FROM THE BOOK: WHERE DO THE CHILDEN PLAY? Companion Volume to the PBS Program

---------------------------------------------------



Changing the Way We Think About Play
By
Robert Lavelle


I work in public engagement. Let me state clearly that public engagement is not the same as public relations. In the field of public relations, the goal is to persuade people or to sell them ideas. In the field of public engagement, the goal is to help the public engage with complex issues and problems, to help them listen to one another and to implement new ideas. I’m an unlikely person to be so deeply involved in the field of public engagement; I’m not a very public person. I don’t mind being in a crowd, but I’d prefer not to address the crowd. I’m more intellectual than organizational.

In the past twenty-five years, I’ve moved from the field of book publishing to public television to public engagement. At heart, what I’ve been doing is to help ideas that I believe in have a substantial impact. As an editor, the books I helped bring into the world were often serious and thoughtful (and admittedly, usually unprofitable). I deeply wanted to have an effect, but the books came and went.

After a few years, I learned of a project being developed in Boston---it was to be a major television documentary series on the history of the civil rights movement. I left publishing to enter the world of public television, working on what would become the acclaimed series, “Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years.” This got more attention than I could have imagined. The companion volume that I helped produce hit several bestseller lists. The television series won numerous awards. I stayed with that production company, called Blackside, for over thirteen years. During those years I witnessed the rise of cable television, satellite television, computer games, video games, and the Internet. With each expansion of electronic communications technology, the ideas we presented on television and in books had a harder and harder time getting recognition. With so many options, it was difficult to get viewers’ attention; with so much media coming so fast, it was even harder to turn viewers into active, engaged citizens. With my colleagues, I began creating ways of bringing community members together in structured settings for deliberation, using media as a catalyst. After Henry Hampton, the founder of Blackside, died, Martha Fowlkes (another Blackside executive) and I started our own company, Roundtable, dedicated to bringing citizens together for discussion and action. Together we helped to launch the website and initial planning phase for a national outreach campaign funded by the Kellogg Foundation.


Martha and I were drawn to “Where Do the Children Play?” because it brings together several elements that illustrate the situation in which we find ourselves. We know that children’s access to natural spaces and unstructured play is deeply important to the development of healthy children--physically, socially, spiritually, intellectually and emotionally. That access has been diminishing significantly in recent years. Experts may recognize the problem, but changing the public’s priorities to enable solutions to emerge is a challenge. There are numerous community problems that need our attention, that call for us to change. But change demands hard work, especially when it is borne of consensus and compromise. Change is even more difficult when we rank this problem in relation to other social problems. It is far easier to sustain the status quo, to convince ourselves that expressing concern or guilt is enough, or to hold a fundraiser. It is far easier to answer a questionnaire or share our frustration with like-minded souls and feel as if we’ve done something that will result in long-term change. But good ideas are too rarely implemented. Rational arguments do not often result in change.

“Where Do the Children Play?” puts the issues of social isolation and withdrawal directly before us in the unformed lives of our communities’ most vulnerable members-- children. This project is a perfect reminder that while we may be members of innumerable “communities of interest” (meeting in chat rooms, or posting on blogs) we actually live in a physical community. When we see our children more familiar with creatures in the online game “World of Warcraft” than with those in the woods nearby, or when they spend more time IMing fellow gamers half-way around the country than they do playing with their friends down the street, we’re seeing a clear manifestation of changes in our communities.


Before Roundtable takes on a project, we ask ourselves: Do we think this is a problem that affects a significant number of people? Is this a problem with solutions that can be implemented at the local level? Is this problem of such significant importance as to warrant competing with existing local priorities seeking attention and resources? If yes, we then set about creating tools--videos, print support, Web resources--that help inform the targeted public and provide a structured space for local coalition -building, assessment, discussion, and action.

