WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.980 A couple of months ago I saw a video on social of a new toy called a noodle pod, 00:00:05.449 --> 00:00:10.750 which essentially replaces all those pesky plastic toys with one beautifully 00:00:10.770 --> 00:00:13.559 designed, creative, open ended toy. 00:00:14.030 --> 00:00:17.755 So I thought if my kids were still young, I'd I would be ordering that thing. 00:00:18.365 --> 00:00:21.815 And i've been seeing more and more videos on social about this brand new 00:00:21.825 --> 00:00:25.205 amazing innovation and I thought I need to find out more about this thing 00:00:25.794 --> 00:00:29.734 and so I did a bit of googling and found out more about the designer and 00:00:29.734 --> 00:00:31.674 founder of this amazing innovation. 00:00:32.034 --> 00:00:35.245 And so today on Blooming Curious, we have Marcus Veerman. 00:00:35.704 --> 00:00:39.954 Marcus is a playground designer founder and ceo of a charity called 00:00:40.254 --> 00:00:45.234 Playground Ideas Playground Ideas was born when Marcus started designing 00:00:45.234 --> 00:00:50.374 playgrounds with totally, sorry, with locally available materials, tools, 00:00:50.414 --> 00:00:53.694 and people back in Thailand in 2007. 00:00:54.145 --> 00:00:57.984 The company's playgrounds have positively impacted the lives of millions of 00:00:57.984 --> 00:01:03.094 children around the world who have enjoyed the benefits and sheer joy of play. 00:01:03.564 --> 00:01:07.834 So today Marcus is here to talk about his playgrounds and 00:01:07.845 --> 00:01:09.574 his new baby, the noodle cart. 00:01:09.584 --> 00:01:11.984 So welcome to Blooming Curious Marcus Veerman. 00:01:12.914 --> 00:01:13.815 Thanks for having me on the show. 00:01:14.625 --> 00:01:17.495 It's really exciting to have you here, Marcus. 00:01:17.864 --> 00:01:20.624 I know you've been on social and you're doing the rounds, but can you 00:01:20.624 --> 00:01:26.784 tell listeners about yourself and how you came to be designing those 00:01:26.804 --> 00:01:29.804 playgrounds in Thailand those years ago? 00:01:31.655 --> 00:01:37.160 Firstly, it started in 2006, I married a very strong woman and one of the, 00:01:37.370 --> 00:01:41.569 one of the, she wasn't particularly keen on getting married and set 00:01:41.569 --> 00:01:42.960 down some very strict requirements. 00:01:42.960 --> 00:01:47.979 And one of them was that, um, uh, that she wanted to make sure that we were 00:01:47.980 --> 00:01:52.790 going to go and live overseas and do some development work, um, at some stage. 00:01:52.800 --> 00:01:54.050 And I had to be okay with that. 00:01:54.625 --> 00:02:00.905 And so we got married in 2006 and by 2007, um, , she got a job with something called 00:02:00.905 --> 00:02:05.324 Australian Volunteers International, which is a volunteer program which 00:02:05.324 --> 00:02:10.264 places Australian professionals into organizations to, help them to develop 00:02:10.265 --> 00:02:12.145 their organizations and programs overseas. 00:02:12.145 --> 00:02:17.115 So that started in the, um, Far north of Thailand in a tiny little 00:02:17.125 --> 00:02:19.075 village called, um, Changdao. 00:02:19.685 --> 00:02:26.490 We lived in a little, um, thatch kind of Beautiful house with a little, with 00:02:26.490 --> 00:02:30.980 a rice paddy just out the window and a stunning Chengdao mountain, um, that we'd 00:02:30.980 --> 00:02:32.829 see the sun rising over every morning. 00:02:33.699 --> 00:02:37.490 Uh, and then we shifted after about six months to the Thai 00:02:38.190 --> 00:02:40.489 Myanmar border, so way over 00:02:41.525 --> 00:02:43.175 to the, west side of the country. 00:02:44.005 --> 00:02:47.255 And I went over there having absolutely no idea what I was going to do. 00:02:47.295 --> 00:02:50.774 I had worked as an, uh, a mountain guide and outdoor education 00:02:50.774 --> 00:02:54.725 teacher, both in Australia, and I'd been lucky enough to travel to 00:02:54.725 --> 00:02:56.435 some amazing places with children. 00:02:56.435 --> 00:03:00.385 I, I got to go to some very remote locations in Madagascar, 00:03:00.545 --> 00:03:02.125 Cambodia, and Thailand 00:03:02.865 --> 00:03:03.985 and other places and, 00:03:04.188 --> 00:03:08.988 I, I had happened to just by chance, build a couple of playgrounds on those trips. 00:03:09.058 --> 00:03:12.718 Um, and from the, I'm in Vietnam. 00:03:12.718 --> 00:03:16.608 So I'd built two playgrounds, one in one in Cambodia and one in Vietnam, basically. 00:03:16.619 --> 00:03:22.819 And so when I was arrived in Thailand and my wife's organization said, Hey, 00:03:22.989 --> 00:03:24.399 could you help us build a playground? 00:03:24.449 --> 00:03:25.969 I was like, Sure. 00:03:26.829 --> 00:03:30.789 So we built a small playground and before I'd even finished, um, a 00:03:30.789 --> 00:03:34.999 local school principal who lived way up in the mountains was passing by 00:03:35.079 --> 00:03:36.469 the property where we were staying. 00:03:37.429 --> 00:03:41.569 Um, where I was building the playground and said, I work in this very remote 00:03:41.569 --> 00:03:46.759 region with the, pandang people who were uh, Nepalese group that had 00:03:46.819 --> 00:03:50.069 traveled into Thailand thousands of years ago and and had this small little 00:03:50.459 --> 00:03:54.199 group that lived up in the mountains supported by the Thai government, but 00:03:54.199 --> 00:03:55.499 they didn't have a lot of resources. 00:03:55.529 --> 00:03:57.959 You know, she said, could you come up and help us to build a playground? 00:03:57.969 --> 00:03:58.919 I said, okay. 00:03:59.579 --> 00:04:00.349 So I did that. 00:04:00.929 --> 00:04:05.399 And, basically one thing led to another that we, as soon as I 00:04:05.399 --> 00:04:08.519 moved to the Thai Myanmar border 00:04:08.729 --> 00:04:13.289 I started talking to some of the NGOs that my partner was connected to, and 00:04:13.289 --> 00:04:15.129 I had another playground build request. 00:04:15.379 --> 00:04:18.949 In fact, a guy who was running a big charity, World Education 00:04:18.969 --> 00:04:21.469 Consortium, said, You know what? 00:04:21.569 --> 00:04:25.859 My, my mother just gave me 500 to donate to a project. 00:04:26.009 --> 00:04:27.219 We've got this great school. 00:04:27.489 --> 00:04:28.439 I'd like to give it to you. 00:04:28.479 --> 00:04:30.889 Could you just build a little playground and let's see what happens? 00:04:31.699 --> 00:04:33.539 His name was Greg, amazing guy. 00:04:33.579 --> 00:04:37.569 And we built a playground with almost nothing out of recycled materials 00:04:37.569 --> 00:04:39.199 and car tires and bits and pieces. 