Interviews with Parents

Our goal was to answer the following questions: 1

  1. What kind of outside place will you take your kids to? (before or after covid)
  2. Do you think it’s important for kids to go to playgrounds? Why?
  3. What are the things you most concern about when taking your kids out during covid?
  4. If there is an outdoor playground that is designed to practice good social distancing, will you be willing to bring your kids to? If not, why? What are your concerns?
  5. How do you feel about having playgrounds be a shared space with other age groups? For exercise, art gallery, etc.?

We spoke with 5 parents, 2 with design/architecture backgrounds, and 1 with a background in early childhood development. We've learnt:

  • parents are incredibly resourceful in creating play in and out of the playground for their children.
  • parents universally agree playgrounds are a core part of child development
  • parental concerns on playgrounds often lie in their children being physically harmed, bullied, or being out of sight; not on the dangers of contracting COVID-19 as we originally thought
  • Parents living in the suburbs find playgrounds being a shared space with adults creepy; parents in cities are familiar with the overlapping use of spaces

We were also given tons of suggestions (often conflicting!) for essential aspects of the playground both for play and social distancing.

It was universally agreed upon that trying to force children to be socially distanced is impossible. The only way to separate children is to have repeated play objects spread apart.