Anarchic playground where putting kids at risk is the point
- World Half Full
- Sep 4, 2025
- 5 min read
LIFESTYLE
Kolle 37 is not your typical kids’ playground. With its flaming stone fire pits, wonky swings, lopsided wooden forts, stacks of hammers and saws, even an abandoned car, the 4,000-square-metre, anarchic adventure playground in the heart of Berlin’s central Prenzlauer Berg neighbourhood might be most parent’s accident waiting to happen.
This playground allows children to build — or, indeed, destroy — structures as they see fit. And parents can visit only on Saturdays.
“To a lot of people it looks like junk and dirt, and [they think] that it isn’t useful,” says Marcus Schmidt, who trained as a social worker before joining Kolle 37 in 2005. “But here you get prepared for your future life.”
The idea is that “risky” adventure playgrounds encourage children to contend with genuine challenges from a young age, setting them up to better deal with all kinds of obstacles in adulthood. Proponents say they offer an important antidote to the risk-averse model of learning and play that has become increasingly dominant just about everywhere in the western world and which critics say limits their early development.
In practice, it means pro-risk Kolle 37 is home to great piles of wooden logs, half-built shacks and random structures, an impressive quantity of mud and dirt, and leafy trees dotted throughout. And it’s constantly changing.
“You have to talk to your neighbours,” says Schmidt, who is one of a handful of full-time adult employees who oversee but do not interfere. “You share tools, work with others, practice problem-solving, compromise. It’s the democratic process.”
Kolle 37, which began in 1990, is open to children between the ages of six and 16, and offers a rare space for unaccompanied play and so-called “free-range parenting” — parents are asked to give a mobile number and leave the site promptly. The playground, which receives funding from Berlin government authorities, also offers practical courses such as pottery, blacksmithery, archery and handicrafts, and has a space for music practice.
In the depths of Berlin’s freezing winters, there might only be a dozen children there on any given day, but during the summer peak the number can exceed 100. Weekly meetings are held among the children to discuss rules and problems, with a system of cards used for behavioural issues. Yellows serve as warnings and reds mean a child must leave for the day, for example, if they hurt someone or steal something.
“They run everything,” says Schmidt. “If the government or officials visit, the kids give the tour. There’s an equal relationship between children and adults here.”
Encouraging children to engage in risk has a wide range of benefits, says Ellen Beate Hansen Sandseter, associate professor at the Queen Maud University College of Early Childhood Education in Norway and co-author of the book Risky Play: An Ethical Challenge.
“It’s good for physical development, motor skills and learning how to cope with fears,” she says. “We habituate them through risky play, self-confidence building, courage, learning how to navigate the environment and build social skills.”
There’s already a body of research showing how risky play can set children up for life. One 2004 study found that children who took part in trained physical activities — such as the archery and pottery offered at Kolle 37 — in kindergarten had a “significant improvement” in their motor skills and had fewer accidents. Meanwhile, a 2022 study co-written by Sandseter concluded that the “thrilling emotions” involved in risky play help children mature and learn to deal with “complex psychosocial settings”. In 2024, the Canadian Paediatric Society even set out a position statement encouraging non-hazardous risky play.
Perhaps the ultimate sign of proof is that even insurance companies agree. In a 2020 report about playgrounds, the DGUV — the association of statutory accident insurers in Germany — said it was “particularly necessary” for children to practice taking risks in order to improve longer-term safety. “Allowing risks and daring is just as much a part of child-friendly safety promotion as regulating and prohibiting them,” it noted.
As well, adventure playgrounds are plainly a lot of fun. “It’s more joyful to be a child if you are allowed to do that,” says Sandseter. “It’s exhilarating to feel the sense of mastery of something they might be afraid of.”
Mitja, 13, has been coming to Kolle 37 almost every day for the past six years. “I’m usually around the campfire because there are a lot of other kids there,” he says. “I can chat and chill there. But I also help with chopping wood and building huts. I’ve made new friends, and I don’t sit in front of the computer all day.”
Adventure playgrounds became popular in postwar Europe following the opening of Copenhagen’s Emdrup Junk Playground in the early 1940s. Danish architect Carl Theodor Sørensen tore up the traditional four S’s of play — swings, slides, sandpits and seesaws — and let children lead their own play, digging caves in the ground and assembling their own houses from junk they found.
These days, Germany is arguably the “risky playground” capital of the world, home to about 400 sites out of an estimated 1,000 worldwide. There are also similar playgrounds in Denmark, France and England, such as the Big Swing Adventure Playground in Bradford. In the US, New York City’s Governors Island is home to The Yard, the city’s only adventure playground and one of only a few in the US. It has welcomed more than 60,000 city kids since it opened in 2016 “for building, exploring, imagining and destroying.”
Despite decades of proven service, adventure playgrounds can be subject to heated debate over safety, particularly as in the case of Kolle 37 where the surrounding neighbourhood has gentrified over the years.
The reality is there aren’t serious accidents at Kolle 37, Schmidt says. Sometimes children step on a nail and occasionally there are broken arms. But Schmidt argues these accidents happen everywhere — and often when children aren’t being watched.
In the same vein, Sandseter is at pains to distinguish between risks and hazards, the latter of which she argues is the responsibility of adults. Adventure playgrounds are about taking risks with intention, not going blindly into danger.
“Hazards are things we can’t expect children to identify,” she elaborates. “I’m not talking about pushing children into dangerous situations. A rotten pole in the swing sets, for example, that’s our responsibility as adults.”
Nonetheless, national contexts also play a role in whether adventure playgrounds can flourish. Public space in Germany is not plagued by liability lawsuits as can be the case, in say, the US. Then there’s the health system. “The US is a bit more difficult, it’s very risk-averse,” says Sandseter. “If a child climbs a tree, falls and breaks an arm, it’s completely free to be treated in some countries. While in the US, the family could go personally bankrupt.”
For Schmidt, Kolle 37 is “a really, really special place. It looks different every day. And the kids made it, not some engineer.”
TOP Problem-solving at Kolle
PHOTO Kolle 37
ABOVE PHOTO Kolle 37
MIDDLE, BOTTOM PHOTOS Peter Yeung
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