Cohort 2026 PhD Project
About The Project
Article 31 of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child recognises children’s right to play. However, in the UK there is increasing concern about the erosion of play opportunities, increased hostility towards children playing and an ineffectual policy landscape (Play England, 2025).
An extensive body of research details the wide-ranging benefits of play, particularly open-ended curiosity-driven play. These include developing social and communication skills (e.g. building healthy relationships); supporting cognitive development, particularly problem solving and critical thinking; building resilience and an ability to adapt, and positive impacts on health and wellbeing (Bradbury, 2025). Furthermore, established community play venues often become support networks for families; signposting or hosting food banks, clothes banks, or training spaces for employment skills (King 2021).
Nottingham has a rich history of community play with several adventure playgrounds. However, local communities note the decline, closure (e.g. The Venture in St Ann’s, Nottingham Play Forum) or inaccessibility of these spaces (Skelding, 2025). In addition to limited urban play spaces, top-down educational policy decisions and assessment-driven agendas have reduced the time children have to play in school (Bradbury & Hare, 2025). This also impacts all children across schooling. Continuous play provision has important educational and social advantages, contributing to the disruption of cycles of educational inequality. Teachers admit that their knowledge about play and ability to implement play methodologies is limited. While some external providers offer play programmes, they are unaffordable for many local schools.
Therefore, this project seeks to explore how all children’s right to play and learn through curiosity-driven play can be re-established. It contributes towards Nottingham City Council’s goal of being a child-friendly city by working with community partner Ignite!. As an organisation, Ignite! takes a curiosity-first approach to support the creative development of young people, enabling them to flourish. This project brings together children, family, caregivers and teachers from a local under-served primary school to be drawn from Ignite!’s network, constituting a ‘school community’. Using a Playful Participatory Methodology, it will investigate how the rich cultures of play from diverse communities shape inclusive play practice and charts the outcomes of playful encounters to inform community-led models of play provision that can be embedded in schools and policy.
This project has been co-created with and is supported by researchers from University of Nottingham, Nottingham Trent University and partners at Ignite Futures.
Project Aims
The overall aims of the project are:
Co-produce a toolkit of resources to support the facilitation of inclusive and culturally responsive curiosity-driven play.
To investigate how children’s right to play, as enshrined in Article 31 of the UNCRC, can be meaningfully re-established in primary school and community settings.
To explore how diverse cultural traditions and community histories of play can inform inclusive and locally relevant curiosity-driven play.
To document and analyse the outcomes of curiosity-driven playful encounters in terms of educational engagement, social connection and children’s development.
Project Team
- PhD Candidate: Adele Cleaver
- Lead Academic Supervisor: Dr Kerryn Dixon (University of Nottingham)
- Academic Co-Supervisor: Dr Aaron Bradbury (Nottingham Trent University)
- Academic Co-Supervisor: Dr Jonathan Halls (University of Nottingham)
- Community Supervisor: Megan Shore (Ignite Futures)