Mapping The Places You Played Outside as a Kid

I love this project. You may, too (boldface mine):

Dear hhaibfisri
Free-Range Kids: I’m a photographer and an interdisciplinary community artist, and I’m transforming people’s childhood play memories into art for my new project called Play Passages.  

To start, I’m inviting people to share a vivid outdoor play memory from their childhood, and then draw a map of its location with their eyes closed. Believe it or not, it’s actually easier for many adults than drawing with eyes open—it short circuits the inner critic and invites people to play again.  

After making the drawing, then people use watercolors (with their eyes open) to color in and flesh out their map however they want.

Inspired by the stories and the maps, I rephotograph the locations of the memories by visiting them through online photos and satellite images and creating new abstracted images.

There have been many inspirations for Play Passages, but one of the primary ones is that after  I had kids (I have two of them, they’re 8 and 5), I’ve became increasingly frustrated (like so many other readers of this blog) that it’s so difficult to give them the same freedoms and play opportunities that I had. And I don’t think it needs to be that way.

Fear in many forms seems to have trumped remembering what it felt like to really play, to take risks, to sometimes get hurt, to have a sense of wonder and possibility that isn’t necessarily “productive”.

I found myself wondering what would happen if I started asking people to remember, what stories would come up? And if I asked them to play a little bit, take a small artistic risk, what would that process be like for people?

It’s not just about nostalgia (although of course thinking back on our childhood play can be very nostalgic). I don’t want to look at childhood play through rose-colored glasse — play is complex and it isn’t always a positive experience.  

I’m just extremely curious about so many things: what are our most vivid memories of playing outside and why do we remember them? What is the relationship between how we played as children and who we became as adults? How do we stay in touch with play over the course of our lives? And how do we give those same opportunities to our children?

I’m hoping Play Passages will spark some of those conversations.  

People can get involved in the project and share their own play memory stories through my  website  (link to:  http://www.mindystricke.com/playpassages/). I just released the first five photographs from the project, and I’ll be releasing more as I make them. I look forward to hearing people’s stories and seeing their play memory maps from all over the world!

Here’s my contact info:

Mindy Stricke
Photographer/Interdisciplinary Community Artist

Art That Connects Us

http://www.mindystricke.com

Mapping Our Lives Facebook Group

And here’s an example of a story, play memory map, and the image of the location of the memory:

“Every summer, all summer, between the ages of 4 or 5 until about 10 years old, we played in the bamboo along a creek that ran through my family’s property and through many yards in our neighbourhood.

The creek, which we called “Chicken House Slough”, was shallow and muddy. We hid in the bamboo along the banks and pretended we lived there. We made up a religion with altars and figurines made of bamboo, string, picantha berries, vines and sticks. I felt free and powerful, as if I could build a society with my friends from whatever we wanted. We made “food” in tiny cups that we got from slicing a bamboo stalk between its joints. We stalked the creek, threw berries at an angry crawdad, and snuck into strangers’ backyards. It felt exciting and illicit.” – Erin Koshal

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