How playful design can bring football communities together
A football can do many things. It can make us hold our breath. It can make us run faster than we ever thought possible. It can unite a nation and set neighbours arguing. It can also bring people together through play and give a child a sense of belonging.
Football is the most popular organised sport among children and young people in Denmark. Around 216,000 children aged 0–16 play football in nearly 1,500 clubs. Some come to compete and experience the satisfaction of improving with every training session. Others come simply to play with the ball and spend time with their teammates.
Working closely with clubs, regional football associations and external partners, the Danish Football Association (DBU) wants to improve the environments in which children and young people experience football. Through targeted initiatives, the project aims to strengthen wellbeing, community, volunteering and football training in clubs across the country.
"With Hele Danmarks Klubhus, we want to help make Denmark the best country in the world in which to be a child. Together with the clubs, we want to develop playful football environments that encourage children to take part in the communities football creates – whether they come to compete, improve their skills, play or spend time with friends.
"We are delighted to be working with design researchers from Kolding School of Design, who bring valuable knowledge about creating playful environments for football," says Kenneth Reeh, Director of Hele Danmarks Klubhus.
Kenneth Reeh, Director of Hele Danmarks Klubhus.
A new angle on the beautiful game
Part of the answer lies in nine regional football centres across Denmark. These centres will serve as living laboratories where children and coaches can explore what happens when familiar football environments are reimagined and playful elements become an integral part of the experience.
But how can football training still feel like football when children are given more freedom to explore and experiment?
This is one of the questions Associate Professor Jesper Falck Legaard has brought to the development of the centres. Working alongside DBU, architects and other project partners, he has contributed a play-based perspective to the design of the new facilities.
"Playfulness is a fundamental design principle – an ongoing approach to activities, environments and interactions. We work from the idea that there should be a good balance between free exploration and structured exercises during training.
"We also use a range of playful design approaches that can enhance many of the positive effects of play, movement and community," explains Jesper Falck Legaard.
In practice, this can involve small changes to an ordinary training session, giving familiar exercises a more playful structure.
For example, when children practise passing, they do not necessarily need to stand in a line repeating the same movement. Instead, they might play a game in which they work together to move the ball through a course by discovering new passing options.
In this way, passing is no longer an end in itself, but a means of solving a shared challenge.
Associate Professor Jesper Falck Legaard combines playful approaches with the more structured elements of football training in the project.
"It is about seeing football training through children's eyes and finding the right balance. Some children want more freedom to play and explore, while others are highly motivated by learning new skills and improving their performance.
"There needs to be room for social interaction and play, but children should still feel that they are at football training. They should have the freedom to do things in their own way within the framework that football provides," says Jesper Falck Legaard.
The new centres are designed to challenge conventional approaches to football training and inspire coaches to think differently.
An important aspect of the project is ensuring that everyone can participate, regardless of their level of ability. Football should be fun for everyone.
One of the guiding principles is therefore to make sure children can feel recognised and valued without having to be the best player. This involves both strengthening the social aspects of football and creating different ways for children to experience success.
Jesper Falck Legaard's research offers a perspective on how play and performance can coexist. He distinguishes between two states: wonder and flow.
Play and Purpose
The difference between flow and wonder can perhaps best be explained through a simple exercise.
Take a moment to pause and listen to your surroundings. Perhaps you can hear a bird singing or a radio playing somewhere nearby.
Now compare that experience with being asked to work out what 23 + 789 equals.
It feels different, doesn't it?
Fodbowl is one of the new activities that coaches and children can explore together during training. The game is played on a paved surface with curved sides that make the ball roll in unexpected ways, creating a different experience from a conventional football pitch.
Broadly speaking, these two states represent different sides of the same dynamic.
Wonder is the more open and exploratory state, driven by free play without a specific goal – playing simply for the sake of playing.
Free play can, of course, help us develop skills and discover new abilities. It is precisely through open-ended exploration that we might discover a new way of controlling a football with our feet.
When we then try to repeat that movement to master the skill, we move into what researchers call flow. Here, our attention is focused on achieving a particular outcome, much like solving the calculation above.
The answer, incidentally, is 812.
It is this movement between open-ended exploration and focused, purposeful activity that Jesper Falck Legaard examines in his research – and which has helped inform the development of the regional football centres.
"The theory is still in its early stages, but it opens up new ways of designing football facilities that balance exploration and purpose, while keeping playful communities at the heart of the experience.
"That is exactly the thinking behind the centres. We have focused on making sure everyone can benefit from the different opportunities they offer. In this way, a child with the potential to become the next Michael Laudrup can get just as much out of the experience as a child who simply loves playing football with friends," says Jesper Falck Legaard.
DBU's ambitions extend beyond the new centres. The experiences and insights gained are intended to inspire coaches and club leaders in their everyday work, building on the sense of community already created by more than 120,000 volunteers in Danish football.
Associate Professor Jesper Falck Legaard.
