Children’s Outdoor Active Play Research Network

Play is crucial for children’s health, belonging and well-being. Active outdoor play helps children to be physically active, to feel a sense of belonging in their environments and to improve and maintain their well-being. However, over the last 20 years, the time that children spend playing outdoors has decreased. This is due to multiple interconnected psycho-social, cultural, societal and policy factors. Developing strategies to help children regain their right and ability to play outdoors regularly requires a multidisciplinary and interconnected approach. With this in mind, the network will bring together a variety of experts from across England and the UK to develop promising strategies to increase active outdoor play in children, and to explore how best to measure children’s active play at a population level.  

The network will bring together academics, practioners and policy makers from across England and the UK in a series of three workshops. In these workshops we will identify shared interests, develop focused workstreams and to initiate collaborative funding applications to test active play interventions and to explore active play measurement. ECR support is provided through a research associate position to support the work of the network. As well as positioning ourselves for competitive funding applications, we expect to complete a systematic review, a delphi study and a policy brief outlining network members position on policy priorities for improving children’s opportunities for outdoor active play in England.