Lack of access to play has many commonalities across the nation, but the challenges posed at the local level are usually particular to that environment. We do not assume that our project is appropriate for every community in the nation. When it comes to adopting social changes, we have found it useful to borrow from the field of public health. When public health researchers attempt to predict whether an individual is ready to change his or her behavior, they often assess the individual and assign him or her to one of four categories. Those categories are useful in describing communities’ readiness for change as well. Some are not ready to think about it (“preconceptuals”); others are ready to consider the need for change, to consider recognizing the problem (“conceptuals”); some communities are further along on the continuum, have recognized the problem and are now ready to take action (“action-takers”); and some have recognized the problem, have taken action, and need support to maintain their change (“maintainers”). In a world of limited resources, we need to identify which communities are ready to take action, and enlist them in our campaign.

To determine which communities would benefit most from involvement in the “Where Do the Children Play? Campaign” – that is, ready to take action, outreach needs a two-track approach. First, listen to project advisors, foundation program officers, staff of national organizations working in the field of play as well as field producers. From there it is evident who is dealing with the issue in communities across the country. Advisors, national partners, and funders then have first-hand knowledge and provide consulting and financial resources to active groups; as such they are well aware of at least a portion of those communities addressing the issue. Second, conduct a modest attempt at mining data. By observing ballot initiatives, voting records, governors’ “State of the State” addresses, and scanning local and regional press sources, it is possible to identify additional communities that are addressing the issue of “access to play.”

After identifying appropriate communities, implement the project design and begin recruiting organizations within those communities to build a coalition that is willing to address the issue of increasing access to play. They might provide educational videos to make sure all participants have the same baseline knowledge, as well as print and online tools to help guide the process in an inclusive, deliberative manner. The coalitions will assess their local challenges and opportunities for change and come to agreement on a year’s plan of action. The action plan is usually launched at an event for which the organization supplies an event video (excerpts from the documentary). Often Roundtable sends a producer or advisor as a guest.

Not every member of a targeted community needs to be recruited or engaged with the issue. For the “Where Do the Children Play? Campaign,” it would be useful to launch a national outreach campaign by targeting formal and informal leaders, influential and active citizens, and people who frame the way communities consider new ideas. In the field of children’s play, these community members might include elected officers, journalists, educators, police officials, health and medical staff, child development professionals, academics from nearby universities, development executives, business leaders, park and recreation officials, and urban planners. While bringing in local experts and decision makers is important, long term success requires that stakeholder citizens—parents, grandparents, caregivers, and children--be included in meaningful ways. As local communities form a coalition to address the issue of restricted access to play, it is critical that the planning group and public participants include a variety of perspectives. Such a coalition should include those who tend to resist new community initiatives for financial reasons, those who are likely boosters, those who are disabled or have disabled children, senior citizens, and meaningful representations of ages, incomes, races and ethnicities.

We live in highly partisan times in which ideology has a tendency to become strident. This stridency is acute on a non-local basis. Ranting on a blog or at a stranger’s house party where you’ve just watched a propaganda documentary, phoning in to a reactionary radio program, or bombarding an offending newspaper with a wave of rabid email is very easy. Individuals acting this way suffer no direct social consequences for their behavior. However, we live locally, and confrontational or divisive behavior that seeks to squelch dissent is not sustainable in brick--and--mortar communities. Access to play must compete with a host of other issues. It is helpful to humanize the issues and the opposition by bringing together people who are not like-minded, including people who have divergent opinions and are looking at the issue from very different perspectives. Roundtable helps make sure that all participants understand the need for listening, civility, and for being mindful of the difference between fact and opinion. Democracy lives through deliberation and civic participation, not just voting, and a community’s ability to deal with problems demands that we put partisanship aside to make progress.

We’ve developed a version of the framework laid out by Everett Rogers in his Diffusion of Innovations. He notes that groups adopt change to the extent that it has the following characteristics [text in italics from Rogers’ book]:

