About Us

Why We’re Doing This

All parents strive to provide a good life for their children. We sometimes say we want to give them a better life than ours and that usually translates as more opportunities and more material goods. Piano lessons, a place on the competitive soccer team, the latest must-have toy or a new games console. But when you think back to your own childhood, what do you remember? It is likely your most vivid memories are those associated with the times spent just roaming around with friends – on foot and on bikes, making discoveries, playing games of the imagination, inventing new worlds, trying scary things and running, falling and getting back up again so you could have more fun. More often than not all this was happening without parent supervision.

Free, unstructured play has virtually vanished from the lives of most children in America. Playborhood, a campaign conceived and managed by parent volunteers, is committed to doing whatever we can to bring it back for our often overscheduled children. Playborhood aims to build a community of parents in the United States, and potentially the world, which will become more aware of this problem, discuss solutions, and implement the best of them.

Our mission is not just fueled by nostalgia. It is well documented that depriving children of regular physical exercise and free play can lead to problems such as obesity and poor socialization skills.

Playborhood Berkeley is the third local neighborhood site to join the Playborhood network. Here you will find information and resources that are specific to our own community. Read about who is currently involved below. And feel free to join the discussion, to share ideas and help make our neighborhoods better places to live for everyone. If you like what you see, get in touch. 

Playborhood was founded by Mike Lanza, a parent in Palo Alto, California. To find out more about the thinking behind the project, check out Mike’s Manifesto.

People

Tracey Taylor is British journalist and editor who has lived in Berkeley with her husband and two children since moving there from London in 2005. She writes regular feature articles for the weekend edition of the Financial Times newspaper and East Bay magazine Diablo among others. Subjects include profiles, architecture and food. She also writes a Berkeley housing blog for online real estate agents Redfin. Growing up in Brussels, Belgium her fondest memories include riding her bike with her friend Doug through the alleys and sidewalks of her suburban neighborhood, playing prison tag with local friends and roaming around the construction sites of homes going up in the area. Since moving to the US Tracey has discovered the good and bad of summer camps and become a somewhat reluctant soccer mom.  To learn more about Tracey, see her Playborhood profile page.

Gina Moreland is the founder and director of Habitot Children’s Museum, a play-based discovery museum for young children located in Berkeley. Habitot has welcomed over 650,000 toddlers, preschoolers and their families since opening in 1998. In 2006, Gina was honored with a “Jefferson Award” for her community service in establishing Habitot and was proclaimed “Early Childhood Champion of the Year” by the Berkeley City Council. Her involvement with play issues dates back to 1980 with the implementation of Project PLAE, a play and learning summer program involving both disabled and non-disabled children at the Washington Environmental Yard in Berkeley. She has founded school gardens and outdoor environments and taught science in a number of local schools. Gina holds a BA in Economics, an MS in Education with an emphasis in environmental education, and a California teaching credential. She also serves on the Board of Directors of Windrush School, a progressive K-8 independent school in El Cerrito, CA. Gina lives in Kensington and has two children, aged 18 and 14.

Mark Powell likes to say he has 30 children, aged from 9 to 12, although none of them are his own. For Mark is director of an upper elementary classroom at Berkeley Montessori School. Previously, he taught lower elementary children for ten years. He is also a teacher trainer with the Center for Montessori Teacher Education, New York. Mark is K-6 certified by the state of MA and holds a M. Ed. with a specialty in Conflict Resolution and Peaceable Schools from Lesley University. He is a frequent contributor to “Montessori Life” among other journals, and is the author of “Fort Culture: The Hidden Curriculum of Recess Play”, part of the forthcoming book “Where Do the Children Play?” due out in the spring of 2007. Mark lives in the Westbrae area of Berkeley with his wife.