Matt Robinson on Nature Play & Outdoor Learning

Lukas: Where did you like to play as a child? I ask this question a lot because childhood memories shape us into the people we become. Welcome to Play It Forward, a Worthy podcast. I'm your host Lukas Ritzen. Thanks so much for joining me. I talk a lot about play. I'm a dad, I'm a husband, I'm an educator, and I'm a playground designer. So I want to gather some of my favorite people who are advocates of children and nature and create a space to have an honest conversation about getting more kids outside. The power of play is very often underestimated and I think we all need a little more play in our lives. Welcome to another Play It Forward Worthy podcast. My guest today works for an organization that I've looked up to for a long time. Now they're impacting children right across the UK. You might be familiar with them - it's Learning Through Landscapes. I'm sitting down today with the Scotland director, the inspirational Matt Robinson. We're going to be talking about how we're moving away from traditional playgrounds and one of my favorite topics in the world, nature play. We'll also be going over things that we can do in our environments and actions we can take to make a difference to the children in our world. And you'll get to learn more about Learning Through Landscapes and you'll be inspired as I am every day by them, I'm sure. Thank you for joining us so much, Matt Robinson. Welcome.

Matt Robinson: Good to be here.

Lukas: As we start with all guests, where did you play as a child?

Matt Robinson: I played outdoors. As simple as that. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a family who lived rurally and it was the done thing for my mom to kick myself, my brother and my sister out the house and say see you for lunch, you know, see you for evening meal, and that was it. And we lived, even when we lived in slightly busier towns and things, the garden, the park around the friends' houses was the place you hang out. And it really wasn't indoors unless for some reason the weather was utterly atrocious. I think even then we went sledging anyway, so.

Lukas: And living in the UK you do have those weather challenges like we do in Australia. What were the weather challenges you faced?

Matt Robinson: I think usually in the UK it tends to center a lot - the concern is about wet, sometimes wintry snowy weather. The reality is it tends to be more wind at times that kind of curtails play and things like that. It's the classic - certainly in doing the work that we do, the concerns are around wet, and yet we cancel a few sessions a year and it's never for wet, it's for wind, occasionally for snow. So it depends quite where you are in the UK, but we are a wet, windy country.

Lukas: So I loved reading your bio online and getting to know you a bit more through that, and you talk about the incident of capsizing a dinghy and how that led you to where you are today. Can you unpack that for our listeners? It gives them a great insight to the person you are.

Matt Robinson: Yeah, so I went to a very small rural primary school and when I moved, made the move to secondary school, it was quite intimidating. There's more children in my class than I've been in my whole school. And thankfully I had a couple of teachers who ran a sailing club and we spent the winter repainting and repairing these things and the summer going down to the sailing club once or twice a week and sailing. And I remember the first couple of weeks we had a teacher on board and the third week they said here you go, here's a small boat, off you go by yourself. And I remember this thing taking off to the middle of a lake and within 30 seconds to a minute I was upside down and in the water. It was the scariest, best, most brilliant thing I had ever done. You know, if anyone's sailed, you kind of feel like you're barely hanging on to the wind at times and it just was one of those - that's fantastic. I didn't have a lot of confidence and actually the teacher said come on, you're getting this thing back upright and you're getting going again. And you know what? I did, and I was actually all right at it. And it just stuck with me. One of those things I really enjoyed. And again, through that secondary school I took part in more and more outdoor things. It's what I enjoyed, it's where my confidence came from. And I think by the time I was towards the end of secondary school I felt confident enough to say to my parents, I know you thought I'd do this as a career, quite fancy working in the outdoors. And gave me the confidence somehow to blag my way into a university course. To this day I still don't understand how I was accepted into that university. And I think the rest is history. I did an outdoor education and science teaching course for four years. And I go back - I've done a lot of work in residential centers and I used to say to the children at the start of the week, you know, one, I know this is life because I sat in your seat ten years ago and I wouldn't be here today without it. And two, I reckon I can achieve more this week than you'll achieve this term in school because it's such an intense experience. And yeah, I think for me I've just got a few key points at dinghy sailing, swimming in the middle of a lake just brought it alive for me and was something I just went, this is great and I'm actually pretty good at it and I love it.

Lukas: That's brilliant. And when I talk to so many people and it is - I know most sectors refer to the people that work within their sector as like special breed and all of that jazz - but I've been fortunate enough to go from Finland to America and the people involved in nature play and nature education, they are a unique type of people. And time and time again you hear similar stories of these circumstances where there was risk, there was danger that they got through it by the skin of their teeth, and yet that was the moment that inspired them on this journey to be connected with nature forever. And now we fast forward to the experience children are having now and we're kind of trying to protect children from the types of experiences that we look back on in such a memorable way.

Matt Robinson: It is, and it's hard because those incidents when they happen, they're very immediate and in your face and therefore as you know, as a parent, you would often look at it and think oh there's the risk I should be worried about. Yeah, actually the gain of these incidents is long-term, slow personality engagement in activities, nature, outdoors, and that doesn't happen quite as immediate. And a friend of Learning Through Landscapes is Juliette Robertson in the UK and she's talked to me about what she calls her inner health safety queen and the fact that sometimes you just have to kind of swallow that down a little bit and think what's the long-term benefit. And I think that's something we've lost sight of a little bit in education, perhaps a little bit more broadly in parenting. But I agree it attracts a certain people. An odd statistic here - the last outdoor center I worked at, we had about 50 instructors, eight out of ten of them were dyslexic. So in many senses in traditional school settings they would be the struggling student. Actually they were some of the most creative, dynamic, great communicators - perhaps not written down in a traditional sense - but the way they would work with young people and children was incredible. And I do think there's something in this sector that attracts a slightly different wired brain. We'll get onto it in a minute, but I think that's possibly one of the challenges we face as we work in mainstream education. I think slightly different to your average teacher. I've got to somehow get my head into how the average teacher thinks and maybe meet them where they're at a little bit more rather than my kind of ideals and my view of the world. So but you're right, we are a slightly different breed in some senses.

