The child's right to play — Ege Sevinçli on Eğitim 360°

Ege Sevinçli joined an episode of Eğitim 360° on play in the city and why children's right to it needs more than one-off gestures.

Play is how children learn, recover and take part in the life of a place. On episode 38 of Eğitim 360°, the education programme Medyascope produces with the Education Reform Initiative (ERG), host Yaprak Sarıışık gathered three people working on that idea from different angles: Başak İncekara of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, Necla Korkmaz of the Rengarenk Umutlar association, and Ege Sevinçli of Superpool.

Necla Korkmaz spoke from the association's psychosocial work with children in Sur, Diyarbakır. Children lack enough places to play at home, at school and in the street, she argued, and local governments should treat them as participants when cities are planned, not only as beneficiaries.

Başak İncekara presented the Istanbul Play Master Plan, prepared within the municipality's Parks, Gardens and Green Spaces Department. It aims to make children's need for play part of how public services are planned, and it has its own play and recreation unit to carry it forward.

Ege described the work Superpool does with local governments in several cities on children, play and public space. His central point was that designing for the right to play cannot be a single intervention. It has to be sustained, so that it becomes part of how a city is run rather than something it did once.

The episode is in Turkish. Listen to the episode