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Journal of Playwork Practice • vol 2 • no 2 • 199–204 • © Policy Press 2015 • #JPP
Print ISSN 2053 1621 • Online ISSN 2053 163X • http://dx.doi.org/10.1332/205316215X14454245885195
profile
Janet Dalglish, MBE (1919–2007)
Ute navidi,1 UK
ute.navidi_europe@yahoo.co.uk
key words adventure playgrounds • playwork practice • London Play
• International Play Association • Fair Play for Children
‘Can you please take this to Berlin
for me?’ pleaded this seemingly frail
woman of advanced age, bursting
into a meeting of the Executive
Committee of the International Play
Association (IPA) England Wales
Northern Ireland (EWNI) branch
which I was chairing in early 2005.
I had heard about this feisty EC
member but not met her before. She
pressed a handwritten note into my
hand: ‘Please give my apologies.’ So
this was Janet Dalglish, MBE. She
had attended most IPA triennial conferences around the world but on this occasion
she was not going to travel. This encounter was the beginning of our – rather too
short – friendship.
The same year, as the new Chief Executive Ocer at the registered charity, London
Play, I successfully proposed to start an annual celebration of the contribution made
by playworkers to children in the UK’s capital – London Play’s own ‘Oscar’. The
Lifetime in Play in London Award was born. Of all the distinguished nominees, an
independent panel chose Janet – then aged 87 – as the first ever recipient of this award
in 2006. It was presented by David Lammy MP, the then Culture Minister whose
portfolio included play. The event, hosted by Tom Brake MP, one of London Play’s
Parliamentary Friends (a cross-party selection of MPs), and sponsored by Sutclie
Play, was described by Bob Hughes of PlayEd as ‘a real historical gathering’ (Hughes,
2006). Janet agreed, saying ‘I enjoyed myself no end, and it was interesting meeting so
many old friends.’ She was also delighted to receive the award because she felt that it
put the spotlight on playwork, an often undervalued children’s workforce profession.
Having been knocked over on a pavement by a cyclist (‘he didn’t mean it’),
octogenarian Janet was determined to get back onto her feet after a spell of ill health
requiring hospital treatment so that she could be at the award ceremony on 19 April
2006 at the Terrace Marquee of the Houses of Parliament (‘the Posh Tent’, as she
would later call it). In a personal postcard to me, dated 28 March 2006, she wrote
‘I am doing all I can to be fit, healthy and dress wise’. Even from her hospital bed,
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she was trying ‘to complete the questionnaire’ – a set of questions I had given Janet
to help her prepare for my interview2 with her, in time for the award ceremony. To
conduct the interview, another visit was arranged, this time at her home. While she
made us a cup of tea, London Play trustee Dr Keith Cranwell and I were made very
welcome and seated among a maze which was at least three feet high and covered
her entire sitting room, spilling over into the kitchen and bedroom. These were the
papers, photos, play materials and mementos from many decades of Janet’s amazing
life. She would then wander around, picking up a photo here and there, explaining
the context, and smilingly retrieve a few play things she had collected from around
the world, showing us how they worked. What appeared like a messy chaos, were in
fact Janet’s professional tools, and her personal unique play treasure store.
It was not hard to see why it was said of Janet that she ‘talked, listened and
breathed play’ (Lifetime in Play in London award nominator, nomination paper,
2006, unpublished).
Janet was born not long after the First World War, in 1919, in a flat in Paddington,
West London. Given the name Margaret, a name she did not like, she dropped it and
was thenceforth ‘Janet’. Play was her life’s passion. Janet said that she became involved
in play from a very young age: ‘I was the eldest of an extended family – sister, three
boy cousins and others. You are expected to keep them occupied and amused.’ Later,
she said, she ‘trained as architectural and engineering drafter in Westminster and
worked on top secret things during the war. Then I had eye problems and became
teacher to diplomatic families in Europe.’
Proud to speak ‘Fluent French, practical Italian, Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian,
Finnish (Anglo Saxon at university helps)’, Janet added she could also make ‘polite
noises in Japanese’. Her linguistic abilities were matched by a colourful career.
‘I trained as Stage Manager at the Embassy Theatre, Swiss Cottage. There
was a new play every fortnight with people like Michael Redgrave, James
Mason and Dennis Price. Then I was a gardener during the war, reaching
Royal Horticultural Society Level 2. Then I worked at the hospital for
seven years and was a trade union member, followed by teaching gardening,
interior decoration and history of architecture and furniture and costume.’
At some stage she was ‘at the Commonwealth Institute Kensington doing make-ups
and worldwide board games’.
Janet developed a professional interest in children’s wellbeing, and successfully
applied for the post of Recreational Ocer at a children’s tuberculosis hospital
with 700 patients. She reminisced how she would organise getting children in their
beds pushed out from the wards into the open air, causing a minor revolution. She
developed a sense of the need of sick children to play. There too, Janet pursued her
lifelong interest in the Girl Guides movement. ‘I was a Brownie at my prep school.
