The Ask Project: Connecting young people with place

Introduction

The Ask project was a one year consultation project involving disabled and non-disabled children in the evaluation of public outdoor space. It addresses a fundamental concern – that in both UK and Japan we are rearing a generation that is ‘outdoor adverse’. Children benefit from being outside, interacting with their environment, learning from nature and developing through play. However, children’s environments have changed dramatically: there are fewer natural environments and increasingly parents discourage outdoor play. The consequences include obesity, inability among children to understand and assess risk, poor spatial understanding, impaired social skills and reduced ability to navigate the ‘real’ world.

The promotion of better quality environments and more opportunities for play is a crucial issue for the healthy growth of children in both UK and Japan. The Ask project is about bringing the outdoors back into the domain of childhood.

The ASK project addresses these issues by asking children about their needs to inform future design and management decisions. It is a UK-Japan initiative run as a partnership between the Sensory Trust in Cornwall, UK, and the Association for Children’s Environments (ACE) in Tokyo, Japan. The project was supported by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, GB Sasakawa Foundation and Japan Foundation.

Ask involved consulting with young people and the managers and planners of public open space and a series of conferences in UK and Japan to share the results and ideas. The first conference was held in Cornwall in September 2007, the second is in Tokyo in December 2007 and the third in Reading in April 2008.

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