Lukas: Absolutely. For someone that's been involved in this sector for so long, been engaged since you've flipped and got cold in your boat, and there's so many different lenses to look at the benefits of nature play from Richard Louv and nature deficit disorder to nature therapies, but for you, why nature for children?

Matt Robinson: Again, I think it comes back to my personal experience. You know, I know this is - if I've had a stressful week at work, if I need to have a talk with my wife, where do we go? We go for a walk. You know, we go to the outdoors, we go somewhere. I know the impact it has on me. It's calming, it's engaging, it's exciting, it's ever-changing. And I think I still feel that as an adult and still make effort for that. And I think I look around these days and see a lack of that in children. I see a real disengagement between so many of the families that we work with and that's having an impact on young children. So I think for me it just comes back to that personal experience - what I believe actually has a real impact on me day to day, I would like to see for every young person, every child. So yeah.

Lukas: Yeah, I think the great thing about talking to you is like we can kind of get a snapshot into the future with kind of looking at the density of living and density challenges within communities. So what is it that's causing this huge divide between nature being accessible for families and even being considered even to explore those spaces? What's causing that in Scotland?

Matt Robinson: I think there's a multitude of things. And again, this reflects some of our work. A lot of it comes down to real practicalities. You know, through this lockdown we're aware how few families have access to great outdoor space. They don't have their own garden, they live in a flat, they live in a city. You know, with the current kind of lack of finances, governments, councils aren't - haven't been investing in green space enough. Our green space is perhaps not the best quality or is not necessarily designed with nature and play and families. It's designed because a landscape architect thinks it looks great on their screen, not necessarily because it's actually the most amazing experience and place to be. I think once you start losing sight of some of the connection with nature for yourself, it's hard to kind of motivate yourself to get out. We often talk about - I'm the father of three boys. All three love the outdoors. Hasn't always been that way. I've had the arguments with them about going out, we've had to persuade them to go, we've had the bribery, we've had that no we are just going. You know, we've booked the family holidays that are just places where you know what, there isn't an option other than we're going outdoors and there's a beach or a mountain or a forest nearby. And I think finally there's something about the community around you. Again, if this starts drifting and we see less and less of it, it's then much harder to be that the sort of oddball fleece-wearing person. We often joke in school communities about teachers - there's being one in every school who's the one who wears the outdoor clothing. And we need to challenge that and we need to persuade schools actually there needs to be everybody. And you don't have to wear the weird outdoor clothing, this is just part and parcel of life, good teaching and education. Maybe for parents as well, persuading them this is just a piece of normality. So I think that kind of disconnect is on various levels. We've not provided the space, we've maybe need to motivate parents more, and at a community level just really start valuing spaces, places and time outdoors again. Our lockdown in the UK, we've really seen that. I don't know about anyone else, but you know, the end of my road is just a line of people walking and cycling that I think a year ago would never have been there. Paths and little lanes and forests near me and my house which I would have gone for a walk before and not seen anyone, I'm now saying hello to a dozen people on my walk. I think there's been a real transformation in some parts of the UK to do with this. We are fortunate with what we've got, but I think even in a city we can find these spaces and places and take them back over again, sort of thing.

Lukas: So reclaim, plant the flag, bring them to the park.

Matt Robinson: Yep, yep.

Lukas: And yeah, that's an observation I've made during lockdown. In Australia we're obviously in a very different situation to you, but it was so fulfilling to see during these challenging times so many people outdoors. I back onto a bushland with a fire trail that runs through and I've never seen so many people walking back there and families and couples and everything. And it's just been so great to see. It has dwindled since opening back up but it is still - it's still above the ratio it was before. And also what excites me about Scotland, you're being very proactive in taking these steps to support communities and specifically with the play charter in Scotland being implemented. For the listeners, would you be able to just give a brief overview of what the play charter is in Scotland?

Matt Robinson: Yes, so without a doubt we stand on the shoulders of giants a little bit here. I would say for the last 15, 20 years there's been a lot of work at a very senior level, at a governmental level in Scotland with our parliament to do with play and the right of the child to play and the role of play in everything from school to social care, free time, youth work - you name it, it's there. And as part of that, as an output of that, five years ago we created a Scottish play charter and strategy. What we wanted to do - there's so

Matt Robinson: me big claims in there we want scotland to be the best place to grow up for every child you know it's that that's our kind of overall ambition we want outdoor free play in nature and it is this is in the strategy is is the right of every child every day in scotland no matter what they are the strategy goes into details and it says you know if you're in a nursery a child care setting a school then these are obvious places where that free play in nature should be happening that's where it should be resourced and led from alongside local communities we've got to a place now where there's more detail going into that a lot of this is is led by organizations across the sector by the way this is not any one organization and again i think this is a hallmark of we're a smaller country we tend to know it's we always joke you can never insult somebody in scotland because it's somebody else's brother or sister twice removed kind of thing and it's true we work together as a sector so people like play scotland have have really worked hard over the years to make these things stick and there's now a lot of practical toolkits flowing out of that so organizations like ourselves john muir trust play scotland are now creating more and more well this is how you do it documents so that that play strategy is now getting real teeth and alongside wales in the uk scotland has now put into law the un rights of the child so again the right to play in nature is is there enshrined in law we have a long way to go on how this is embedded and actually seen in action you know one of one of the things we talk about as a team here is the fact that our job will be done when we're out of a job you know we're not needed in every school and every early year setting is heading outdoors and we're not needed to advise them anymore because it's just part and parcel of what they do and that would be a lovely place to be but i think we're we're a long way from that at the moment so yeah