00:04:40.134 --> 00:04:44.544 And from that, that birthed a whole bunch of little partnerships with organizations 00:04:44.544 --> 00:04:49.884 where over the next two years, we built 40 playgrounds for about 25, 000 00:04:49.924 --> 00:04:54.494 children,, you know, they weren't schools, they were operating out of shopfronts 00:04:54.554 --> 00:04:59.624 and, um, you know, underneath in the basement of houses and places like that. 00:04:59.624 --> 00:05:02.344 And because we weren't really an organization, we were just a bunch of 00:05:02.444 --> 00:05:07.514 ragtag volunteers, we could just go in and build playgrounds for these places 00:05:07.514 --> 00:05:12.394 for very low cost,, and so get the job done and, and create really great spaces 00:05:12.394 --> 00:05:16.684 for those, for those children, because I've always had, as being a creative 00:05:16.684 --> 00:05:21.034 person, I've always just had a very strong sense that children will learn 00:05:21.034 --> 00:05:25.344 what they need to learn, um, or at least the majority of children will learn 00:05:25.344 --> 00:05:31.784 what they need to learn through that self motivated intrinsic play drive. 00:05:31.834 --> 00:05:35.584 We've diminished the importance of play, by calling it play, 00:05:35.584 --> 00:05:39.174 which is to do now to do with toys and all sorts of other things. 00:05:39.174 --> 00:05:44.464 But the play drive is essentially the child's drive to learn how the world 00:05:44.464 --> 00:05:48.694 works and to practice and apply that in their lives so they become competent, 00:05:49.144 --> 00:05:54.089 um, and become increasingly competent throughout their lifespan, right? 00:05:54.859 --> 00:05:54.869 I 00:05:54.869 --> 00:05:55.569 love that. 00:05:55.589 --> 00:05:59.009 The drive to learn how the world works. 00:05:59.049 --> 00:05:59.549 That's play. 00:05:59.549 --> 00:05:59.639 I 00:05:59.679 --> 00:06:06.569 mean, what else is Why else would children spend every waking hour doing this crazy 00:06:06.569 --> 00:06:08.689 activity, spending all of their energy? 00:06:08.699 --> 00:06:12.649 You know, you think about it from an evolutionary perspective, scarcity has 00:06:12.649 --> 00:06:15.189 been a problem for humans throughout time. 00:06:15.814 --> 00:06:19.594 Probably for the majority of time in terms of having enough calories to eat, and yet 00:06:19.634 --> 00:06:22.174 children are born and all they do is move. 00:06:22.474 --> 00:06:23.774 They burn everything. 00:06:23.784 --> 00:06:28.374 It's a death sentence really, evolutionary speaking, but because 00:06:28.374 --> 00:06:35.974 we have big heads and our main tool is our brain, not our claws or our, 00:06:36.324 --> 00:06:38.794 you know, um, teeth, our fangs. 00:06:38.884 --> 00:06:40.764 No, really, that's our tool, right? 00:06:41.344 --> 00:06:43.854 I'm just thinking, you're thinking, what a shame that not enough 00:06:43.864 --> 00:06:45.364 people are using that tool. 00:06:46.564 --> 00:06:50.954 Well, I, but I think even, I mean, the thing is that humans are generally, I'm 00:06:50.954 --> 00:06:53.754 talking about adults, not children, I know, I know exactly what you're saying. 00:06:54.274 --> 00:06:55.084 Humans. 00:06:55.459 --> 00:06:56.359 are generalists. 00:06:56.369 --> 00:07:00.489 We have the ability to use tools to, you know, to do everything that we've done 00:07:00.489 --> 00:07:05.149 in the world that we see, which is what makes us absolutely incredible and able 00:07:05.149 --> 00:07:09.569 to adapt to any environment anywhere and to solve problems that be creative 00:07:09.569 --> 00:07:11.879 and go, okay, I'm struggling with this. 00:07:11.879 --> 00:07:13.059 How would I solve that problem? 00:07:13.139 --> 00:07:14.629 Well, can I make a tool? 00:07:14.629 --> 00:07:15.729 Can I talk to someone? 00:07:15.769 --> 00:07:16.949 Can I go to a therapist? 00:07:16.959 --> 00:07:20.814 Can I, you know, like, You think about the incredible ways that humans have 00:07:20.814 --> 00:07:25.924 solved everything to essentially be the dominant species across the entire planet 00:07:25.964 --> 00:07:30.504 is absolutely, you know, we eclipsed everything that's ever come before 00:07:30.504 --> 00:07:32.304 us in terms of any kind of species. 00:07:32.304 --> 00:07:33.494 It's quite amazing. 00:07:33.984 --> 00:07:38.804 And I think that that's all developmentally rooted in play. 00:07:38.864 --> 00:07:44.964 And no surprise, the closest species to us that plays are orangutans. 00:07:45.499 --> 00:07:49.309 And they, they have a childhood that lasts about, um, eight to 11 years or 00:07:49.309 --> 00:07:54.179 something like that before maturity and ours is almost double that length, you 00:07:54.179 --> 00:07:59.449 know, and, and as society increases in complexity with technologies and other 00:07:59.449 --> 00:08:02.119 things, have you noticed how childhood. 00:08:02.424 --> 00:08:06.024 Is increasing in length, you know, kids stay at home for longer. 00:08:06.284 --> 00:08:07.434 We, do you mean? 00:08:07.444 --> 00:08:09.184 It's, it's quite interesting how you see that. 00:08:09.194 --> 00:08:09.244 Oh, I mean. 00:08:09.244 --> 00:08:09.354 I've got 00:08:09.424 --> 00:08:11.064 24 year old. 00:08:11.314 --> 00:08:11.594 Yeah. 00:08:12.104 --> 00:08:12.344 Yeah. 00:08:12.344 --> 00:08:13.744 So I don't think that's a surprise. 00:08:13.744 --> 00:08:17.984 I, I, I'm probably also not looking forward to that, but having kids at home. 00:08:18.034 --> 00:08:18.244 It's 00:08:18.244 --> 00:08:18.874 amazing. 00:08:18.894 --> 00:08:19.394 I love it. 00:08:19.424 --> 00:08:20.994 We love having our kids here. 00:08:21.104 --> 00:08:26.449 They're, studying and, , it's amazing to share in a different way in their lives. 00:08:26.459 --> 00:08:32.664 It's and I and sometimes we think how lucky are we to still Um, be able 00:08:32.694 --> 00:08:35.284 to share in our children's lives. 00:08:35.704 --> 00:08:37.054 We see it as a blessing. 00:08:37.104 --> 00:08:37.934 We honestly do. 00:08:37.944 --> 00:08:39.014 Of course it's not going to last forever. 00:08:39.334 --> 00:08:39.654 You know. 00:08:39.714 --> 00:08:40.004 Yeah. 00:08:40.004 --> 00:08:41.254 And that's a good reality check. 00:08:41.374 --> 00:08:41.624 You know. 00:08:41.754 --> 00:08:45.734 And humans have probably lived in small family groups like that, you know, 00:08:45.744 --> 00:08:47.254 until they partner up with someone else. 00:08:47.424 --> 00:08:49.204 They would live in that group. 00:08:49.204 --> 00:08:53.664 And we've sort of, I guess we had to move away from that, you know, um, sort 00:08:53.664 --> 00:08:57.684 of maybe in the seventies or eighties, which is because of house prices and 00:08:57.684 --> 00:09:00.524 other things, I think, people are staying together for longer and things 00:09:00.524 --> 00:09:02.494 like that as humans fill the earth. 