Everyday Places & Spaces: Briefs and Resources

Given that school-age children spend less than twenty percent of their waking hours in school, valuable learning opportunities emerge outside of school. Community-based organizations, libraries, museums, clinics, laundromats, and community centers can and do play an important part in providing inclusive literacy-rich settings that help build a myriad of skills in the summer, after school, and on weekends.

In a William Penn Foundation report entitled “Transforming Community Spaces into Opportunities for Playful Learning,” playful learning refers to the type of play in which children are actively exploring an engaging activity embedded in a relevant, meaningful context that is structured by caregivers or the environment to guide children toward focusing on the elements that promote learning (p.3).

The Everyday Places & Spaces coalition is comprised of a number of individuals, organizations, and institutions engaged in uplifting the importance of inclusive informal learning anywhere and everywhere.

Below are a number of articles, briefs, and websites that discuss the importance of establishing inclusive nonformal learning opportunities throughout communities.

• Transforming Community Spaces into Opportunities for Playful Learning – William Penn Foundation (September 2021)
• Guide to Inclusive Play – Sensory Trust
• Let Kids Play! Accessible Playgrounds
• Urban95-Bernard Leer Foundation-Creating healthy, safe, and vibrant cities where babies and toddlers and their families thrive
• Child in the City – Child in the City Foundation (archive of articles)
• Playful Planet – for a Child Friedly World
• US Play Coalition – Partners for Play
• Learning Through Play – The Lego Foundation
• Teaching Diversity and Inclusion Through Play (June 2020) – TheGeniusofPlay.org
• Playful Learning Landscapes (brookings.edu) (2020)
• Creating Playful Learning Spaces in Cities-The Importance of Stakeholder Buyin – Brookings.edu (February 2022)
• Remake Learning – Igniting engaging, relevant, and equitable learning practices – The Grable Foundation
• Growing and Learning Through Play – Sesame Street in Communities