Helen Woolley

Helen is not a play worker but as a Landscape Architect she is very interested in outdoor spaces that are provided for children to play in. But she also knows that children will play anywhere and everywhere so outdoor environments that children choose to use are also of interest. These include found spaces of skateboarders and different outdoor spaces in housing areas.

Helen first shared the term Kit, Fence Carpet to describe the provision of playgrounds in England over a meal in the Sheffield Botanical Gardens in 2005 before publishing the term, now well accepted in England and other parts of Europe, in a variety of papers. These types of spaces don’t have enough loose parts in them . . . .

Helen is a Reader in Landscape Architecture and Society in the Department of Landscape at The University of Sheffield and has worked with a range of non-academic partners including play equipment companies and housing providers. She is currently involved in a three year BIG Lottery Reaching Communities project called Living with Nature. The project team is working with communities in 24 social housing areas of Sheffield to encourage the use of play/green spaces and the redesign and physical changes to some of these open spaces. (Living with Nature has a conference coming up – see Helen’s web pages for a link for this).

In the last few years Helen has spent time in Japan, where she is about to re-visit, understanding some of the issues related to children’s outdoor environments in the post-disaster area.

h.woolley@sheffield.ac.uk

http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/landscape/staff/profiles/hwoolley

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