00:09:02.494 --> 00:09:06.254 But anyway, so to cut a long story short, you asked me how I got to here. 00:09:06.284 --> 00:09:06.644 Yeah. 00:09:07.174 --> 00:09:11.554 So from Thailand and building those 40 playgrounds, we spent the next 00:09:11.554 --> 00:09:16.144 few years, I got some funding and we spent the next few years essentially 00:09:16.254 --> 00:09:21.314 documenting everything we learned from that process into simple step 00:09:21.324 --> 00:09:27.674 by step kind of IKEA style, um, step by step pictorial, directions. 00:09:28.024 --> 00:09:30.464 We created a five step playground. 00:09:30.884 --> 00:09:35.214 Sort of community consultation playground building manual based on our process and 00:09:35.214 --> 00:09:39.384 a bunch of and sort of how to assess your playground to the international safety 00:09:39.384 --> 00:09:43.054 standards, the sort of the basics if you don't have safety standards in your 00:09:43.054 --> 00:09:44.839 country and so on and so on and so on. 00:09:45.179 --> 00:09:48.149 Essentially, anyone, anywhere can come to our website. 00:09:48.709 --> 00:09:52.759 They can even set up a crowdfunding page with a PayPal button to raise money. 00:09:53.109 --> 00:09:55.959 They can get our manuals and educate themselves on how to build a playground. 00:09:55.959 --> 00:10:00.899 And then they can, um, use our online or offline printable drag 00:10:00.899 --> 00:10:03.319 and drop playground designer. 00:10:03.639 --> 00:10:06.539 And then , download those designs and then off they go. 00:10:06.599 --> 00:10:09.209 And so, that supports now. 00:10:09.289 --> 00:10:11.919 So, uh, we did 20 playgrounds a year in Thailand. 00:10:12.434 --> 00:10:18.344 And that now supports, give or take, around 700 to 1, 000 00:10:18.364 --> 00:10:23.004 playgrounds around the world every year in about 143 countries. 00:10:23.014 --> 00:10:27.414 So it's a truly scaled up, and it costs us about 30 cents. 00:10:27.759 --> 00:10:28.289 For that model. 00:10:28.289 --> 00:10:31.199 And, you know, I just want if anyone's listening out there that runs a charity, 00:10:31.239 --> 00:10:36.059 I would highly encourage you to give away your IP and allow other people 00:10:36.889 --> 00:10:40.909 to use what, you know, for the good of their communities, you know, so many 00:10:40.919 --> 00:10:45.229 charities take their IP and bundle it up and say, this is our special thing. 00:10:45.669 --> 00:10:48.579 Our real strength, I think, has been sharing that with the world and 00:10:48.579 --> 00:10:52.794 allowing, you know, an individual literally anywhere can just stand up 00:10:52.794 --> 00:10:54.674 and decide they want to make a change. 00:10:55.014 --> 00:10:56.704 And we empower them to do that. 00:10:56.714 --> 00:10:58.214 That's how our model works. 00:10:58.774 --> 00:11:02.894 Marcus, that is honestly, that is incredible. 00:11:03.234 --> 00:11:07.244 So you did say, and it was a thought going through my mind when you were talking 00:11:07.244 --> 00:11:09.754 there, that it's actually worldwide. 00:11:09.764 --> 00:11:13.504 So anyone, anywhere, cause obviously it's online, it's on the web. 00:11:13.504 --> 00:11:15.064 So everybody has access to it. 00:11:15.494 --> 00:11:18.744 And so are you finding that,, most people. 00:11:19.359 --> 00:11:23.839 or schools or organizations that are going to your website and downloading 00:11:23.839 --> 00:11:29.749 these playground plans, are they mostly from disadvantaged communities, third 00:11:29.749 --> 00:11:34.169 world countries, or is it, is it a mixed bag or what are you finding? 00:11:34.279 --> 00:11:34.519 I 00:11:34.519 --> 00:11:37.769 think that there's a lot of people who are going on a playground 00:11:37.769 --> 00:11:40.259 journey for their, you know, their primary school secondary school. 00:11:40.939 --> 00:11:44.849 Perth, for example, you know, and they just get some interesting information, 00:11:45.319 --> 00:11:48.329 but I would say that most of the people who follow through and actually build 00:11:48.379 --> 00:11:53.859 are from, low income nations, uh, the global south, things like that, because, 00:11:55.119 --> 00:11:59.249 you know, we're very constrained here in Australia with, safety standards, 00:11:59.249 --> 00:12:01.899 material use and community expectations. 00:12:01.969 --> 00:12:05.159 People, people say, well, I know what a playground looks like. 00:12:05.279 --> 00:12:08.189 Unfortunately, it looks like a bunch of steel poles. 00:12:08.539 --> 00:12:13.929 With a bunch of plastic or steel platforms and roofs and a little, you know, um, 00:12:14.679 --> 00:12:16.569 simple shop underneath the cubby house. 00:12:16.579 --> 00:12:20.449 It's not hand painted, you know, it has a very refined finish. 00:12:21.649 --> 00:12:26.029 Sort of aesthetic and that, that model was set up in the sixties 00:12:26.169 --> 00:12:27.659 that sort of modular playground. 00:12:27.669 --> 00:12:30.889 It's a great business model, but I think that, playgrounds can 00:12:30.889 --> 00:12:35.789 be a lot more, and we don't have to do that cookie cutter model. 00:12:35.809 --> 00:12:39.809 You know, one thing, one thing we love to do in our playgrounds is just heap 00:12:39.819 --> 00:12:43.769 up earth and grow grass on top of it and put a few little paths up and down it. 00:12:43.819 --> 00:12:46.159 You know, you don't have to build a slide 00:12:46.649 --> 00:12:51.109 to give children that falling, slipping, you know, experience, they can just 00:12:51.109 --> 00:12:55.149 run down a hill, they can roll down a hill, you know, and, you know, I 00:12:55.149 --> 00:12:59.299 mean, we get, we get stuck into these sort of swing slide, a playground needs 00:12:59.299 --> 00:13:03.189 to have a swing slide and a seesaw, but it doesn't, you know, children 00:13:03.199 --> 00:13:07.889 want diversity of experience and they want a stimulating environment. 00:13:08.984 --> 00:13:14.654 But we don't have to do these same kind of repeated kind of activities 00:13:14.654 --> 00:13:17.504 all the way through where, uh, you know, you know what I'm talking 00:13:17.504 --> 00:13:22.524 about, it's just silly that we've got this such a fixed standard model. 00:13:22.524 --> 00:13:26.744 And interestingly, I've met the father of, that playground design, that poles 00:13:26.744 --> 00:13:30.194 and platform playground design is sort of credited to one particular person. 00:13:30.854 --> 00:13:32.364 He's a super creative guy. 00:13:32.544 --> 00:13:36.674 He didn't, he didn't design those things to be used universally for 00:13:36.674 --> 00:13:37.994 every playground in the world. 