Copyright

Potter, John; Cannon, Michelle;

Published On

2023-06-01

Page Range

pp. 299–316

Language

  • English

Print Length

18 pages

Keywords

  • Photo essay
  • Play Observatory
  • children's play experiences during the pandemic
  • online study
  • Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
  • University College London
  • University of Sheffield
  • UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis
  • collecting
  • analyzing
  • preserving material
  • images
  • moving images
  • play experiences
  • function of play
  • Covid-19 pandemic
  • 2020-2022

14. The Observatory of Children’s Play Experiences during Covid-19

A Photo Essay

  • John Potter (author)
  • Michelle Cannon (author)
Chapter of: Play in a Covid Frame: Everyday Pandemic Creativity in a Time of Isolation(pp. 299–316)
This chapter is a photo essay which presents twelve images selected from among those collected by the Play Observatory in the UK, along with a commentary further outlining the context. This was a study of children’s play experiences during the pandemic, conducted almost wholly online over a seventeen-month period, between October 2020 and March 2022. It was funded in the UK by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as part of the UK Research Institute (UKRI) Rapid Response to Covid-19 call and was a collaboration between researchers at the IOE, University College London’s Faculty of Education and Society, the School of Education at the University of Sheffield, and the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. A key aim of the project was to collect, analyze and preserve for future generations material from children and adults in the form of text, images, moving images and more, which represented their play experiences at such a challenging and difficult time but also demonstrated the function of play in their lives in terms of well-being and resourcefulness. The commentary which accompanies the images contains some background information. However, the authors invite readers to form their own interpretations in the light of their own experiences of Covid during 2020-2022.

Contributors

John Potter

(author)
Professor of Media in Education at the Faculty of Education and Society at University College London

John Potter is professor of media in education at University College London’s Faculty of Education & Society. He is director of the ReMAP (Researching Media Arts and Play) research centre and associate director (media) of the UCL Knowledge Lab. His research relates to media education, play on and offscreen, theories of curation and agency in social media, and teaching and learning in the context of digital media. He recently directed the ESRC-funded National Observatory of Children’s Play Experiences during COVID-19, a collaboration with colleagues in the School of Education at the University of Sheffield and the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. Previously, he worked as a primary school teacher in Tower Hamlets in London’s East End, as a local authority education advisor in Newham, and as a teacher educator at both Goldsmiths College and the University of East London.

Michelle Cannon

(author)
Programme Leader of the MA in Digital Media: Education at the Institute in Education at University College London

Michelle Cannon, PhD, is programme leader of the MA in Digital Media: Education at the UCL Institute in Education. She leads the moving image production module and co-facilitates the enquiry module. She is an experienced ethnographer with children and young people and makes use of participatory creative methods of enquiry having worked on two international EU-funded research programmes in collaboration with the British Film Institute and European cultural agencies. She was a co-investigator on the ESRC-funded national Play Observatory project researching instances of children's play and film-making during the pandemic. She is on the editorial board of the journal Film Education journal and is an executive member of the Media Education Association.