Lukas: and i gained inspiration from the fact that to where you've got already because we're sitting behind you once again and to see that you were able to even to get to where you are now and then seem to improve and that's that's our big hairy audacious goal is to get a play charter put into australia and 15 20 years ago that that dream was dreamed by people here and there was some very practical steps taken we are on an election week into two days time we have our elections here and and 15 20 years ago that was the same again and we had some very clever people who invited our politicians quite literally for either a cup of tea or dare to take a group of children to parliament to play for the day and an interrupted parliament with a group of children playing in the foyer and and you can actually track back some real practical engagements with our politicians and decision makers in things like education scotland and our care inspectorate which looks after early years services and you can look back over the years and see some real key moments we went as far as a group group of these politicians and decision makers were taken away on a residential and engaged with nature i believe they even took them up a hillside and left them for three hours to do a solo in their own little space scottish hill and again you just go back and you go that was really clever that was really you know they identified who the decisions makers were who the politicians were and they actually got stuck in and did some practical work with them not with a you ought to do this but from a personal experience point of view and of course during election when it was timed well every party turned around said yep we'll put play on our agenda so any party that was elected in scotland tends to have now you know play outdoor learning nature learning for sustainability is part and parcel of it no matter which party you speak to in scotland which is a fantastic thing but that is 15 to 20 years of of hard effort for many people to get that

Matt Robinson: yeah yep and we're creating a really solid solid alliance that are going nowhere and we've got this joint mission so i look forward to in the years to come when there's a bit more grain hopefully not as much gray in the mid bed to get there and be able to sit down and have a conversation reflect on this journey indeed

Lukas: in australia there seems to be this and you mentioned schools there i wanted to extend on that a little bit and going into schools and they're the forefront and when children are they're having so much screen time at home parents are busy they've got to get to work they've got minimum time to explore and experience at home in their community so the schools so the early childhood centers are becoming even more integral it's these places where the children are going to be reflecting on and this is where their memorable childhood experience are coming from in setting not within these free settings so how do we bridge that disconnect between schools being there for the academic benefit of children to saying no the schools are there to help the child thrive

Matt Robinson: i think you're right some of this goes back to you know what is school and early child care about you know what is the purpose of it if your purpose is to build everything up to sit down for an hour and achieve a piece of paper with a grade on well so be it i don't believe anyone enters education for that i think they enter education because they realize this is about shaping children for the future you know better healthier happier citizens sort of thing and i think for me it's also i sit here and go i recognize the benefits of being outdoors and being in nature but actually for the teachers that's not the language they speak they're they're speaking languages of academia and achievement and attainment and you know tests and maths and literacy and history so we meet them on their terms so when we're going to schools this is not necessarily about nature play this is about well we could do a history lesson and by the way it might be better to do it outdoors we could do play and by the way that could happen whilst you have your morning break with a cup of tea in your hand and we can put these kind of free play moments on and a more engaged children don't require as much supervision so actually it makes life easier and and we come in with these kind of conversations with teachers rather than the benefits that you and i both know are there you know those long-term benefits i don't necessarily unpack a huge amount until we actually get stuck into these things so so i think for me a lot of the work that ltl's done is about meeting teachers where they are it's about providing really practical tools and advice and ideas if there's a challenge if there's a difficulty i think you alluded to it before just before we started this thing about you know we we learned to to either create a tool to solve that problem or we sidestep it somehow or we do our research and go do we really have to stick to that could we do this in a different way and we just get really practical and resourceful on that disconnect and and working alongside teachers and educators they have so much on their plate they are so busy one of my overused phrases is don't do more do something different and i think that resonates with a lot of teachers these days we are not asking them to do more we're just asking them to have a slightly different approach and particularly when it comes to play that can happen at times where the teacher doesn't necessarily have to be involved before school break times after school they are perfect opportunities for children to go and play in an environment that should be created with them in mind

Lukas: my mind boggles it to go in so many directions oh my gosh so you were also involved with being the head of education for learning through landscapes so you would go in and try to teach the teachers so to speak on the benefits and then go in and and change the environments to help the children so from a parent standpoint for our parents listening how do they go about encouraging their schools and the messaging they want to deliver to their schools to implement the nature-based learning

Matt Robinson: i think for me this relates to a lot of our work there's a quote from jay beckwith back in the 1970s about we're not just changing spaces we're changing mindsets and i think there's something really powerful here and particularly with parents we tend to find there's two things two extremes going on we either have a parent who approaches us who totally gets this they they see the benefits of nature playing outdoors they want it for their child but somehow they're pushing uphill with school and authority that's not as interested and passionate as they are or the opposite we've got a parent who's sat there going what on earth is this stuff school is meant to be sat on your bahookie holding a pen you know doing some admin work that's how you learn isn't it bolted to a desk and i think again it's about meeting those those parents where they are and for us we put some work into engaging with their childhood experiences and reminding them of what still the majority of people had as a childhood it's about also giving them a first-hand experience now send them outdoors with their children to go and play run a kind of information evening where instead of a teacher talking about outdoors we go outdoors and we actually have those experiences with parents and we then unpack them from an educated point of view and go can you see what we were learning here did you understand what was going on some of our best some of the projects i've been involved in particularly when i was running we run some some long-term teach courses so over the course of a year we don't just go in once we meet teachers four five six seven times over the course of the year they do work with their classes their own homework they come back share how it went and one of the challenges of those courses is they've got to take colleagues and parents along with them how do you change the culture in the school how do you bring them with you and i think the the big takeaway i took from that is when we got children involved in leading the learning and you arrive as a parent to an assembly and you're met by your own child saying come on we're off to do some maths in the playground or why don't you come and build a den with me why don't you come and see the secret places in the school grounds that's the moment where you get the parents going oh my word and they see the children as the kind of the driver of this the educator the play leader they see the value for themselves so a lot of effort there is about engaging parents in first-hand experience again it comes back to our real practicalities and we'll maybe talk about some of the risk and challenge later where parents have concerns we don't avoid those we don't ignore them we try to take them head-on and find the answers and find the tools and have things thought through as ever once you know what the barriers are you can address them and actually what we discover is the barriers are often not as as much as first indicated and actually it's attitudes that we're working with and it's kind of values and belief systems a little bit that we're working with a lot of our training work is about culture change it's not about outdoor learning and play it's it's about culture change and and i i would say again a lot of our staff are very skilled in that work not in the outdoor learning and play they will work in the how do you change attitudes sphere and so that