00:13:38.264 --> 00:13:41.664 He just created a really smart system of connecting poles and platforms together 00:13:41.934 --> 00:13:43.424 and did all sorts of creative things. 00:13:43.424 --> 00:13:46.324 I'm hoping that we have a big revolution in this area and 00:13:46.324 --> 00:13:48.464 seeing much more creative designs. 00:13:48.464 --> 00:13:49.744 And there are, there are companies. 00:13:50.229 --> 00:13:53.219 Um, that are definitely doing more creative things, but 00:13:53.219 --> 00:13:54.609 they're still in the minority. 00:13:55.349 --> 00:13:58.789 Because I think what we are seeing, and I, I've, you know, I've spoken 00:13:58.789 --> 00:14:03.769 about this with another guest who's also really into play and outdoor play. 00:14:04.819 --> 00:14:06.269 I think we're seeing a shift. 00:14:06.399 --> 00:14:10.239 I see a shift anyway in my local area and in our playgrounds 00:14:10.239 --> 00:14:12.329 more towards natural materials. 00:14:12.919 --> 00:14:15.559 You know, you see more sort of wooden things. 00:14:16.624 --> 00:14:18.394 nets and these kinds of things. 00:14:18.764 --> 00:14:25.194 But to me, those are really aesthetically very pleasing, but they're so 00:14:25.274 --> 00:14:32.474 safe and I think we still lack an element of risk in so many of the 00:14:32.474 --> 00:14:34.234 playgrounds that are being designed. 00:14:34.624 --> 00:14:38.964 And when I looked at some of your videos from the playgrounds that you did, 00:14:39.054 --> 00:14:42.484 must have been in Thailand or Cambodia or somewhere. 00:14:43.374 --> 00:14:47.384 Kids were having so much fun and they were taking risks. 00:14:47.614 --> 00:14:49.964 But they weren't risks that were going to kill them. 00:14:50.284 --> 00:14:55.154 They were just risks that could push their bodies to a little bit of a limit. 00:14:55.194 --> 00:14:59.359 Because I think we're so wrapping kids up in so much bubble wrap 00:14:59.359 --> 00:15:03.779 now that they don't actually know how to even take risks anymore. 00:15:04.019 --> 00:15:06.809 They're so scared just to put one foot in front of the other, 00:15:07.379 --> 00:15:07.749 and 00:15:08.069 --> 00:15:12.389 I think COVID really, um, put a huge hole in that. 00:15:12.459 --> 00:15:16.259 Yeah, I think that this sort of, you know, I've been talking about this a bit more 00:15:16.259 --> 00:15:18.049 lately, this sort of indoor generation. 00:15:18.099 --> 00:15:22.029 There's a whole bunch of different factors that are going on in the world right 00:15:22.059 --> 00:15:28.359 now and they're all pushing parents and teachers into a really difficult position. 00:15:28.409 --> 00:15:30.889 But let's come back to that in a sec. I want to touch on that 00:15:30.939 --> 00:15:32.409 word risk that you brought up. 00:15:32.459 --> 00:15:37.079 If there's one message that your listeners could take away 00:15:37.079 --> 00:15:38.679 from what I'm saying today. 00:15:39.899 --> 00:15:43.129 about risk is that there's actually two words. 00:15:43.379 --> 00:15:46.439 There's risk and there's hazards. 00:15:47.089 --> 00:15:54.689 So a hazard is something that deserves a big you know, uh, fluorescent orange 00:15:54.699 --> 00:15:58.669 sign next to it that says if you do this, you're likely to get hurt. 00:15:58.729 --> 00:16:04.749 So no playground should have a loose screw or nail where a child can stand 00:16:04.759 --> 00:16:06.639 up and bang their head on onto it. 00:16:06.649 --> 00:16:09.029 You know, something like that or something where they can get 00:16:09.029 --> 00:16:13.099 splinters or, you know, something that's going to cause them an injury. 00:16:13.479 --> 00:16:16.389 All of those things should be removed from playgrounds for sure. 00:16:17.659 --> 00:16:19.789 They're called hazards and that's important to note. 00:16:20.529 --> 00:16:25.199 Risks, on the other hand, , and so the other thing about, um, hazards, something 00:16:25.199 --> 00:16:28.759 that makes something a hazard is a really clear defining thing that we sort of 00:16:28.769 --> 00:16:34.169 worked out in the early days is something that a child is unlikely to be able to 00:16:34.209 --> 00:16:37.029 see before they engage in the activity. 00:16:38.259 --> 00:16:38.689 That make sense? 00:16:38.709 --> 00:16:41.899 So, for instance, here's an example of something risky. 00:16:41.919 --> 00:16:45.569 We often make standing seesaws, right? 00:16:45.619 --> 00:16:46.809 So a big plank. 00:16:47.354 --> 00:16:53.464 It's lower to the ground than a normal seesaw, very long, but it's clear that 00:16:53.544 --> 00:16:59.794 if you walk up that seesaw, when you get to the fulcrum, you know that it's 00:16:59.794 --> 00:17:01.164 going to drop down the other side. 00:17:01.534 --> 00:17:02.404 That's not a hazard. 00:17:02.404 --> 00:17:07.104 It's a clearly visible and the longer the seesaw and the more heavy it is, 00:17:07.154 --> 00:17:10.394 the slower that that that tilt happens. 00:17:10.724 --> 00:17:14.274 So your body gets a bit of warning and obviously you don't have any 00:17:14.284 --> 00:17:17.474 hazards either side so you can just jump off if you get a fright. 00:17:17.699 --> 00:17:18.059 Right? 00:17:18.199 --> 00:17:20.089 So we're learning about physics as well. 00:17:20.319 --> 00:17:25.499 Yes, so that's, that's what I would call a risky, a risky activity. 00:17:25.539 --> 00:17:28.939 It, it has a, it gives you a sense in your body, a sensation in your 00:17:28.939 --> 00:17:30.639 body that you need to respond to. 00:17:31.199 --> 00:17:36.094 Um, and if you're a very young child, That could be a very challenging physical 00:17:36.104 --> 00:17:40.644 element and then as you get older the great thing about that same element is 00:17:40.644 --> 00:17:45.534 instead of tiptoeing up you can run up and see how far you can get off before 00:17:45.534 --> 00:17:51.344 you jump off the end because you expect that that fulcrum shift and then you can 00:17:51.544 --> 00:17:55.994 you know and you can increase the level of challenge so but I think it's very 00:17:55.994 --> 00:17:59.614 important to note the difference in my mind I don't talk about there's there's 00:17:59.614 --> 00:18:04.339 not risks that are dangerous and risks that are positive I would just say There 00:18:04.339 --> 00:18:05.479 are certain things that are hazards. 00:18:05.549 --> 00:18:06.609 We need to get rid of those. 00:18:07.209 --> 00:18:14.659 But taking risks is absolutely, foundational to growth and that's true, 00:18:14.659 --> 00:18:19.239 you know, with, with the launch of noodle, if we hadn't, if we didn't take risks and, 00:18:19.299 --> 00:18:23.299 um, you know, and make enough products, we get to a point very quickly where 00:18:23.299 --> 00:18:26.829 we run out of product and we run out of money and the whole charity goes downhill. 