News

National Position Statement on Outdoor Play relaunched

Outdoor activity plays a major role in supporting our health and wellbeing – something that has become increasingly clear over the past year. For children and young people, playing outdoors has an even greater impact – enhancing and supporting learning and development. Scotland has become the first part of the UK to directly incorporate Children’s Rights into law, and one of those is the right to play.  As we look forward to recovery, it is vital that a recommitment to outdoor play and learning is at the heart of it.

In 2018, Inspiring Scotland worked with Scottish Government to form Scotland’s Outdoor Play and Learning Coalition by bringing together people and organisations from education, childcare, healthcare, environment and government. This group developed National Position Statement: Outdoor Play and Learning, which has now been signed by over 100 organisations, committing to work together to embed playing and learning and outdoors as an everyday activity and a fundamental part of growing up in Scotland.

Outdoor play and learning for children and young people aligns with the aims and objectives of many public bodies and organisations across a number of sectors, including those addressing pressing issues, such as poor health and wellbeing outcomes, and those supporting national efforts to close the attainment gap in education.

It is now more apparent than ever before that enabling more playing and learning outdoors can go a long way to ensuring the best outcomes for Scotland’s children and young people. That’s why Inspiring Scotland is relaunching this position statement, to get more organisations involved and raise awareness of the benefits of outdoor play and learning.

Organisations that sign up to the position statement commit to:

• Widening access to diverse greenspaces and natural landscapes to ensure that all children, young people and families have easy, local access to excellent outdoor play.
• Opening up more of our communal and publicly-managed spaces for playing and learning outdoors, ensuring that children and young people know they are entitled to access these spaces and feel safe and comfortable using them.
• Enhancing and enriching urban greenspace and built environments to be inviting, play-friendly places, offering easy access to the outdoors and nature close to home.
• Empowering every adult involved in the lives of our children and young people with the confidence, enthusiasm and skills to encourage and support them to play and learn outdoors.

We welcome organisations that wish to become a signatory. You can also get involved in our digital campaign or share how you have incorporated outdoor play and learning into your organisation with the hashtags #NeverMoreNeeded and #OutdoorCoalition.