(At)tending to rhizomes: how researching neighbourhood play with children can affect and be affected by policy and practice in transcalar ways in the context of the Welsh Government’s Play Sufficiency Duty

Abstract

The authors draw on their experiences of researching the Welsh Government’s Play Sufficiency Duty to discuss how the conditions for the Duty itself, its implementation and for children to play out in their neighbourhoods develop in rhizomatic ways that can be both planned and unexpected. Looking at examples of neighbourhood research with children, they suggest four dimensions of children’s participation (as the capacity to affect and be affected): first, seeing playing itself as a mode of participation in the production of public space; second, through participation in research and influencing planning and design at a hyperlocal level; third, through the ways such research affects researchers and others; and fourth, how the stories that emerge from the research spread in rhizomatic ways that affect policy and practice at multiple intra-related scales