Nicole Williams

The writer Jay Griffiths wrote how “today’s children are enclosed in school and home, enclosed in cars to shuttle between them, enclosed by fear, by surveillance and poverty and enclosed in rigid schedules of time.”[1] A forest school proposed within Ryeish Green allows children to break from these enclosures. Its location creates walkable or cyclable routes to school through protected green spaces, whilst the classrooms encourage outdoor learning and a freedom for children to explore themselves. Through simple and natural materials, the school hopes to provide a better alternative to those currently within the parish, combining the rhythms of learning, play and nature.

In Shinfield Parish these nooks and turns are in danger of being forgotten, with the influx of new homes ignoring the green spaces in the area.  Since the 1970s, the area in which children roam without adults has decreased by 90%. This generation of children have suffered even more over the pandemic, losing out on the simple fun of playing outside. The parish is set to receive 3,000 homes by 2026. However, hemmed in by high fences and with more tarmac than grass, the new housing and schools in the area are designed to keep children in rather than let them out. They discourage them from the messy play of nature, confining them to the ‘safe’ environment indoors or gardens. Play is so important to childhood that is a protected human right. Therefore this needs to be addressed within the evolving infrastructure of Shinfield Parish.

My domestic memory was hiding in the eave of the house, filling in the spaces unoccupied by adults. The school recreates this experience, giving children, and their parents, the confidence to explore the wild territories of nature that are so essential to our development and well-being.

[1] Jay Griffiths, Kith, (Hamish Hamilton, London), cited in George Monbiot https://www.monbiot.com/2015/01/06/the-child-inside/