8-15 year old children and adolescents often lack age-appropriate activities, non-formal learning opportunities and proper outdoor spaces. As a result, young people’s schedules are overbooked, or they spend too much time alone. Often, their physical, mental and social health suffer.
Adventure playgrounds, which are spaces for youth designed to provide various opportunities for building, creating, communicating, moving, and playing, offer kids the challenges they need. Such spaces might be integrated into school yards, youth and community centres, but can also be built temporarily for festivals and other events. Junkyard playgrounds support creativity, initiative, autonomy, and social skills.
An adventure playground ('kolahoov' in Estonian) is a playscape made by children for themselves. It's essential elements are autonomous free play and loose parts.
It has been called a “laboratory for democracy” in research papers: it is a place where the kids/youngsters can take initiative and autonomously create their own worlds out of ‘junk’- pieces of different materials - wood, bricks, tires, rope, paint, hammers, nails, saws, fabric, netting, plastic pipes etc.