Creating nature-based play settings for children through looking, listening, learning and modifying in a Swedish landscape laboratory

Children's outdoor play and access to nature are important for their health and development of environmental agency but there is a global decline of green spaces available to them. The aim is to explore the possibilities of creating nature-based outdoor settings for play and learning which benefit children as well as the wildlife and wider ecosystems. A fieldwork on developing nature based play settings in an outdoor landscape laboratory in Sweden involved university students (3 days) and children, two groups of 3–5 years olds (8 days) and one group of 6-year-olds (4 days). Field notes from ethnographic work was at the core of the process and involved practitioners and scholars in landscape architecture, vegetation design, ecology and environmental psychology. An iterative place-based process of learning guided the process, including following phases: (1) looking and listening attentive to the physical environment and to the children´s activities in a setting (2) transdisciplinary learning based on results from the analysis of field notes and the dialogues, and, (3) modifications of settings. In two of the five settings investigated an intervention to improve the setting was set up, followed by further investigations, illustrating the iterative character of the process with elements of co-creation. The results reveal the potentials in collaborative work setting out to develop features in nature as woodland, meadow, water and paths, so that they align well with children´s needs as well as nature conservation. The material should be useful in efforts to make natural environment more accessible to children and to the conceptual development of play biotopes, useful in the design and management of sustainable living environments.