Revealing the Hidden Dimensions of Place Experience in Primary School-aged Children

The everyday local environment of incidental spaces routinely encountered by children is an important contributor to their social development and general health and wellbeing. There remains, however, a significant loss of connection between children and outdoor settings and this is increasingly raised as an issue that may have long-term implications. It is now recognised as important that the voices of children should play a pivotal role in the arrangement and content of their spatial realm and that achieving this will require new ways to understand children’s perceptions of place and how this contributes to individual and social development. This paper outlines UK-based doctoral research to develop a range of participatory tools to facilitate exploration and analysis of the spatial experiences of primary school-age children with particular reference to their perceptions of the outdoor places they encounter in their daily life patterns.