Stockholm, Sweden

January 17

Exploring Stockholm's Playgrounds with Sawako Akune

By Linus Rueegger

The second day of our chock-full learning cluster was spent exploring the city of Stockholm through what can be best described as a tour of some of the city’s most admirable and unique playgrounds. Our wonderful, determined, and knowledgeable tour guide for the day was Sawako Akune, someone with deep knowledge of the playgrounds around Stockholm due to her work. Sawako spends a lot of her days taking different ages of school children on public transit throughout the city to different places of play on the weekends and during the summer, her goal being to give the children time away from their parents and exposure to playgrounds that they may not have the opportunity to experience otherwise. There were two playgrounds that took up a large portion of our day with the first being the Uggleparken (owl park). Uggleparken is a park located in Furstenberg Castle Park (Stockholm Stad, 2019) within Stockholm, it was opened in 2013 and has since then become not only a staple of play for the elementary and preschool nearby but a landmark for the neighborhood. The park as seen in the pictures below has a strong forest theme, with the two main attractions being the “king” and “queen” owl, surrounded by mushrooms, ants, oversized Beatles and more forest-themed play structures.

Celine with Queen Owl

Linus with the beetles

All of these structures are constructed from wood, a feature that adds another layer to the connection to the natural world. However, even though this may have been the most famous and easy to spot playgrounds we visited on this day it was certainly not the most unique.

Sawako had been carrying with her a large backpack all day and we all found out at our next destination was that this pack carried our lunch. We enjoyed lunch at our next stop Rålambshovsparken, this was in the minds of many in our group not only the most fun but also the most different from the American playgrounds that many of us are used to. While we spent most of the time in the playground section of the park, this park also contains a skate park, looping trails for runners and walkers, and an outdoor theater utilized primarily during the summer, these different sections of the park allow for a wide variety of demographics to enjoy the park. The actual playground of the park also serves as a public kindergarten.

(Visit Stockholm, 2018). What this means is throughout the week there is staff at the playground from Monday to Friday between the hours of 10 am-5 pm. Anyone can drop off their kindergarten-aged children between these hours with the staff free of charge and feel safe in knowing their child has a multitude of activities for the children. The park overall looks very different then most playgrounds, one of the key aspects being the dynamic construction of the playground. There is a woodworking shed, as seen below, in the playground where children can work with the staff in order to create structures that they want to see. We must give a big thank you to Ms. Lianna pictured above who gave us a tour of not only the outdoor playground but also the indoor facilities where the staff have a restroom for playground users to use, a snack area, and foosball and air hockey table. This park showcased the priority of play in Swedish culture with the city not only providing a world-class park but also staff who make the park even more accessible and enjoyable then it would be without them.

Car Wash

Vianne slipping down the slide

Linus embracing his "Kid Power"

Maddie, Celine, Shelby, and Kentaro enjoying the swings

The day ended with a reflection on our time with Sawako in a quaint cafe near our hostel. There was a general consensus that while the day was filled with lots of walking and many of us could feel it by the end of the day we felt very lucky to be able to experience the city of Stockholm and some of its most incredible playgrounds with Sawako. Overall one of the greatest lessons we took away from the day was that many of the playgrounds we visited and specifically Rålambshovsparken had a very particular approach towards children’s enjoyment. There was not nearly as high of prioritization or obsession that many American playgrounds have towards safety, instead of allowing children to learn from falling down, scraping their knees, etc, in order to fine-tune more real-life skills. The other aspect that was prioritized was creativity, by having structures that are not as clear cut as a swing set or teeter-totter children are challenged intellectually to create their own play instead of following rigid rules set by many American playgrounds. Lastly, we have to acknowledge that while we are a group of 18-21-year-olds we ceritantly tested out and played on all of the structures we could, and if our group had as much fun as is shown below we definitely have to give this day, and the playgrounds we visited a 10/10.

References

Stockholm Stad, Parks and Nature, 2019

https://parker.stockholm/hitta-lekplatser-parklekar-plaskdammar/

Visit Stockholm, Parks, and Recreation, 2019

https://www.visitstockholm.com/sv/se--gora/sevardheter/ralambshovsparken/

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