Nursery World - Enabling Environments: Physical Development

A space called The Tig, where children can move exuberantly in the presence of acrobats and dancers, is wowing participants in every city it tours to, writes Penny Greenland

Since 2009, JABADAO has taught more than 2,000 early years practitioners about the many benefits that physical play brings to a child’s development, learning and capacity for happiness, and how to support these through our Developmental Movement Play (DMP) approach. But still we wanted to make more impact.

We wanted to show how small children really inhabit their bodies when they have the opportunity; to show what child-led movement play really looks like, and what happens when adults who are also very physical – dancers and acrobats – meet children as genuine equals. So, in 2012 we commissioned The Tig.

The Tig is a space made for exuberant movement play; a space where the adults are also challenging themselves to find the physical skills that are just out of reach, as young children are; a space where words are replaced by our first and most direct language – movement. The Tig has its own culture – the culture of physicality. In here, we can fast-track to a different way of being and demonstrate, quickly, the way things could be.
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