Lukas: i jumped to the vision of having a community meeting to discuss these things is that how it would go down and then what would be that type of content you share

Matt Robinson: yeah a mixture of tools and one of the important bits when we do consulting is is we we try to sort of shape that consulting a little bit if i went in and asked a child you know what do you want in your school ground in your nursery they want the swimming pool they want the roller coaster they want and we sat here going well can't afford it two i know long term you'd get bored with that because it's so on dimensional there's only one way of playing that and i think it's similar with the parents often when we go in and say what do you want their first thing is a thing and actually to say to them what experiences would you like your children to have you probably see some pictures on the wall behind me here you know we use images a lot when we're consulting to shape pictures of children in nature in sand jumping in puddles bouncing on things building a den hiding things you know we actually shaped people's thinking a little bit through some of that work and that imagery and from that you say well which which image most jumps out at you we have short videos things that because again the imagery is so strong through those and i think that's really important because again it comes back to this disconnect nature if you're an adult you are distant from your childhood memories a little bit maybe you've not been engaged in nature recently it's easy to pick up the catalog of play equipment and say i want one of those rather than going what experiences do you want for your child i want to run jump socialize with their friends great we can work with that now so yeah it comes down to some clever consulting a slight steering

Matt Robinson: Lots of strong imagery and again those that you've been to like our website and things will see we are really strong on that imagery. In our talk it's been being peppered with all sorts of stuff - you're not afraid to show pictures of children in mud and so on and so forth so yeah.

Lukas: Yeah and I'll put all of the links to the websites and to Play Scotland in the show notes as well for our listeners. What I hear time and time again through this conversation is that it comes back to honoring the child and being that advocate of the child and honoring their experience - not being that authoritarian figure time and time again. Here you go, I know play, I'm an architect, I know how to make things look good and this is play for you by the way. And also honoring the parents' childhood experience as much as the current childhood experience and actually leveraging on that. And I think it comes down to a big as a culture right now we're facing it's us and them - like we want authentic nature play for children and we've got to convince and we've got to show people how they're wrong of what children are doing now. When I love your approach and it's just like no we already share these agreements, we're coming from a place of love for children, we want the best for children and once that aligns I think and it's neutral and everyone's humbled and the ego is put to the side, I think that's one of the key attributes in why Learning Through Landscapes has just been so successful.

Matt Robinson: It is and I think it's for us you know we are fortunate we have 30 years work in this area. We've got hard-earned experience and tools from many many people over the years and I think when you put all that together and you're coming in saying this is nothing new. This is - you know we were just discussing before - a lot of the kind of play pioneers happened between and just after the Second World War, so between first and second or a lot of our outdoor learning again was developed in a similar period. We've got a couple of quotes from pre-World War you know late 1800s about people talking about children being out to play and coming back in better able to learn. 1940s talking about that which is best taught outside or to be taught outside in really quite awkward language but there is nothing new to what we do. And again I think one of our strengths particularly in Scotland as a set of kind of play and outdoor learning organizations - none of us have particularly developed a this is how you do it. We've developed a we can help you do it and here's a bunch of ideas but there's not this kind of fixed you have to go through this process, you have to sign up to this scheme. That's not how it works. As you say we honor people's individual experiences, it's about putting the child at the center and their needs and their hopes and from that you then have this much more open-ended - you know this is just something we do. This is part of good teaching learning and upbringing for children is to be outdoors to play and to spend time doing these things. It's not a discussion we don't have to win the argument. The argument is one we know the impact of it. What we need to be better at doing is saying to people well how do you want to do this rather than why do you want to do this - how do you want to do this? And that's where our work comes about.

Lukas: I love that there's no argument on this topic we actually agree.

Matt Robinson: No. We've some colleagues here I'm thinking of one particularly hello Sally who who just sits there regularly and says I've made the argument, I've made it for 30 years, I don't need to make it again. I don't need another document telling me why I should be outdoors with children. I need another document says well how could you do this, what could we do. The argument's won. It's not a debate. We wouldn't be in schools having an argument about the value of learning maths so why we're still in schools arguing about the value of play - it's a non-starter.

Lukas: Yeah it brings me to a quote from a friend of ours of Rem who says resonance is the moment in which your brain realizes what your heart's always known to be true. And all you have to do is ask a person about their play and about childhood and make those links to what's happening now with the deprivation of play and you can see that little spark in the eye and people go yes that's true and you get the nods agreed.

Matt Robinson: And I think the big advantage particularly I would say Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland in the UK we also now have a layer of kind of policy and have to as a professional so. If you sign up as a teacher in Scotland now you sign a document every five years that says I deploy outdoor learning and play as part of my practice, I have learning for sustainability at the heart of what I do. You cannot be a teacher in Scotland and not sign that document every five years as part of your renewal. So I think when you put both the personal experience and the heart for doing this with actually you've been asked to do this as a professional, I think we're on to something quite powerful. Hasn't solved all the problems but we are on something really powerful and we've won the argument and I don't want to make it again and again.

Lukas: No that's fair. One of the arguments that or not arguments that may be a misunderstanding Arian play - the default of people's perception is plays to go to a park, there's a big structure, there's swings, there's a slide and these big built structures are getting more complicated and more expensive. We're seeing a lot of that especially within new housing estates. The developer will put a huge multi-million dollar playground in the middle, it looks amazing but there's from me looking at it with a play lens I'm like where's the child involved in this? Yes they're going to transition through the space but where is the child? If you take all the children out of that space there's no evidence of them whatsoever. So what's your strategy in overcoming that perception of play is just this big structure we design it for children, we put it there, it's done?