• Relative Advantage … the degree to which an innovation is perceived as better than the idea it supersedes. The degree of relative advantage may be measured in economic terms, but social prestige, convenience, and satisfaction are also important factors. It does not matter so much if an innovation has a great deal of objective advantage; the greater the perceived relative advantage of an innovation, the more rapid its rate of adoption will be.
• Compatibility … the degree to which an innovation is perceived as being consistent with the existing values, past experiences, and needs of potential adopters. An idea that is incompatible with the values and norms of a social system will not be adopted as rapidly as innovation that is compatible. The adoption of an incompatible innovation often requires the prior adoption of a new value system, which is a slow process.
• Complexity … the degree to which an innovation is perceived as difficult to understand and use. New ideas that are simpler to understand are adopted more rapidly than innovations that require the adopter to develop new skills and understanding.
• Trialability … the degree to which an innovation may be experimented with on a limited basis. New ideas that can be tried will generally be adopted more quickly than innovations that are not divisible.
• Observability … the degree to which the results of an innovation are visible to others. The easier it is for individuals to see the results of an innovation, the more likely they are to adopt it. Visibility stimulates discussion of a new idea.

With such motivational guidelines in mind, we work with video, print, and online resources to present the benefits of change.

A single project, even year long with multiple media components, rarely affects substantial change. But if a project aligns itself with existing and emerging trends at the local level; is respectful of local needs, promotes change in stages, and shows tangible benefits, a single project can measurably help further progress in the field. For example, Roundtable recently launched a national dialogue and action campaign called “The College Track: America’s Sorting Machine.” The project sought to highlight the importance of all children being prepared to succeed in post-secondary education, especially in the emerging economy. It also brought to light the fact that most communities continue to track students based on income, race, ethnicity, and whether or not their parents went to college (though today this process is rarely called “tracking”). The project consisted of a three-part documentary series we produced for public television and a “Community Connections” campaign to build coalitions in targeted communities and to help them address access and equity in preparing all students for success in college.

We also began a “National Awareness Initiative,” which recruited formal and informal leaders in our participating communities to take video, print, and audio materials to offices of local decision-makers, luncheon meetings or roundtable breakfasts. Our goal was to highlight issues and solutions at the local level so people in positions of power help set local agendas or allocate resources. The results were remarkable. Over 150 communities launched twelve-month projects seeking to improve middle schools through the college degree pipeline. Mayors, school superintendents, state legislatures, business people, parents, students, and numerous organizations and associations came together and formed over 110 new coalitions. Each region and community identified the issues related to the project that they wanted to work on.

These issues varied at the local level from communication (New Hampshire set up a toll-free number to guide families to resources) to mentoring (communities such as Cincinnati and Seattle established new mentoring programs) to identity issues (in Alaska, Inuits who had completed college were brought back to visit middle and secondary school students to demonstrate that one can retain tribal identity after post-secondary education). Additional media programming on radio or in print supported most of the efforts, and most coalitions committed to continuing their work together.

The issues surrounding access to play for children are many, including universal access for the disabled and underserved populations, crime, education, health, safety, sidewalks and transportation, urban planning, zoning, and scheduling. Fortunately, numerous organizations and informal groups are already at work on these issues. “Where Do the Children Play?” can help galvanize and connect these organizations, volunteers, and formal and informal leaders to make progress. Such a coalition can undertake the important job of helping children from all walks of life--urban, suburban, rural, able-bodied and those with disabilities, those from well-resourced communities and those from communities working through myriad issues of poverty--to grow by playing in unstructured outdoor settings. A national project with local applications can have a significant impact. The time to launch such an initiative is now.

About Robert Lavelle

Robert Lavelle founded Roundtable with his colleague, Martha Fowlkes, in 1999. At Roundtable, he helped develop and implement the idea of "public engagement media" - producing, distributing and employing non-fiction media in a manner that brings key members of the public together for discussion in conjunction with national broadcasts. Lavelle was a co-executive producer on the national public television series, The College Track: America's Sorting Machine. He has overseen numerous national public engagement campaigns, usually using media as a key component. Earlier, Lavelle was a vice president at Blackside, Inc., where he worked on such award-winning projects as "Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years," and "America's War on Poverty." Lavelle directed Blackside's publishing efforts and worked closely with scholars on project development. Prior to working at Blackside, Lavelle was a senior editor and publishing board member in the trade book division of Addison-Wesley Publishing. He is the editor of the anthology "America's New War on Poverty: A Reader for Action" published by KQED Books and, for his work on "Eyes on the Prize" is a recipient of the "Crystal Award for Outstanding Innovation in Educational Technology" given yearly by AECT).