00:18:26.829 --> 00:18:28.469 And do you know what I mean? 00:18:28.539 --> 00:18:33.624 Like you have, you have to take risks in life and the removal of risks, It's 00:18:33.624 --> 00:18:39.964 a critical error that many, many, many parents, uh, making that error on a 00:18:39.974 --> 00:18:42.544 daily basis where they stop their child. 00:18:42.604 --> 00:18:45.034 I can't, this is something that drives me crazy. 00:18:45.044 --> 00:18:49.964 You go to the playground or you go to, you know, even just a birthday 00:18:49.964 --> 00:18:57.429 party or something and you see parents removing the, The responsibility from 00:18:57.429 --> 00:19:00.659 the child to take a risk, whether it's a social risk, you know, you sort 00:19:00.659 --> 00:19:03.239 of, you know, micromanaging a child's 00:19:03.714 --> 00:19:05.044 emotional response. 00:19:05.304 --> 00:19:06.324 Yeah, to, yeah. 00:19:06.474 --> 00:19:09.044 I mean, I think we've got to be careful with those terms because it 00:19:09.044 --> 00:19:10.754 makes parents sometimes feel guilty. 00:19:10.754 --> 00:19:14.744 I think it's more just kind of going, let's talk about the positives of allowing 00:19:14.744 --> 00:19:18.354 your child to take that risk with that child who's just snatched their toy. 00:19:18.674 --> 00:19:20.584 They've come back to you and they're really upset. 00:19:21.274 --> 00:19:21.844 Yeah, sure. 00:19:21.854 --> 00:19:22.804 You can comfort them. 00:19:23.054 --> 00:19:25.619 But then, You don't have to go and manage that situation. 00:19:25.629 --> 00:19:26.629 Give them some advice. 00:19:26.629 --> 00:19:29.899 Give them some scaffolding and then send them out into the 00:19:29.899 --> 00:19:31.509 battlefield of life, right? 00:19:31.979 --> 00:19:33.669 That's their job to work that out. 00:19:33.769 --> 00:19:37.199 They've got to, they've got to, they've got to practice these skills 00:19:37.299 --> 00:19:41.409 over and over and over and over again and work out what works for them. 00:19:41.549 --> 00:19:45.549 You know, if they snatch that toy back, you can coach them again. 00:19:45.709 --> 00:19:46.659 What happened there? 00:19:46.839 --> 00:19:48.149 Instead of saying, don't do that. 00:19:48.159 --> 00:19:48.829 You can't do that. 00:19:48.839 --> 00:19:49.569 It's never going to work. 00:19:50.059 --> 00:19:51.509 You can, you can say, what happened there? 00:19:51.519 --> 00:19:52.399 Was that effective? 00:19:52.449 --> 00:19:53.719 Did you get what you wanted? 00:19:54.034 --> 00:19:56.714 Did the world get what it needed from that situation? 00:19:57.224 --> 00:19:59.144 Or maybe there's, you know, are there other options? 00:19:59.144 --> 00:20:00.824 You know, and I know that can be exhausting. 00:20:00.824 --> 00:20:06.024 But, no, actually, I think parents are doing exhausting things all the time. 00:20:06.044 --> 00:20:08.254 In fact, probably taking too much of the responsibility. 00:20:08.764 --> 00:20:11.454 And they need to sort of, I think oftentimes, there are a lot of parents 00:20:11.454 --> 00:20:13.934 who need to really, really step back. 00:20:14.004 --> 00:20:16.744 I think it's hard because often you've got, you know, when you've got two 00:20:16.744 --> 00:20:21.274 parents, often you find that you also find that conflict between the parents 00:20:21.274 --> 00:20:24.204 where one is standing back probably a little too much and not engaging. 00:20:24.944 --> 00:20:28.094 I don't know if you've seen that movie, The Incredibles where, you know, the 00:20:28.094 --> 00:20:32.264 father is, you know, he's, he's really distracted and his wife screams at him, 00:20:32.294 --> 00:20:37.074 would you engage, just engage and, and, you know, he's off with the fairies. 00:20:37.074 --> 00:20:40.344 And, and I think that you often get that combination of one parent who's just off 00:20:40.344 --> 00:20:43.864 with the fairies and the other parent is feeling like they're grinding through and 00:20:43.864 --> 00:20:49.884 carrying all this stuff and trying to find a way to sort of find a nice place between 00:20:49.884 --> 00:20:54.264 them where you can allow children to take risks and to do those things, you know. 00:20:54.314 --> 00:20:58.589 Going back to what you've just said, I think sometimes as parents And even 00:20:58.589 --> 00:21:02.499 as teachers, we jump in too soon. 00:21:02.659 --> 00:21:07.909 Sometimes I think it's helpful to just stand back, just watch, just listen, 00:21:07.999 --> 00:21:10.239 and let the kids sort things out. 00:21:10.309 --> 00:21:14.019 Let them try first before you jump in to scaffold and help. 00:21:14.729 --> 00:21:18.009 Because I think they're very good at sorting themselves out. 00:21:18.289 --> 00:21:21.219 You know, I think we sometimes interfere too quickly. 00:21:21.249 --> 00:21:25.809 And that's the other thing is that play or really deep independent play. 00:21:25.809 --> 00:21:29.539 Kids just want to be left alone to get on with what they're doing. 00:21:29.869 --> 00:21:34.849 And I think play is really important for that because you learn so much from play. 00:21:34.849 --> 00:21:37.969 You're actually learning so much from, you know, if I'm going to snatch 00:21:37.969 --> 00:21:39.349 this toy away from this child. 00:21:40.149 --> 00:21:43.839 Every time I do that, there's a consequence that happens, you know, 00:21:44.379 --> 00:21:46.019 and I think that they learn that. 00:21:46.439 --> 00:21:50.339 But of course, as adults, when we're standing back a little bit and observing, 00:21:50.589 --> 00:21:55.039 we can come in and scaffold, and as you've said so wisely, You know say to 00:21:55.039 --> 00:21:59.819 them has that been helpful, you know hasn't helped your cause So I think what 00:21:59.819 --> 00:22:05.359 you've said there is really wise and I hope a lot of people take note of that 00:22:05.839 --> 00:22:07.969 Marcus you mentioned the Nudel cart. 00:22:08.699 --> 00:22:12.999 So that's your latest venture And i've also seen you've also 00:22:12.999 --> 00:22:14.489 have some other Nudel products. 00:22:14.809 --> 00:22:21.269 So can you explain what the Nudel cart is and how you see the Nudel cart and your 00:22:21.269 --> 00:22:24.039 other Nudel things being used by children? 00:22:24.869 --> 00:22:26.839 Yeah, sure, just one thing you got me. 00:22:26.849 --> 00:22:30.029 Can I go back just to one point that I thought, because it's such a, this is 00:22:30.029 --> 00:22:34.819 such a fascinating topic that we've been talking about for, I mean, over a decade. 00:22:35.549 --> 00:22:39.889 I just wanted to cover that point about, how did we get to this place where there's 00:22:39.889 --> 00:22:41.729 less risk and, and those kinds of things? 