Matt Robinson: Good question. Again I think it comes back to these experiences - what experiences do we want our children to have when they're outdoors? Again we have a really useful play types toolkit here and it's just got the different play types - 16 of them - and it's actually a really useful tool when you work in both settings and designers themselves to say well what play is missing here. And you can go to one of those big play parks or see your traditional kind of what we call moan grass desert playgrounds and hold that document in front of you and go okay I'm looking at physical play happening and I'm looking at a little bit of creative play but where's the social play? Where's the deep play? Where's the - and by the time you start kind of looking around you realize that actually we're missing a bunch of play types going on and this is actually quite one-dimensional play. And I find that really really useful as a way of approaching it and saying well what different opportunities are there. Classic example and we go on about this with so many colleagues is I don't know if you guys there have what we call trim trails - they're often built as these are these kind of low level you have a balanced log, you have something you can climb over, maybe some monkey bars you can swing on and they tend to be in a straight line and you tend to have to have an adult usually because a couple of children have tumbled off them at some point supervising these things. They're designed to be safe so if you're a child it's designed to be safe or you hear that as it's designed to be boring. I want to climb on top of it because on top of it it's more exciting than just being 10 centimeters off the floor. They're designed to go in a straight line and take turns - well that's not how I play. I play with my mates alongside and we try and push each other off and we try and sit underneath a really cool bit and put the tarpaulin over it but I can't because everybody wants to climb through but I want to put my top hole in and make my den. And you just start unpicking these things and you go there is a huge excitement when these things are first installed, children love them for the first week or two and then very very quickly if you talk to head teachers they sit there and go yeah we hardly use it. And then when we don't use it it gets slippy so when it rains we're not allowed on it so it gets less used so and then actually all the children want to do is climb on the high bit or block it out and build a den around it or sit on the balance beam with five mates and swing or we can't do that so we then have multiple layers of rules to protect it. At which point as a child you're going I ain't interested, I'm never allowed on it, there's always an issue with how I want to play on it and there's so many unwritten rules that I've got somehow second guess. So I think for me some of it is is unpicking what what people see of these places and what people see in their own playgrounds. We used to run a lot of school tours particularly here in Scotland, we would take people to see different schools in early years settings. We ran some tours with Scottish educators 10 years ago now to Berlin and went and looked at their play. There's nothing like watching somebody else's children play in a different way to what you think is your understanding sort of thing. And that first-hand experience of talking to another teacher or parent or child who's saying I love sitting under that log, it's just like my favorite place to be and you're certainly going well that was designed as a balance log and you like sitting underneath it - what's going on? So I think for me it's often about watching what's happening, again using some of these toolkits and bits that we've got and working out that there is a different way. Again imagery, firsthand experience is huge in doing that.

Lukas: And also the schools being so heavily driven by litigation compliance - how do you get around and support schools in that process?

Matt Robinson: That's a really good question. I have to say this is one of those things that I've done quite a chunk of work on myself - it interests me. In a residential adventure center I used to take young people canoeing down a river and that river had white water and it quite literally has a rock that is known as boat breaker rock. Need you know any more? How come I was allowed to take those children down that river that had real risks and dangers and yet in a school playground I'm not allowed to do the same with the same children? I'm not allowed to experience something. So we've put a lot of work into kind of practical tools and thoughts. A lot of our effort around risk and safety is not around the agenda that's set often by risk managers which is paper work and process - it's about culture and attitudes. So question I ask teachers and parents all the time - if a child runs past you indoors in a corridor what do you say? Oh slow down, walk indoors. A child runs past on sports day what do you say to them? Run faster. And it comes back to this risk benefit - what is the benefit? What is going on here? Am I comfortable with this? Do we live in a world where the risk industry would have us believe that everything's about risk deficit - in other words everything has to be reduced to zero because risk just shouldn't feature? Or do we sit here and genuinely go life is full of risks and actually I'm better to experience some minor and managed and thought through risks now than some of the significant ones when they're older. So a child learns to jump off the end of a log, it hurts their feet. They jump off a really big log and it really hurts their feet. They learn to go I might be careful when I jump off something big. A child learns to step up on the stage, play a musical instrument in front of their colleagues - there's a risk. They learn to go and hang out with somebody that they've not talked to before, maybe you know maybe meet that new arrival into the class - well there's a risk taking in a relationship. We work a lot with these tools about risk benefit. We've got a - again we'll give you the link but on our website we've got a page all about this and how we got there - and we have a system now that's very clearly balancing these risks and we work with staff, we work with our teachers and our parents to talk about what level of risk are you okay with. You're right with a bump or a bruise? Are you all right maybe with a cut? What about something a bit more serious like a banged head? All right hang on we're getting into something here where we're going this isn't fair. So we can actually start defining risks that are acceptable and they're acceptable legally, morally, socially. It is not a free-for-all that risks is risk and off we go - no it's not. It's really thought through, it's really carefully crafted but within that children are free and encouraged to experience these. Some of the reading I've done around this and again parent of three teenagers - there's a lot of things here as children develop about the benefits of taking risk, learning to manage that internal valley of fear that all my word what's going to happen. And actually if you learn to do that, that's amazing for your mental health, it's amazing for you being able to step up. I don't know that new job interview you've got to go for, that boss you've got to get onto the other side of town. It's amazing for children learning what

Matt Robinson: They're capable of and learning to steal themselves of some of the challenges that are coming in life. It gives them real practical skills about risk-taking and I think as well having seen my children go through adolescence, it's also that understanding if you're the parent of an adolescent they are hardwired to take risks. You cannot avoid this and your choice is not no risk, your choices good risks or really dodgy risks. So we know so many adolescents it becomes you know drink drugs sex rock and roll or I'm not saying my children don't do that maybe they do or I can choose to let them ride a mountain bike down a hillside or they can go and hang out with their mates somewhere and on the skate park and I've had the choice as a parent to allow my children to take these positive risks and risk falling off their bike and breaking themselves. They have done. I'd rather that than some of the other risks they would they would take. Yeah I think again I think some of it comes back to me there's not an argument here life is risky. There's a balanced amount of risk we need to let our children have for their well-being and and their skills in later life and I see benefit to it. Yeah and again some of us like a bit of thrill-seeking you know and we enjoy it and we should not deny that our children.

