Book your place now for Child in the City Rotterdam 2024

‘The early bird catches the worm’, as that most English of sayings goes.

And for you, our valued Child in the City supporters, here is your opportunity to be that early bird, and secure a cut-price registration fee for our important event in Rotterdam in December.

Registration is now open for our 2024 seminar, Keep on Moving, which will be exploring some of the key themes around access to and opportunities for children’s physical movement and outdoor play.

We’re also delighted to be able to reveal details of our keynote speakers at what will be another fantastic gathering of child professionals from 3-4 December:

• Gretel Vila, Project Manager for Educational Programs at the City Council of Barcelona
• Christian Reutlinger, Professor of City Health at Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences
• Sanne de Vries, Professor of Healthy Lifestyle in a Supporting Environment at The Hague University of Applied Sciences

Promoted by Barcelona City Council during 2020-2021, Transforming schoolyards is a programme designed to transform the playgrounds of public schools in the city, in order to make them more natural, coeducational, community-oriented and diverse in terms of play options.

Gretel Vila (below) says the programme focuses on the process of reflection and participation of the entire educational community to develop a conceptual and pedagogical change, as well as a physical change in the playground spaces.

The aim is to improve both the physical spaces and the dynamics and relationships, with the goal of making them more equitable through the diversification of play and converting schoolyards into community facilities accessible to neighbors, often becoming part of the city’s network of climate shelters.

It also forms part of a city-wide effort to combat the climate emergency, as set out in the Municipal Climate Plan, and so far 70 educational centres have transformed their playgrounds. Find out more when Gretel delivers her keynote speech on Tuesday 3 December from 1400 to 1430.

She will be followed by Christian Reutlinger, who will talk about how the concept of ‘bad city, poor children’ sums up the relationship between urban development and children that has been a topic of discussion for almost 200 years.

Christian’s keynote will look at the development and transformation of urban playgrounds and their imagined health effects for children. The focus, he will say, is on the dominant ‘conceptualisations’ of urban childhood, for example how children were perceived and described in the urban environment, rather than on the chronological sequence of events or technical innovations.

Each of these conceptualisations, says Christian, has its own understanding of children’s health and the generally negative influence that the urban environment has on children’s health. These different understandings will be analysed and compared. The aim is to show the historical metamorphosis of urban children’s playgrounds. You can catch his keynote from 1430 to 1500 on Tuesday 3 December.

Finally, our keynote speaker on the second day (4 December) will be Sanne de Vries, with her presentation, Activity-friendly neighbourhoods for children: examples and lessons learned in The Netherlands. She will kick off proceedings from 0900 to 0930.

The seminar will also stage a host of parallel and ‘break out’ sessions, each one focusing on one of the seminar’s key themes: Inclusive Spaces and Initiatives for Play and Sports; Children’s Mobility; Climate Change and Climate Justice.

And there will also be the usual diverse offering of field trips, highlighting projects in the Rotterdam area that provide child-friendly solutions to issues around access to and opportunities for play.

Registration to attend the seminar is open NOW, and the ‘early bird’ price is available until 19 October. It includes participation for the full two-day programme, with lunch, coffee and networking intervals, but excludes dinner which is optional. A special student price is also available. Click here for more details on booking.

Click here for the latest details of the programme, with more to come over the coming weeks.