Several of our Play Aotearoa members attended and presented at the Recreation Aotearoa Green Pavlova Conference that was held last month in Dunedin/Ōtepoti.

Green Pavlova is an annual conference for parks, play, and open space professionals. This year the focus was on the future, and ways to continue to build and maintain a resilient and diverse industry, with a special focus on sustainability, biodiversity, community engagement, Mātauranga Māori and cultural engagement.

The conference was well-attended by play people from the length and breadth of Aotearoa and it was great to hear from a broad range of perspectives on play and recreation. Three of our Play Aotearoa leadership team presented at this year’s conference; Shyrel Burt, our Chairperson, gave an entertaining presentation on heritage playgrounds, Adam Gard’ner Zoomed in with an excellent presentation on the Play and Crisis project that he and the team in Ōtautahi/Christchurch are currently working on, and Jill Rice, our Executive Officer, discussed the importance of place and story in play space design, with her talk about the current school grounds development at Manurewa Central School that she is involved in. 

Highlights from the Green Pavlova Conference

Some of the highlights of the conference included these talks from other Play Aotearoa members:

• Jacquelyn Collins, with a provocative talk about the inequities of play opportunities, especially for teenage girls. 
• Damien Puddle who strategically plots for spontaneous play all around the city of Hamilton/Kirikiriroa.
• Anna Tollich and the Active Rec teams from Northland and Southland about the Sport NZ neighbourhood play system strategy, which works with the relationships already established through a local school to improve opportunities for play in the surrounding neighbourhood
• Scott Mackenzie presenting on the national play plan, soon to be released by Sport NZ!

We heard from some excellent keynote speakers, including Jacqueline Paul and Pania Newton about the challenges and opportunities of marae space to foster well-being for iwi, Yana Kirakovskaya from Papaya Stories about hilarious play activations for all ages, and Tim Geyer from World Urban Parks about the importance of green space for mental health.

There were also some engaging panel discussions about issues around disability and about youth leadership, lots of good opportunities to network, great food and a dance party with a wonderful band!

On Day 3 there were three field trips to choose from. The play-focussed field trip included a visit to a Forest School and a new a “Learn to Ride” track – others visited parks and other recreation spaces around Dunedin on a crisp but blue-sky day for some more social interaction and inspiration.

The key take-away from the conference was that that play happens everywhere, is important for everyone, and we need to work collaboratively to promote policy, strategy and environments that support play for all tamariki and rangatahi.

Play happens everywhere, is important for everyone, and we need to work collaboratively to promote policy, strategy and environments that support play for all tamariki and rangatahi.

Our thanks to Recreation Aotearoa for inviting us to participate as a rōpū and for hosting such a wonderful conference. 

We will be launching a series of webinars soon so that others can also listen to and take inspiration from the presentations at the Conference – so watch this space! 

The presentation by our committee member Adam Gard’ner is now available for viewing in the Resource Centre of the Members Only area of our website. So, feel free to sign up if you’re not already a member to access this presentation and much more interesting content to follow!