Secondary did not have Guides but my Glasgow aunt was Guide Commissioner; I
became captain at the hospital and trainer.’ Alongside her work with children, Janet
was also proud of her work with MENCAP mental health charity.
Janet became the Lifetime President of the charity, Fair Play for Children, after
the death of Trevor Huddleston. Jan Cosgrove, its National Secretary described Janet
(Cosgrove, 2008) as ‘a highly-motivated lady, she had a private income, she was a
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“Girton Girl”3 one of those blue-stocking ladies of the Scottish upper middle class
who strode out between the wars to show that women could make it.’
Professionally, Janet came to play through youth work connected to the Blackfriars’
Settlement. ‘I was the Senior Youth Worker but also involved with folk dance for
the Pound Club and worked with ex-prisoners.’ Many people who knew Janet
through playwork training remember her fondly as carrying around an old battered
suitcase with things to do such as cardboard and scraps of material, which she had
taken onto the bomb sites of post-war London for children to play with. Such stu
‘encourages imaginative use of scrap materials. I also did all sorts of puppetry and
games from round the world.’
These bomb sites – including one of a bombed primary school – evolved into
adventure playgrounds. Janet was present at their birth: ‘I was recruited as what was
called the Warden of the Lollard Adventure Playground4 on a bomb site, by the fire
station and Lambeth Walk market. Our telegraph pole structures went to Notting
Hill. They were rebuilt there. Islington had an adventure playground, and there were
six others in the country. The idea came from Denmark.’
It was at Lollard Adventure Playground where Janet also met young New Zealander
Donne Buck who was appointed assistant play leader in 1958, and he became a life-
long friend. In his biography, Donne acknowledges his involvement with many of the
legendary ‘leading lights’ of adventure playground development, including ‘Lady Allen
of Hurtwood, who imported the adventure playground idea from Denmark in 1948,
National Playing Fields Association’s Drummond Abernethy and Peter Heseltine, Pat
Turner and Janet Dalglish of Lollard Adventure Playground, Pat Smythe of Notting
Hill Adventure Playground, Chris and John Winkley of St John’s Wood Adventure
Playground and many more’. Janet inspired playwork professionals through several
decades. Felicity Sylvester of IPA EWNI reminisced:
‘The last time I worked with Janet was when we ran an IPA UK Workshop
in Nottingham in the 1990s “Play around the world”…We made lots of
colourful parrots and an eight-foot worldwide doll/puppet with decorations
of themes around the world supported by Janet with all her experience and
enthusiasm for children’s play’ (Sylvester, 2014).
Janet was interested in multicultural craftwork from the early 1960s and set up her
own centre where she oered hands-on play training. She reminisced: ‘The leisure
centre began in a small oce in Walworth Road. Then it moved to an old print
works, the Marble Factory in Camberwell Road, oering karate dojo, play and art
studio.’ Janet counted the running of playworkers’ training sessions as one of her
most successful projects. The purpose was, of course, to ensure that ‘lots of children
had play opportunities’ – which also prompted Janet to be instrumental in setting
up Westminster Play. ‘It provided free access to chances of all sorts with trained
playworkers.’ When asked about which memories from her time working in play
stood out, Janet did not hesitate one moment: ‘There was this boy who had never
spoken, who uttered for the first time in a puppet play. And meeting Lady Olave
Baden-Powell three times.’
In a post-award interview (Goddard, 2006), Janet elaborated: this boy, she said ‘was
taking part in a puppet play – the puppets were just cardboard lavatory rolls and a
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bit of gold paper.’ The play was a translation of an Italian fairy story and the young
man was to play the role of ‘grass’.
‘His only line was “I won’t”,’ says Dalglish. ‘We expected someone to say it
for him but he lifted up his puppet at the right moment and said “I won’t”.
Somehow the play had triggered the brain and the mouth and the voice,
and he was speaking. Young people learn by doing fun things.’
Janet received an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 1999 for services to
children’s playschemes. Asked about her memories of that day, Janet chuckled: ‘The
heat. I wore a cotton dress and had put a pocket in for a hankie. I made the Queen
laugh about arts and crafts out of rubbish. They removed all ladies’ handbags – so I
was the only one who had a hankie.’ She also told the Queen that she remembered
seeing her and her sister Margaret playing outdoors, watching them through a fence.
Publicity for the first Lifetime in Play in London Award prompted one reader of
London Play News (of which I was editor, November 2004 to May 2012) to send
a copy of a published report by Janet when she was based at the Leisure Centre in
Camberwell Road. Her ‘safety pin summer scheme’ for disabled children in the
mid-1970s, she wrote, aimed to provide them with a combination of ‘safety with
new experiences, new people to have fun with, and atmosphere of play in which to
feel free but safe’ (Navidi, 2006).