00:22:41.729 --> 00:22:44.579 Like what, what is actually, you know, a lot of people ask, ask 00:22:44.579 --> 00:22:47.869 me, and we've been talking about, like, why, how did we get here? 00:22:48.509 --> 00:22:48.859 Right? 00:22:48.859 --> 00:22:52.684 With this sort of, Helicopter parenting and, and the lack of 00:22:52.684 --> 00:22:53.604 risk and other things in it. 00:22:53.604 --> 00:22:58.904 I, I think there's lots and lots of reasons but I think there's 00:22:58.904 --> 00:23:03.134 some unusual macro factors that we don't often think about that I 00:23:03.134 --> 00:23:04.654 just wanted to quickly touch on. 00:23:05.094 --> 00:23:07.924 And one of them is family size. 00:23:07.924 --> 00:23:10.274 A lot of people don't think about this, right? 00:23:10.884 --> 00:23:16.394 The pressure on parents to do all of this coaching work and to be close and 00:23:16.394 --> 00:23:23.644 talking with their child I think is to do is there's a major factor that no one's 00:23:23.644 --> 00:23:29.494 really talking about which is essentially the number of children per family when 00:23:29.494 --> 00:23:33.674 you have as you did mid last century 4. 00:23:33.674 --> 00:23:35.504 5 children per household. 00:23:36.204 --> 00:23:37.664 Versus now when you've got about 1. 00:23:37.664 --> 00:23:43.454 6 and in Japan, I mean, it's, it's a chronic problem, right? 00:23:43.454 --> 00:23:47.364 You've got two parents and one child on average. 00:23:48.014 --> 00:23:52.254 If you take, so here's just one example of how that affects everything. 00:23:52.624 --> 00:24:00.194 If you take a standard suburban, like urban block, what we used to have was 00:24:00.774 --> 00:24:08.474 marauding groups of 20 to 30 kids after school, and lower numbers of cars in 00:24:08.474 --> 00:24:13.064 suburbs, smaller streets, more dirt roads, and things like that where, people 00:24:13.064 --> 00:24:16.144 would drive, and cars that were more cumbersome with worse brakes, so they 00:24:16.164 --> 00:24:22.024 would drive slowly, and cars also had an expectation that they would run into 00:24:22.024 --> 00:24:26.514 giant groups of children playing cricket, football, or whatever, on the street. 00:24:27.014 --> 00:24:30.754 So people treated the street as a shared space. 00:24:31.934 --> 00:24:35.324 When you reduce the numbers from, you know, if you think about a standard 00:24:35.324 --> 00:24:40.384 block might have 20 houses and four and a half children in each house, that's, 00:24:40.394 --> 00:24:44.304 that can be 30, 40 children who might be in multiple groups around those 00:24:44.304 --> 00:24:46.204 streets doing things on the street. 00:24:46.204 --> 00:24:50.204 They are learning intensely all of these social skills that you're talking about. 00:24:50.654 --> 00:24:55.414 Without parents, in the rough and tumble of that world, older children 00:24:55.414 --> 00:24:58.694 are going, we can't play cricket unless we put our arm behind our 00:24:58.694 --> 00:25:02.204 back because the little kids won't play with us because we keep winning. 00:25:03.134 --> 00:25:03.324 Right? 00:25:03.334 --> 00:25:07.144 That compassion and empathy is being learned through those kinds of skills. 00:25:07.574 --> 00:25:11.784 And the younger children get to stand further away from the goals or they get 00:25:11.794 --> 00:25:13.874 to have three kids against one bigger kid. 00:25:14.164 --> 00:25:17.664 You know, we, we don't see that as much, this multi age challenging 00:25:17.664 --> 00:25:20.464 play where the older children have to disadvantage themselves 00:25:20.464 --> 00:25:21.644 to play with the younger children. 00:25:21.944 --> 00:25:24.854 Peter Gray is an amazing guy who talks a lot about this kind of stuff 00:25:24.864 --> 00:25:26.364 that I find absolutely fascinating. 00:25:27.564 --> 00:25:30.664 But the other thing that's happened is when you've got less siblings. 00:25:31.614 --> 00:25:35.114 The parent becomes the friend or the sibling, right? 00:25:35.514 --> 00:25:38.594 There's a change in that relationship because the child has to play. 00:25:38.624 --> 00:25:42.404 They are hardwired not to play on their own, but to play with 00:25:42.404 --> 00:25:44.374 another person or other people. 00:25:45.074 --> 00:25:49.734 And so the formalizing of culture, the lowering number of children 00:25:49.734 --> 00:25:54.074 means that now we've got playdates instead of just kids walking into 00:25:54.074 --> 00:25:55.234 their next door neighbor's house. 00:25:55.934 --> 00:25:58.854 And stranger danger is, absolutely terrifying parents. 00:25:58.864 --> 00:26:02.684 So, you know, allowing your child to roam and just go to another person's 00:26:02.684 --> 00:26:06.234 house and things like that is incredibly stressful and difficult for parents. 00:26:06.234 --> 00:26:11.424 And I'm not saying they just should let them go, but it's all of these factors. 00:26:12.349 --> 00:26:16.759 are kind of compounding to create a situation where, and this leads into 00:26:16.759 --> 00:26:20.339 Nudel cart and, the work that I'm doing with the pod, where parents 00:26:20.429 --> 00:26:23.249 need an environment in the home. 00:26:23.369 --> 00:26:25.409 Cause we can't solve a lot of these problems. 00:26:25.409 --> 00:26:27.809 You can't just go, Oh, well, I'll just let the kids roam around the streets. 00:26:28.289 --> 00:26:29.109 Now they're full of cars. 00:26:29.189 --> 00:26:31.949 Now that there's less kids on the street, these are hard problems. 00:26:31.949 --> 00:26:35.889 So the pod is trying to create an environment to solve some of these 00:26:35.899 --> 00:26:40.219 problem solving, creativity challenges, and make a great environment for lower 00:26:40.219 --> 00:26:44.019 numbers of children and their parents to connect together and do these enjoyable 00:26:44.019 --> 00:26:47.779 activities together instead of the parents sitting there with these toys 00:26:47.779 --> 00:26:51.799 that beep and make all these annoying noises and, and don't, and they, and 00:26:51.799 --> 00:26:53.449 they're so boring for the parent. 00:26:53.519 --> 00:26:55.949 We're trying to create an environment that works with parents and children 00:26:56.424 --> 00:27:01.164 in this modern environment to give them that risky, open ended, creative space 00:27:01.424 --> 00:27:05.534 that's enjoyable for both parent and child because we just, we appreciate 00:27:05.534 --> 00:27:07.224 that there's parents doing that work now. 00:27:07.414 --> 00:27:15.884 I have to say I have never considered family size as an impact on play. 00:27:15.884 --> 00:27:18.204 So this is, Incredibly enlightening. 