| Childhoods and Play The Play Observatory Playing the Archive The Opie Archive Changing Play Children's Playground Games and Songs in the New Media Age |
Childhoods and Play is a long-term project which exists to surface the Iona and Peter Opie archival collection and make the research materials contained in it freely accessible online for research and public engagement. Established in 2012, the project is a collaboration between the University of Sheffield, University College London, the Bodleian Libraries, the Folklore Society and the British Library. It has the status of a British Academy Research Project, a kitemark of academic excellence for major infrastructural projects and research facilities.
The Childhoods and Play project undertakes research into the Opies and the collection and supports projects which involve the Opie materials. It will result in a digital resource which brings the distributed elements of the Opie Archive together via a common search interface and allows them to be browsed and searched to item level, such as an individual rhyme, song, game, belief, custom or saying. The resource will serve a diverse audience, including academics across a range of disciplines, schools, community groups, reminiscence groups and the general public. It will include search and browse facilities, user guides, bibliography, information on the historical context of the collections and educational resources.
The project was founded by Professor Jackie Marsh at the University of Sheffield, with Co-Directors Professor Andrew Burn, University College London, and Dr Julia Bishop, University of Sheffield. Following the retirement of Jackie and Andrew, Dr Yinka Olusoga at the University of Sheffield has taken over the role of Director, supported by Julia Bishop continuing as a joint Co-Director with Professor John Potter of University College London. They are ably supported by the project Advisory Board whose current members are listed below.
Project Director Yinka Olusoga (University of Sheffield)
Project Co-Directors Julia Bishop (University of Sheffield) and John Potter (University College London)
Advisory Board Catherine Bannister (University of Sheffield), Christina de Bellaigue (University of Oxford), Liz Chesworth (University of Sheffield), Karen Daniels (Sheffield Hallam University), Emma Deakins (British Academy), Michael Eades (Goldsmiths, University of London), Ken Emond (British Academy), Ruth Finnegan (Open University and British Academy), Ross MacFarlane (Queen Mary University London), Heather Montgomery (Open University), Caroline Oates (Folklore Society), Siân Pooley (University of Oxford), Catherine Ritman-Smith (Young V&A), Jonnie Robinson (British Library), Steve Roud (Independent Advisor), Susan Thomas (Bodleian Libraries), and Michael Wragg (Leeds Beckett University).
Childhoods and Play grew out of several earlier projects, Children's Playground Games and Songs in the New Media Age (2009–2011), The Opie Working Papers (2011), and Changing Play: A Study of the Relationship between Media, Commercial Markets and Children's Play in the UK between 1950 and 2011 (2011–2012). The Opie Working Papers was a University of Sheffield knowledge transfer project, funded by the HEFCE Rapid Response Fund (HEIF4). It led to the creation of a preliminary finding aid for the Opie papers at the Bodleian Library, and reported on collection's potential for digitisation and research.
Childhoods and Play has gone on to be associated with a number of further projects involving the collection, especially The Opie Archive: Exploring Play in Britain from the 1950s to the 1980s (2016), Playing the Archive: Community, Memory and Mixed Reality Play (2017–2019), and A National Observatory of Children’s Play Experiences During COVID-19 (2020-2022).
Jackie Marsh. 2013. Research on Childhood and Play: Drawing on the Opie Legacy. British Academy Review 21 (January), 30–33.