Emphatically describing herself as a playworker, Janet was proud to count herself
among the founder members of the International Play Association in the early 1960s.
Why was this organisation important to her? ‘It enables one to discover the bright
ideas of other people and make friends world-wide and attend conferences.’
Janet was acutely aware of the barriers facing children’s outdoor play, including
how society has come to regard children and play: ‘Some hate noise, and others
are over anxious about safety.’ Janet’s advice to people working to improve play
opportunities for children today was to ‘Join with others and use common sense.
Inform your councillors and community workers in all fields about play.’ She regretted
that playworkers did not receive the kind of public recognition they deserve: ‘Many
think the workers are untrained. I have a Swansea University diploma in youth
and community work among other qualifications.’ But she also saw some positive
developments regarding the changed play opportunities for children in London
throughout the years: ‘It is encouraging that disabled children have both special places
but also chances to join in things on ordinary local provision.’ What she wanted for
children was ‘More play. There should be better funding so there are free places to
go, with trained playworkers.’
Janet left the global adventure playground for good on 8 November 2007. She
was survived by one of her cousins, Margaret Portelli. A celebration of her life took
place at a joint London Play/Fair Play for Children Memorial Service in London
on 12 March 2008. Personal friends and members of Janet’s extended family learned
about the high esteem with which Janet continues to be held among people around
the world, and people in the play sector glimpsed a few snapshots of Janet’s personal
life. There were no prepared speeches. Instead, people took turns to say something
spontaneously about how Janet had touched their lives. Just as she would have liked it.
How can one sum up Janet who led the way in campaigning for play opportunities
and developing playwork training for more than 60 years? Her plethora of
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achievements include helping to set up the first playwork training centre, Westminster
Play Association and the International Play Association. Janet made many friends
around the globe and used to attend IPA conferences, but had to be content with
sending a greeting to the IPA Conference in Berlin in 2005.
‘Play has had no better advocate. Those of us who fight for a better deal for play
and for children owe her so much. Janet talks play, she listens play, she breathes play’
(Lifetime in Play in London award nominator).
Janet generously remembered both organisations in her legacy, with London Play
later deciding to use the donation to honour her memory through the Janet Dalglish
Play Street of the Year Award. Asked how she would like to be remembered, Janet
giggled: ‘I still play.’ Her mischievous spirit lives on through her passion for children’s
unstructured, free play, transmitted through generations of playworkers – a lasting
legacy indeed.
Notes
1 Ute Navidi came to play professionally from a children’s services and children’s rights
background. She was CEO at London Play until 2012, and Regional Vice President for
Europe for the International Play Association until 2014. She now works as International
Independent Consultant, mainly for the European Commission, and as advisor to
European and International NGO networks. Her most recent play-related activities were
guest-editing the special issue ‘The role of play in children’s health and development’ of
the MDPI[[needs to be in full at first appearance please]] online journal Children,
and conducting a survey on the implementation of General Comment 17 on Article 31
of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on behalf of the German children’s
NGO Deutsches Kinderhilfswerk.
2 Unless otherwise referenced, the direct quotations in this article are based on this,
previously unpublished, interview with Janet conducted by the author in April 2006.
3 Women who went to Girton College, Cambridge, at a time when few women went
to university.
4 For some photos of what Lollard Street Adventure Playground looked like in the 1950s,
see http://lambethsaveourservices.org/2013/02/17/the-wwii-history-of-lambeths-lost-
adventure-playgrounds/.
References
Buck, D, nd, Biography, London: V&A Museum of Childhood, www.vam.ac.uk/__
data/assets/pdf_file/0010/255079/Donne-Buck-Biog.pdf
Cosgrove, J, 2008, PlayAction OnLine 2, 31 March, http://fairplayforchildren.org/
pdf/1206991484.pdf
Goddard, C, 2006, Big interview: A lifetime devoted to play – Janel Dalglish, MBE,
president, Fair Play for Children, Children and young people now, 2 May, www.
cypnow.co.uk/ypn/news/1064623/big-interview-a-lifetime-devoted-play-janet-
dalglish-mbe-president-fair-play-children
Huddleston, T, 1972, Letter, The Times, 31 July www.theguardian.com/news/2012/
aug/12/from-the-archive-junk-playground-1953#comments[[this is a link to an
article in the Observer archive of 9 August 1953, not directly to the letter,
in which reference is made to this letter by Jan Cosgrove in a comment
of 14 August 2012 to the original Observer article. This link gives part
of the letter www.fairplayforchildren.net/Fair_Play___40.htm]]
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Hughes, B, 2006, [[article title missing]]London Play News, 32, Summer
London Play, London Play News, quarterly publication to 2012
Navidi, U, 2006, [[article title missing]]London Play News, 32, Summer
Sylvester, F, 2014, Newsbrief:[[need subtitle]], IPA (International Play Association),
EWNI (England Wales Northern Ireland), January,[[add web address]]