Lukas: Absolutely and what I hear is that in what you say there is comes back to when if we're not allowing children to explore risk and scratch that itch we're doing a disservice to their life.

Matt Robinson: Absolutely. To think that to live a life up to a point with the framing that there's no repercussions for your choices and life's always good and there's no subtle stops and dead ends and sudden thoughts and thumps you know it's a disservice to hold this child's hand all the way through. They come to the teenage years and we say act like an adult we send them push them out into the world and then all of a sudden they can't manage risks. Yeah and take risks as a teenager that instead of being a bump a bruise a friend turning me away become real life-changing risks you know. Yeah and I think there's something as a young child learning to navigate these risks is vital because by the time you're 13 15 16 wow those risks become life-changing and I don't want them to arrive at that stage without having developed some of these skills and some of this emotional resilience to deal with it. Yeah and we can choose to be the person and the confidant in that child's exploration as a younger child to when they fail to be able to cry and come back into our arms and us reassure them and they look for us to guidance opposed to becoming a teenager and all of a sudden when it comes to that decision making they're looking to their peer who is actually completely struggling with the same decision making as they are. Like as a parent just like yeah let's let's act like let's act now opposed to later let's do something.

Matt Robinson: And one of my best little insights into this my brother lives in New Zealand with his family and they have a little culture there and it was really interesting seeing it. If a child falls over in the UK you more often than not see a parent going are you okay and over in New Zealand there's there's a group of them seem to have a culture that says you're okay and the child may still stand up and need that cuddle and and care but the kind of first reaction from the parents is kind of taught yeah you're okay you're okay let's have a look and I think it's just that subtle change in attitude to say this is okay and I'm all right with some bumps bruises fights fears because actually long term the goals are clear and we can better our children. Yeah it's the you're all right you're right yeah let's keep going as a sort of change. Yeah I don't want the listeners to be confused and saying that that's not caring when your child falls over you still have that reaction and you hurt your heart hurts a little bit and you still you know what before you assume you're hurt and upset and and damaged you assume am I okay no I'm okay yeah I could do this I've got this. And again it it's easy to start transposing that from physical risks that we often take as a child into things that are things like social emotional cultural risks that you take as an older child an adult.

Lukas: Yeah 100% is that physical learning transcends into the intangible so I love what you were saying there we we come into a children's ex a child's experience with the lens of physical experience and mitigating risk but what about all those intangibles that we're not considering and we're voiding by just having such a task-orientated lens on it. Even the other day my daughter was climbing a native hibiscus tree and she would have been seven meters off the ground she's a very confident climber my I was standing under that tree and my hands were so sweaty and I was nervous and I'm like the progress guy and everything and I'm just had to sit in it and I was like made me so uncomfortable but I had to just mind I'm like this isn't about you this isn't your stuff you're a passenger you're there for support and I just let her know I'm here for you if you need me but I really believe in you and afterwards not at the time but on reflection I said to her I was like that was amazing do you know what I was so nervous but I'm just so confident in you making good choices about what you can do and I'm just so proud and and how do you feel?

Matt Robinson: Yeah one of my other big takeaways on that is not to do that alone. I've been in that situation and I see you know educators and teachers be in that same situation and one of my big takeaways from some of our European Erasmus projects that we've been involved in is some of the countries that we visited the educators are much more likely to talk to each other and have conversations about risk than we do in the UK. So in the UK it's more usual for me to hear an educator suddenly go oh stop not happy and they'll kind of react first standing in a playground in Estonia or Denmark and it was much more likely for me to see two of them to educate us suddenly go and talk and say are you okay with this I'm not that looks a bit high to me I think we're about the limit of where we're comfortable okay let's do something and they would have just that 10 second check before they lept in. And again one of the things I'm I'm putting into a lot of our early years work now is do you ever talk about this with a colleague do you ever just sidle up to somebody and say you're right with that child doing that what do you think about that what's going on here because we didn't do enough of it and we still don't do enough of it in the UK talk to a colleague don't be the one making the decision because when you are you tend to be the one going oh I better be safe I better be safe rather than what do I really think.

Lukas: Absolutely something we do with our playground designs and builds we'll go in and talk to the educators and I'll give them an overview on how to transition the children especially with a renovation of a play environment so it's not just chaos but I'll be very light touch with that and then I will leave it and come back after the fact and be able to have those discussions and leave it open so just last night I had an educator say well some people are standing at the bottom of that because we've got a big climbing wall and like a log tangle and some educators are standing at the bottom and they say you can't climb this because you can't do the log tango so you can't climb up the wall so you're not climbing it and then another one someone on the other side of the room starts going well that's because of this this this and what happens if you have 10 children and I was like has anyone spoken to each other about this? Yeah they were just operating on the assumption and I was like and I'm constantly framing to educators what's the agreements we can come up with and it's not just between us it's between the children and asking for their voice and our practices based on the child's voice and coming up with this collective agreement and limit within 15 minutes we had agreements we'd already we'd got the content from how the children's feedback on how they want to do and it was all resolved and awesome.

Matt Robinson: It is and and again it comes back to that conversation again if I educators teachers parents you know if I take it on one on one as I say it's very easy to be to to feel as though I I've ever got to be kind of safer and safe and safer because it comes back to me. If this is a community decision if it's a colleague if this is a group of parents agreed this then it's actually much harder to have this kind of creeping fear. I think the one we also come back to risk and challenge is we've equipped ourselves with a proper deep knowledge of what we are and aren't allowed to do. Our staff are qualified in various health and safety things I can now sit in meetings and somebody says you're not allowed to do that and I can say well I think you are and this is my qualification what's yours? You know that that just helps sometimes at a really practical point of view. We are quite happy to speak to particularly heads of settings who will phone up and say I have a concern talk to me about it and we'll give them the time to work through bounce ideas. We know where the guidance and the documents are not the myths the half-truths the rumors the actual published this is actually where you should be and I think that's really important to have that that the underlying level of we know what we say is correct it's within guidance it's certainly within kind of moral and legal standards yet but at the same time is possibly seen to be more risky than others would see.