00:27:18.254 --> 00:27:21.244 Yeah, and it makes total sense actually. 00:27:21.574 --> 00:27:22.644 I have to say. 00:27:23.584 --> 00:27:27.684 My kids formative years when they were little were spent in the middle east And 00:27:27.704 --> 00:27:33.954 I guess as an expat we lived in these little small gated communities And my 00:27:33.954 --> 00:27:38.424 own kids now say how lucky they were to spend that time there Because these kids 00:27:38.424 --> 00:27:40.414 would roam around that little community. 00:27:40.784 --> 00:27:45.374 They would be in these bands on the streets you know setting up ramps and 00:27:45.384 --> 00:27:51.174 skateboarding over them and running a muck outside So luckily for my children, 00:27:51.624 --> 00:27:55.054 they actually did have that experience, but we were only lucky because we were 00:27:55.054 --> 00:27:59.194 in the small gated community where cars knew the minute they entered, there'd be 00:27:59.194 --> 00:28:00.934 kids on the streets, as you've just said. 00:28:00.934 --> 00:28:04.694 And so there was a slowing down because they expected to 00:28:04.724 --> 00:28:06.414 see children running around. 00:28:06.784 --> 00:28:11.174 And those community expectations are so important because they change our behavior 00:28:11.174 --> 00:28:13.834 you know, what we expect to occur. 00:28:14.184 --> 00:28:17.234 Is more likely to occur, whereas now, I mean, you're listeners, 00:28:17.794 --> 00:28:22.124 if you think about a little child who walks to the front gate, they 00:28:22.124 --> 00:28:26.374 walk to the front gate, they look left, they look right, there's no one there. 00:28:27.019 --> 00:28:30.479 If mom and dad are busy, or a sibling is busy, then they go and 00:28:30.479 --> 00:28:31.899 play on their Nintendo Switch. 00:28:33.119 --> 00:28:33.639 You know what I mean? 00:28:33.869 --> 00:28:36.199 The opportunity is not taken up. 00:28:36.229 --> 00:28:38.659 They go, Oh, I'd like to do blah, blah, blah. 00:28:38.939 --> 00:28:42.679 The only thing, so just to add to your story, the thing that's 00:28:42.679 --> 00:28:46.929 working for my children, my family at the moment, and again, I feel 00:28:46.929 --> 00:28:48.669 incredibly blessed to have this. 00:28:48.669 --> 00:28:52.199 I live in an apartment where I'm sitting right now, where on this 00:28:52.199 --> 00:28:55.109 side of the apartment at the front door, there's a small street, very 00:28:55.109 --> 00:28:56.549 quiet, it's a dead end street. 00:28:57.229 --> 00:28:59.749 But just out there, I don't know if you can see. 00:29:00.059 --> 00:29:00.769 It's a park. 00:29:01.069 --> 00:29:06.519 There's a park on the south side, and out that way is a park, and we specifically 00:29:06.519 --> 00:29:11.319 chose this place because of that, is a park on the um, west side, but what's 00:29:11.319 --> 00:29:18.439 amazing about the west side is we have a door out there, and, crucially, No street. 00:29:19.139 --> 00:29:23.899 And so when my very flighty, fast moving, energetic children run 00:29:23.899 --> 00:29:27.749 out the back door, I don't have an anxiety attack because they run out. 00:29:27.749 --> 00:29:30.649 They hear the kids playing in the park and they can just go. 00:29:31.039 --> 00:29:33.269 And I don't have to stop them, right? 00:29:33.379 --> 00:29:36.199 I've got a child who would run out on a road straight in front of a car. 00:29:36.619 --> 00:29:40.709 You know, even probably now at 10 years old, and it's, you know, it causes, um, 00:29:40.769 --> 00:29:45.379 us no end of stress, but living in an environment with it, where that just that 00:29:45.389 --> 00:29:50.609 one thing, the street has changed, and that the whole apartment block, um, you 00:29:50.609 --> 00:29:53.249 know, we're quite squeezed in here, but we don't want to move because there's 00:29:53.249 --> 00:29:57.609 15 apartments all opening out to the park, and many of them have children, 00:29:57.629 --> 00:30:02.289 and so it just means that large group interaction is where all of those social 00:30:02.289 --> 00:30:06.339 skills and other things of practice is happening really well, it's beautiful. 00:30:06.339 --> 00:30:09.259 You know, you see the sun sets on the west side and you see these kids in 00:30:09.259 --> 00:30:13.589 groups of five or eight, you know, and they're squabbling about this and they're 00:30:13.689 --> 00:30:17.349 laughing about that and they're playing this game and now it's this and, you 00:30:17.349 --> 00:30:22.379 know, collecting huge piles of grass to build, you know, some giant snowman or 00:30:22.379 --> 00:30:27.069 whatever, you know, all of that stuff happens on a daily basis here and I never 00:30:27.069 --> 00:30:30.619 take it for granted because most people nowadays, I think they're saying that, you 00:30:30.619 --> 00:30:34.949 know, by 2050, 70 percent of the entire human population will live in cities. 00:30:35.779 --> 00:30:41.849 So this low birth rate, moving to cities is a fundamental change 00:30:41.879 --> 00:30:43.069 that we're not going to get rid of. 00:30:43.099 --> 00:30:46.789 And we need our toys and our school resources and other 00:30:46.789 --> 00:30:50.819 things to do more in less space. 00:30:51.309 --> 00:30:53.699 And in this new world that we're living in. 00:30:54.699 --> 00:30:59.399 So Marcus, and before we talk about the, the cart, I think you've also touched 00:30:59.399 --> 00:31:01.579 on something else there, town planning. 00:31:02.299 --> 00:31:05.869 And so really people who are planning, you know, towns and 00:31:05.869 --> 00:31:10.879 these new high rises and buildings, they've got to be smarter, right? 00:31:10.939 --> 00:31:15.309 Like I'm getting seriously annoyed when I drive just around here in Perth 00:31:15.689 --> 00:31:21.389 and I'm seeing nursery schools pop up and they're wall to wall with, no 00:31:21.469 --> 00:31:23.519 outdoor space for these kids to play. 00:31:23.859 --> 00:31:28.109 My gosh, that's like sending a kid to prison every day while you're at work. 00:31:28.529 --> 00:31:29.789 Then there's no grass. 00:31:29.819 --> 00:31:30.749 There are no trees. 00:31:30.759 --> 00:31:31.779 There's no outdoor. 00:31:31.789 --> 00:31:38.419 These kids are confined to concrete and it makes me incredibly angry and 00:31:38.419 --> 00:31:41.759 incredibly sad, and I think town planning. 00:31:41.969 --> 00:31:47.129 Have to take the blame for that because why would you allow a preschool to 00:31:47.129 --> 00:31:52.169 be in that location or to be built in that manner where there's now no access 00:31:52.169 --> 00:31:58.199 to nature for children I think that's crucial and and we need to be influencing 00:31:58.509 --> 00:32:02.469 I don't know how but we've got to do something about getting town planners to 00:32:02.549 --> 00:32:06.889 take The next generation, because as you say, there's going to be more people. 