International Council for Children's Play Conselho International para o Jogo da Criança Conseil International pour le Jeu de L'Enfant International Rat für Kinderspiel und Spielzeug
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Past ICCP Conference - Tallinn 2012
Providing Play: Applications for policy and practice from research
The 26th ICCP World Play Conference was held in Tallinn, Estonia on the 18 and 19 June 2012,
organised in co-operation with Tallinn University and the Estonian Union for Child Welfare.
Some final reflections....
The ICCP conference in Tallinn was a wonderful conference. Seldom we received that much enthusiastic
reactions of the participants. Some called it even a wonderful conference. As factors contributing to the
success the diversity of approaches of children's play is mentioned, the quality of the presentations,
the hospitality, quality and efficiency of the organizing university more especially of the organizing team.
All these factors together created an atmosphere that stimulated the reflection on children's play.
Very remarkable was the increase of the number of philosophical contributions. They built a broad context for
children's play. Play is much more than the typical temporal action children develop during a period of
transition to growing up. It's much more than a convenient, child-friendly instrument for a child to teach
or an joyful activity to relax. To play is part of being human. So philosophy demystifies children's play,
but also it anchors it deeper as human activity: being creative, create meaning, the ability to play with
meaning etc.
There was also a lot of attention for the early childhood education. There are still a lot of concerns about
the education of this age-group. In spite of what the term 'teacher' suggests, there is an unanimous approach
on the early childhood education being an interactive, dialogical activity. Paying attention to children's
play, in the ECE there is lot of agency of the children themselves. It should be more valued and pointed out
as the starting point of the ECE.
A challenging remark on the title of the conference: 'Providing play: applications for policy and practice
from research': providing play is impossible because a characteristic of play is the free choice; however
it's possible to provide the conditions for play.
One of our wise presenters asked if -maybe- we have to develop 'playology' as a title for our activities
developed by the all of us....
Dr Jan Van Gils ICCP President
Play Helps Us - a poem inspired by the Tallinn Conference.
