Happy Hands and Happy Faces, Happy Play in Grassy Places

This talk explores children’s experiences of nature in Edinburgh’s Old Town in the early years of the twentieth century. It focuses on the pockets of green space they found for themselves, and the spaces made for and with them by the women of the city’s Free Kindergarten movement and the Edinburgh Social Union’s Open Spaces Committee. This work was underpinned by a profound belief that by connecting children with nature in what was then an overcrowded and industrial slum area, their inherent capacities, as Kindergartner Lileen Hardy wrote, ‘will naturally unfold, into such a pure and perfect whole as a flower.’ Elizabeth Darling is an historian who researches, consults, curates, and publishes in the field of architecture and gender, as well as being a specialist in the history of British architectural modernism. She has worked extensively on the networks of women who sought to improve the lives of women and children in Edinburgh’s Edwardian Old Town, with a particular interest in the St Saviour’s Child Garden, and the women associated with Patrick Geddes’s Outlook Tower. This research has been published in Evergreen 2 (2015), Gender and History (vol 29:2, 2017) and the edited volume Suffragette City (2020). Please note the location of this event is the City Art Centre.