Lukas: Yeah one of the challenges I'd like to share with you and get your feedback on is that being a commercial setting and being primarily engaged in a lot of early childhood as a sector in Australia the challenge we face as playground designers builders implementers and also being the advocate of the child on behalf of our clients is that we will do something to code we will do something with additional training that is way beyond what's required we'll go and do our risk benefit assessments I'll coach people on all of these things but then I'll have the department education department come in and go well I just feel that this is inappropriate but I can go listen here's this this this and this and it absolutely is and I go well you know I just don't feel that so you're going to have to change it or this a child of this age can't engage with this element so can you give me some personal advice and also for our listeners that are dealing with these challenges how do you navigate that?

Matt Robinson: It's a really good question and I think if I ever solve that completely I'll let you know. I think at the end of the day again it comes back to this knowing as you say you know your code you know the stuff you've got to design to and work you've got to put in place to start with. Sometimes it's it's there I suggest it's highlighting the absurdity sometimes of this. We had a brilliant incident not far from this office where I'm sat in sitting at the moment we had built a wooden platform with it with a a drop of probably about a meter off the edge of this drop so a reasonably significant drop at the highest end and it it was fine it was onto grass and a sandpit and and it met all the standards and it was absolutely fine and it came for sign off and somebody came in from the local authority and said I don't like it it's dangerous I want to hand rail I don't want children to be able to go off. Had the discussion had the argument wasn't the 15 put the handrail in so we met this person on site three weeks later and said see that handrail you put in that's two meters above the ground now guess where the children are now leaping from and we actually had to take them back to site and show that you know sometimes the adjustments actually made it less safe because of what we had created before it was an obvious drop it was an obvious place it started small it got bigger and so some of it is actually taking them firsthand to see things. Again this is where some of our school ground tours some of our imagery came in we've got some actually borderline provocative images of children leaping off things balancing down awkward things and again that's all deliberate to try and sort of normalize the fact none of these are outside of play park regulations and European and British standards things but it just is a slight provocative this is allowed and this is fine and by the way that log's been there for 10 years and we've not had an accident on it type approach to life. And again for me it's going back even with these people whose job is kind of health and safety and documents and things to their own personal experience and going back to them and saying what is the purpose of this playground why are we creating this? Yeah because it's not about flatman grass if that's what it is then you know frankly we should have designed flat bone grass. We had an interesting statistic I'll have to dig out the report to do with the fact that when we created our natural playgrounds project in 2013-15 the schools compared their accident books prior to us installing all our items and mounds and logs and log and balance beams and dens and trees and twigs and trip hazards and you name it and actually accidents went down.

Matt Robinson: had more minor scuffs and scrapes but actually because the area was much more awkward to navigate around children slowed down and children learn physical literacy and we actually had some great figures about the accident books getting safer despite that first glance that you look at it and go woof that looks a bit interesting we didn't have a problem with it so again i think for me it's maybe equipping ourselves with the knowledge not just the regulations about actually what happens when we install these things versus a flat concrete playground that leads to more accidents and bumps and scrapes and making that clear to people

Lukas: Yeah and what's your advice for people designing playgrounds with children at the center not as the last thought? I love looking at a playground I can see the designer I can see the regulation for shade I can see the soft fall I can see how they wanted nature play so they put some trees and they put a log in so that's tick in the box for nature play and the child's right at the bottom of that list or we build a fort out of wooden it's called nature play now right so what's your practice in putting that child first in the experience?

Matt Robinson: We have a very similar simple process should i say. One is we consult genuinely and deeply with children and adults in the setting and again it goes back to that what would you like to do what experiences would you like to have in that place and we genuinely listen to them second one is this part of that that's part of an audit starting tool what have we got where are we going how would we like to get there and actually go through a process. I would say most days we get a phone call from a school saying we're buying this piece of outdoor equipment could you come in and tell us what we need you think you already know what you need what why are you asking me and the question should be more what would we like to do and that the thing and the design is actually the end of some good consultations some auditing we never change a space without training and support for adults and children as well i think that's another key element in this they are involved as it's consulted at design stage at build stage and actually as we put it into service as well there's an opportunity to engage and see how things run and how you can manage supervise or as a child how you can best make use of it and maybe what more resources you need to really make use of it so a lot of it's about consulting genuinely truly and a good audit tool or two to start off with not hey i've got a lovely catalogue with the most amazing thing and i'm going to buy one of those tell me how i'm going to do it that's not the way we start

Lukas: That's exactly how we started I was the educator very organically built the play environment with the children and then going out for people to say oh can you help us and give us some advice I'm out there and then go oh it's so great we've got a playground company they're going to renovate the whole playground I was like brilliant I come back and it's astro turf and a fort I was like what what happened what happened here and then it was just so frustrating to me and a mentor of mine said well why don't you do it then I was like fine I will do I'll watch me there's a lovely quote Yvon Chouinard who runs the outdoor company patagonia and he talks about study the juvenile delinquent because actually he's the entrepreneur who's saying screw you i'm doing it my way and i think there's something again we go back to the people involved in this industry there's an entrepreneurship here that says that's not gonna work i've got a better way of doing it I'm seeing that in you

Matt Robinson: Great hundred percent and yes and we see it in in the smallest child with the pop-up playgrounds we make we get a shipping container full of loose parts we plonk it in the middle of the piazza and next thing you've got a four-year-old creating something you'd never even imagine was possible every single time and they're having these tangible learning experiences that set them up to say hey i don't have to conform to this linear line if i want to put a screw through a what was it my little pony and nail it to this pole and then touch a wheel to it i'm going to do that i'm like yes you are absolutely

Lukas: What excites you most about what you do?

