Not too long ago, I was on a hunt for a sandbox for Claire to play in while we were in Singapore on a vacation break from Los Angeles.

I have many fond childhood memories of running to the neighbourhood playground near my Ghim Moh HDB flat with my brother, and taking turns to push each other on the merry-go-rounds, slide down the dragon’s back, hop like frogs on the see-saws and dig into the sand, building fortresses and mountain ranges with our hands and our active imagination.

That humble pit of sand that I remembered being everywhere in the playgrounds of my childhood was nowhere to be found. To my dismay, every playground that we walked to in the vicinity of our HDB flat was fitted with shock-absorbent rubber mats and pre-fabricated structures that looked like carbon-copies of each other.

No see-saws, no merry-go-rounds, no sand.

We ended up taking a taxi to the Jacob Ballast Children’s garden, a good 20 minute trip, just to play with some sand.

Some people might wonder what the big deal is. After all, many people believe that rubber mats are supposed to be more hygienic, more shock-absorbant, more functional, more practical.

But to me, it’s more about the not-so-subtle message that’s being sent to our children; that in our vital neighbourhood playgrounds, there is no room for building sandcastles or engaging the imagination with a bucket of sand and a shovel ; and that, sadly, there is no room for a child to create in the playground. Instead, functionality and practical considerations trump the perceived messiness of the sandbox.

Yes, a sandbox can be deemed messy. Yes, we always had piles of leaves and leftover rain puddles in the sandbox, but then we could always use it as a fort, or a lake, or some sea that we could barricade with a castle fortress; we could imagine the leaves were tiny boats, or animals forging their way across the seas ala Christopher Columbus.

Creativity can be messy. After all, the best type of play is open-ended, open to experimentation and to being clothed by imagination.

My mother’s most vivid memory of playtime in her childhood was that of her making mud-dolls out of the mud in the ground. My father recounts how he would catch spiders for spider-fighting matches with his friends, and how he would go swimming in the longkangs around his neighbourhood. Even my daughter Claire often prefers to play with the cardboard boxes that her toys come in rather than the toys themselves because she can make the boxes into dollhouses or robots with a little imagination.

Creativity is the jet-fuel behind innovation and in today’s society, it is the creative innovator that will lead the way, no matter the industry. It pays to nurture creativity. One only has to look at companies like Google, or Apple to see how innovation and huge economic returns go hand-in-hand.

Every society, and every individual needs a space to play and to create. It would be good to provide that space for our children, not just with pre-fabricated playground structures, but with pliable materials that connect them with their imagination.

Singapore’s own National Parks Board highlights the joy and benefits of building sandcastles on their website, showing where in Singapore one can build a sandcastle, listing seven parks in Singapore where one can build sandcastles.

Source

There is even a non-profit organization called Castle Beach that operates out of the East Coast Park that “provides sandcastle teambuilding activities for children from under-privileged background, high-risk families and physically challenged conditions.” Even business consultants have spoken about how the simple act of building a sandcastle actually works to nurture innovation.

I would hope that children from all backgrounds and neighbourhoods in Singapore will be able to have access to sandcastle building in Singapore and not just have seven parks in the whole of Singapore to find enough sand to build a sandcastle.

I would hope that children can run down to their neighbourhood playground so that they can play with a basic creative material such as sand.

Now why would that be so impossible to find in modern day Singapore?

Top photo from here

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