ABSTRACT
One of the key publicly accessible representations of the playground games research after its completion was a website which was produced collaboratively by the British Library and some of the children who participated in the project. It is important to note at the outset that not all the children were involved in this process and that, for those who were, their agency was constrained by both time pressures and issues of hierarchy. This was, after all, the main outward facing online portal of a major cultural institution and, in the context of Foucault’s reflections on heterotopia, libraries and museums are among those institutions producing an immobility which contrasts starkly with the children’s dynamic and participatory play cultures (Foucault, 1984). Nevertheless, there was a willingness on the part of the library to generate and engage with design and navigation ideas from representative groups of children; it is these which this chapter will examine and situate within appropriate theories of design, of authoring in new media forms, and in relation to the concept of ‘heterotopian games’, adapted from Foucault (see Chapter 1).
