Território Brincapé: The First Adventure Playground Experience in Portugal

Território Brincapé (TB) - Community Space for Free Play was a seminal project in Lisbon designed to deliver weekly play sessions to 112 children between 6 and 10 years old, for 1.5 hours during school time, at a private sandpit just outside a school. TB was developed under the ethos of playwork practice and was conceptualised as an adventure playground. This is a report of how we navigated this endeavour, focusing mainly on the perspective of the playwork practitioners. Specifically, it documents the questions that we dwelled upon through reflection and which aspects of this process we focused on. We hope that this piece of work can be used as a roadmap of questions that will inevitably arise wherever and whenever playwork practice emerges (schools, hospitals, streets, supermarkets, adventure playgrounds), from the perspective of a group of practitioners that, in spite of not having formal training or support from a local community of practitioners, were able to find in playwork practice a source of re-enchantment, one of collective healing and of collective wisdom - for children, for themselves, and for the wider community.