-development work.
Training and professional development
Our training and professional development connects contemporary research on children, childhood, play and playwork with the practical decisions adults make within organisations, services, schools and public systems.
Learning programmes range from keynotes, briefings and twilight sessions to full-day courses, multi-session online programmes, conferences and longer knowledge-transfer processes. Topics include understanding play, doing play sufficiency, play and risk management, risk-benefit assessment, play-centred policy and practice, community sociability, spatial justice and the development of rich and inclusive school playtimes.
Training can stand alone or form part of a wider programme involving research, policy development, mentoring, facilitation and implementation support. The purpose is to develop practical capability—not simply to transfer information—and help participants connect learning to meaningful organisational action.
See examples of our training, conferences and professional-development work, or contact Ludicology to discuss the right starting point.
