Patrick McCarthy
School of Sport, Performing Arts & Leisure University of Wolverhampton (UK)

'Reclaiming the Streets': Children's Play, Health, and Access to Public Spaces

The central premise underlying this presentation is the increase in obesity amongst our young people, coupled with a reflective evaluation of my own life - I reach 50 in May 2003. My reflections on my own youth brought forth memories of childhood days spent playing in the streets. It was possible to tell the seasons of the year simply by looking at the symbols drawn on the streets. Summer saw chalk lines drawn on lampposts by boys to act as Cricket wickets, or on paths by girls for 'Hopscotch'. June though found chalk marks on the roads themselves! This advised of the arrival of 'Wimbledon Fortnight' and the annual rush to 'Woolies' for the cheap tennis racket! Girls could also be found playing skipping games across the streets and mixed groups controlled the whole street for 'British Bulldog'. Summer's end was announced by a return to school and chalk goal posts marked on end-houses in the street. These 'idyllic' memories started a thought process that began to hypothesise whether there might be a correlation between the growing health concerns over obesity amongst young people and the decline in street play?
     The purpose of this research is to identify the cause(s) surrounding the decline in access to neighbourhood streets for the purpose of play by young people in the UK. The presentation will cover the gestation period of the research, following it through the research process from conception to the birth of a working research methodology. It will fully explain the rationale underpinning the chosen research topic and provide an exploratory explanation of the literature that demonstrates both the 'growth' in obesity and the historical decline in access to the streets as a place of play for UK children. It will address the question of why it is felt that the West Midlands provides an appropriate location for this research. This will lead to the development of a conceptual framework that includes not only the primary concepts, but also introduces the explicit socio-cultural changes of the past century - technology, gender, multiculturalism and the dichotomous decline of 'community'. It will conclude with a discussion on the process of developing instruments appropriate for carrying out this research in the multi-ethnic 21st century Black Country landscape. This will incorporate explanation of the important methodological issues - ethics, reliability and validity - that faced the researcher.