Matt Robinson: I think again it goes back to my childhood experiences I know the impact this is going to have and and i don't think any of us work here at ltl without understanding the work we do genuinely benefits children's health well-being and education long-term and and and we're passionate about that and i think that really comes through our work and it's certainly it's the thing that excites me. I think some of the best projects i've been involved in in the industry landscapes are those long-term training culture co courses with educators and teachers where you know you've got teachers coming back educators come back i tried this and it worked and you can see the delight on that you're hearing what the children have been up to and the engagement they've had with the project you've got teachers coming back saying that has absolutely revolutionized how i approached teaching and learning for my career. You know i've got quotes from teachers saying that you know i've been in teaching 20 years and actually to take this different approach this play based nature engagement place responsive local area type things has transformed what i think about teaching and learning more importantly they're doing it because they see the transformation on the children and and i think for me it's that knowledge that if we can create spaces if we can support adults to create better experiences the benefit is is our children and that surely is what we all want

Lukas: I can align with that you summed up my motivation exactly. A question from our in-house landscape architect dan rhymes he is a british fellow chap if you will and he was asking how do you change your support to engage in nature play from a place like scotland where it's access to nature is a lot it's there a lot of outskirts so it's accessible but then on the other hand you've got places like paisley and glasgow where it's super dense so he was wondering how you get into those areas and have an impact in those denser areas

Matt Robinson: It does become a challenge again we've got practical with some toolkits about how you work with kind of concrete spaces small spaces things like that and some of this is based around again not assuming that a concrete yard has to stay a flat concrete yard we've got some schools right in the heart of say edinburgh where we've dug a hole in that tarmac or we put stuff on top of it i worked with a school who were looking at they had concrete walls and an old victorian yard and we actually looked at putting up and over kind of climbing frames and platforms at six foot height wall level again to try and create a variety of kind of levels shade things to slide up swing down jump off whatever it was you kind of got to work with what you've got we are not averse at times about how to use a bunch of man-made materials because you know what they're resilient they may be accessible we've maybe got those walls in place instead of taking the walls out let's work with them and create something with them i would say as well it's amazing even in in the kind of heart of cities it's amazing sometimes the bitter green space you can find and the spaces and places that we've got again we've got a couple of primary schools here who walk up the road because the posh hotel up the road has a little bit of green space our parliament building in edinburgh has a garden which i know a school has accessed on a regular basis things like that it's sometimes i can't find it here what's within a few hundred meters of school that maybe i could go and ask to get access but certainly a lot of it's getting practical about those concrete spaces and those challenging smaller places

Matt Robinson: Last thought on this i three years ago was very very fortunate to go out to asia and do some work there with a fantastic set of international schools called dulwich international and i had left the playground in glasgow on one day with a group of teachers saying are we concerned about the weather it's cold it's wet we're concerned about risk and challenge and we're concerned about whether parents think that this kind of play thing is and this outdoor learning is really legitimate learning 36 48 hours later i'm stood in a playground in beijing in china with a group of parents going we're really concerned risk and challenge about the heat of the weather in the cold of the winter and whether this is legitimate learning and i just thought i can go anywhere in the world i'm coming up with the same challenges here so i do think although there are cultural differences and environmental differences the challenges that we face with spaces and with attitudes are actually quite common around the world and one of the things we need to get better at doing is sharing between countries how we solve those projects and again those schools in beijing i know they made some changes to what looked like basically a builder's yard they had just built a school it was concrete with a bunch of stored items in it and i go back now and they've got trees in there and they've got seating in there and they've got quiet corners in there and they put some water in there to dull the sound of the city in the background so you hear a waterfall not traffic and i just think there's some amazing things we can do if we get creative about it so that's phenomenal

Lukas: To wrap up today i was just thinking for those educators listening that they might be parents as well how do they best support children to just get outside more because that's initial step is the hardest once you get out the convincer is nature's the convincer to them and everyone sees a bit everyone can see the benefit firsthand but how do we bridge that gap between what we're doing and actually getting there

Matt Robinson: I think for me and i'm thinking this is as much me as a parent as as the work i do with with schools it was making that decision to say we do outdoors this is what we do and and you know if we've got an hour spare i'm not gonna sit here i am gonna go to the park and i am gonna say i'm a child no we are going and and have enough i guess value and understanding to say this is worth doing with our educators and teachers that often comes around planning and saying no no this is just part and parcel of what we do you know our nursery is outdoors every day the door is open any child can choose to go out as a school i've planned in outdoor learning i resource break time and lunch time so that there are actually resources for children to play with and it's kind of making that decision before you have to make the decision in front of you and that's certainly worked for me as a parent but i think it also reflects some of the work we do as learning through landscapes and saying choose to value this put the policies the practicalities the planned time in place and actually children will engage they're not the issue we are the adult is

Lukas: I love that yeah we children will seek it out they will just as we did and i want to sneak out on the day where you're sat there going oh man the rain is bouncing they're going great puddles let's go absolutely my son will ask is it going to rain today so i can play in the rain exactly so yeah thank you so much for your beautiful insight thanks for inspiring me to see what and get a sneak peek of what is actually achievable and thank you so much for your tips in overcoming those challenges and as you mentioned those universal challenges that we all face and just a reminder you're not no one's alone in this journey we all want the best for our children we want this to be a generational change so we don't have to sit here and do a podcast about it at all we want this to become the norm so thank you for the work

Matt Robinson: One of the things i'd be remiss if i didn't share it at the end and i know we've invited you lucas to possibly be involved in this we are working with the international school grounds alliance in september to hold a conference here in stirling and however in the current climate if you can't make it in person it's all running online as well so we'll put a link in in afterwards but we'd welcome people to join the international school grounds alliance for a conference that funnily enough is entitled overcoming challenges and we're going to hear from countries all around the world and all sorts of people about what they're up to how they're doing it and and just inspire us all i think it's going to be a fascinating conference particularly after the last year that we've had

Lukas: 100 and we'll put all the links into that and when it gets closer and closer we'll be sharing it on our social so head over once you wrap up listening to this podcast head over to learning through landscapes go to the website so many resources also play scotland some and organizations i've looked up to since i was an educator eight years ago going wow this is achievable so thank you for supporting me passively on my journey as well brilliant brilliant thank you very much for the opportunity thank you for sharing your wisdom you