NO BALL GAMES

A classic of the mid-century housing estate, you’ve probably seen them, this is public turf, yes, but under tight command of the self-righteous land owners (council). Not legally enforceable, just advisory (surprising, perhaps, for the casual bystander). Protecting window panes and promoting neighbourliness. The bleak ‘no ball games’ sign erodes the freedom of outdoors and mutates the urban village green from shared space into negative space. Mowed monthly, edges clipped, this may look like a working class putting green, but don’t be fooled, this is no jumpers for goalposts common land. Modernism dreamt up small clusters of 2 and 3 bed estate house terraces, gathered around a central courtyard of open space for all. The planting of no ball games signage feels like an afterthought, an anti-utopian strategy of enthusiastic, pencil-pushing council officers, smashed into the freshly laid turf at the first sign of youthful boisterousness. An early warning sign of the problems to come for some of these sprawling estates.

Don’t get me wrong, I get the point, I see how the perceived prospect of a group of teenagers smashing a size 5 football around within 20 feet of my kitchen window is intimidating, off-putting and unsociable. But is this the best we’ve got? As solutions go it’s moving us away from the chance to create an open and broad discussion in the community. To create a public space that everyone can enjoy, balls or no balls. Instead it creates a dead end, a decisive no. Nudging people into certain behaviours, controlling the masses, taking a sense of ownership away from those who live here.

“The miserliness of no-ball-games signs seems to reinforce an unfortunate British attitude towards the idea of other people doing things.”

Lynsey Hanley, The Guardian, 2nd July 2015

The continuing presence of these signs, across our housing estates, on shopping precinct walls and beyond, tells us much about the recent historic relationship between adults and children. A very direct and immediate form on nimbyism, enforced by a quick call to the council from the adult, peeking from behind a sagging net curtain, staring at the swaggering teens, loitering on the lawn. It takes a village to raise a child, they say, but don’t tell my kids what to do, say the neighbours. Instead our complaints become private, a council issue, with a reference number and an email trail.

Unless we’re lucky enough to be very rural, or live a nomadic lifestyle the majority of us have a neighbour, or 3 or 4 or more. For as long as humans have taken shelter we’ve known that the delicate path of neighbourly relations is to be trodden gently. I left a wild and out of place branch on my evergreen because my neighbours 4 year old likes to swing on it, for example. In the close-quarter, pressure-cooker world of the housing estate keeping things on an even keel has always been a process.

But as time goes on and the childhood obesity crisis embeds itself further into our society, some councils now refuse to erect new signage on healthy living grounds, and several have pro-actively moved on, pushing a policy of ‘yes ball games’ instead.

Having spent his first 12 years as a bare-foot council tenant in Aberdeen, before going on to score 227 goals in 485 professional football matches, Denis Law was a wonder-kid who can rightfully lay claim to being an expert both in the field and on the field. His eponymous trust has been responsible for an impressive PR campaign that resulted in Aberdeen council removing large numbers of no ball game signs from the streets and estates. When the ceremonial removal of the first sign arrived (sledgehammers at the ready), it was a significant moment of victory for those who believe in the right to free play and more, in the power of youth.

Haringey Council has also taken action in the name of childhood health and fitness, removing hundreds of signs across their London borough. Each potential removal has been painstakingly reviewed first alongside the local community, an all encompassing customer first strategy from the council, an approach perhaps missing from the initial installation of the offending signage across the housing estates of Britain.

Impressive though these efforts are, the notion that childhood obesity can be fixed by removing a sign is obviously misguided. As Hanley concludes in her article:

“Permitting ball games, as generous as such a move looks, won’t make children healthier. If the signs were changed to state “Play outside! No one will mind!”, they would still be ignored.”

Lynsey Hanley, The Guardian, 2nd July 2015

Suffice to say childhood obesity has less to do with rules and regulations and much more to do with our changing diet and our increasingly online lives, but that’s another story.

It feels safe to assume that one day the iconic no ball games sign will be nothing more than a relic of the past. Condemned to the flea markets, student bedrooms and vintage inspired bars (a working-class-chic cocktail lounge, anyone?) Signs fade, things move on. Kids ignore them anyway, the balls get kicked around. Future Denis Law’s break through. But will the adult’s become kinder and more forgiving of those cursed with being young - only time will tell (unlikely). For now though, we say yes to ball games, yes to taking back the public realm and yes to making the most of our shared green space, just as the modernists wanted it to be.