RALEIGH'S CREEK BOYS

As a parent raising her family in downtown Raleigh, Tina Govan became a passionate advocate for providing unstructured places for kids to play.  In this short video ( best watched fullscreen ), she documents a group of boys who grew up together in the city exploring the outdoors. It is testimony to the importance of autonomous outdoor play for children, especially in cities.

It has been shown at the 2012 Playworks Conference in the UK, NCSU's 2012 Growing in Place symposium in Raleigh, NC, the Gehl Institute’s Public X Design 2018 conference in Detroit, and Project for Public Spaces’ 2019 Placemaking Week in Chattanooga. It is also featured on Tim Gill's UK site Rethinking Childhood and Lenore Skenazy’s site Free-Range Kids.

Raleigh's Urban Design Center invited Tina to come speak on the topic of "Kids 'n the City," where the boys in this video were part of a panel discussion, sharing their experiences of growing up in Raleigh in search of places to play.

These same boys have grown up to study environmental science, urban planning, and more, becoming passionate stewards of their environment, in large part due to their free range childhood as "Raleigh's Creek Boys."