00:32:06.889 --> 00:32:09.209 We're going to be in high rises and in apartments. 00:32:09.609 --> 00:32:17.019 They have to get smarter about how do we make it safe and healthy for children. 00:32:17.084 --> 00:32:22.674 And things that are, things that are planned well, have a higher value, right? 00:32:23.104 --> 00:32:26.884 So in, in Melbourne, where I live, you know, there are some really great 00:32:26.884 --> 00:32:31.224 examples in a suburb called Doncaster, which is just an outer suburban town. 00:32:31.834 --> 00:32:37.194 They have these houses that are built on these very curvy roads and, and coming 00:32:37.194 --> 00:32:41.999 off the curvy roads are these very short, you can't drive through them, you just 00:32:41.999 --> 00:32:45.849 go into these little pockets off the main street and all the houses are off these 00:32:45.849 --> 00:32:50.579 pockets and as a result, you've got low traffic counts and kids can play cricket 00:32:50.579 --> 00:32:52.329 and stuff in the end of the cul de sac. 00:32:52.349 --> 00:32:56.609 So that's one, we are seeing those things and I've seen where they created 00:32:56.609 --> 00:33:01.709 smaller streets, and, at the back door of the houses was a long kind 00:33:01.709 --> 00:33:06.449 of linear winding path that connected all of the houses at their back gate. 00:33:06.449 --> 00:33:09.849 So slightly smaller backyard, but then when you go through the back gate, 00:33:09.849 --> 00:33:12.299 there's this long connected , park. 00:33:12.329 --> 00:33:17.159 I didn't love that so much because it was sort of behind the tall back fence. 00:33:17.169 --> 00:33:18.739 So line of sight was difficult. 00:33:18.739 --> 00:33:22.499 I think line of sight for parents is something that we always took 00:33:22.499 --> 00:33:24.419 into account for playground design. 00:33:24.419 --> 00:33:27.859 , , where do parents sit and, and what can they see? 00:33:27.869 --> 00:33:31.589 Because as soon as they feel like they can't sort of see particularly young 00:33:31.589 --> 00:33:34.359 children, they're going to stop the play. 00:33:34.919 --> 00:33:35.719 They're going to bring them back. 00:33:35.719 --> 00:33:38.529 So there's these little things you really need to think about with adults. 00:33:39.129 --> 00:33:43.239 The other thing that I saw in Germany, um, years and years ago, which was absolutely 00:33:43.249 --> 00:33:48.429 incredible, was basically all of the streets in this, particular housing 00:33:48.429 --> 00:33:54.489 estate were kind of like laneways, single direction, um, laneways with garages 00:33:54.509 --> 00:33:58.159 on each side, nothing to look at, just these garages and you would drive your 00:33:58.179 --> 00:34:03.479 car in these kind of almost like service lanes and then they took the linear 00:34:03.479 --> 00:34:05.919 park idea and they put it in the front. 00:34:06.439 --> 00:34:11.799 So, small front yards, almost like a patio and a little tiny garden space, 00:34:12.369 --> 00:34:17.299 and then they shared the rest of that space, and then every five or ten houses, 00:34:17.299 --> 00:34:22.689 there was a little gap, and there was different play spaces in every gap. 00:34:23.109 --> 00:34:25.579 So, in one of them was just a massive boulder. 00:34:26.114 --> 00:34:30.084 Just a huge rock that you could climb on, that you could hide around 00:34:30.084 --> 00:34:31.044 the back of, and things like that. 00:34:31.444 --> 00:34:33.344 In another one, there was a more of standard playground. 00:34:33.344 --> 00:34:37.464 Another one just had a giant long seesaw, very low cost interventions, 00:34:37.794 --> 00:34:39.374 and then just grassy space. 00:34:39.384 --> 00:34:43.449 So you could have a picnic or whatever, but it reduced that private space. 00:34:43.669 --> 00:34:49.569 But, gave access to the community to many, many big public or, you know, 00:34:50.049 --> 00:34:53.449 large ish public spaces where you were shaving off a little bit of private 00:34:53.449 --> 00:34:57.309 space for everyone and then giving access to a much larger public space. 00:34:57.309 --> 00:35:04.069 And there are tons of examples of great town planning, , and human beings as 00:35:04.069 --> 00:35:05.569 soon as they see that they love it. 00:35:05.829 --> 00:35:09.229 You know, it always staggers me like new housing developments, almost 00:35:09.249 --> 00:35:13.959 always on the poster, they don't put a picture of the house alone, they put a 00:35:13.959 --> 00:35:15.599 picture of the playground and the park. 00:35:16.189 --> 00:35:16.989 That's what people want. 00:35:17.409 --> 00:35:19.069 You know, that's the big sales ticket. 00:35:19.079 --> 00:35:24.729 Does this place have a have a longer line of sight to a green space where I can 00:35:24.729 --> 00:35:29.109 share and have good times with the people, around me and connect me to my community. 00:35:29.129 --> 00:35:32.449 That's, you know, they never have a picture of a supermarket on the poster. 00:35:32.529 --> 00:35:35.269 Nobody cares, you know, sure, you've got to go to the supermarket, but that's 00:35:35.269 --> 00:35:36.899 not the, what people really value. 00:35:37.359 --> 00:35:40.739 It's that connection and community within a space for them and their children. 00:35:41.274 --> 00:35:46.214 That's so true and let's hope that town planning, you know, more of 00:35:46.214 --> 00:35:52.204 that into consideration as they allow new buildings to pop up everywhere. 00:35:52.834 --> 00:35:58.684 And Marcus you touched on the Nudel cart and you mentioned that one of the 00:35:58.684 --> 00:36:04.319 things was that it was an innovative toy, let's call it that, where in a small 00:36:04.319 --> 00:36:08.899 family, parents could get more involved and interactive with their children. 00:36:08.919 --> 00:36:11.329 So was that your original idea for it? 00:36:11.509 --> 00:36:18.089 Or,, with you working with all these children and schools, did 00:36:18.099 --> 00:36:22.799 that have some kind of influence on you when you were constructing 00:36:22.799 --> 00:36:24.939 your prototype for the Nudel cart? 00:36:25.399 --> 00:36:28.189 What was it that that got this whole idea 00:36:30.059 --> 00:36:32.119 A few things came together all at once. 00:36:32.129 --> 00:36:37.099 First of all, we worked with a government entity I won't say who it was Playground 00:36:37.099 --> 00:36:42.139 Ideas was going really well and we won a contract to build 300 playgrounds 00:36:42.929 --> 00:36:47.419 across one of the newest nations called Timor Leste, which is up, , it had 00:36:47.419 --> 00:36:51.349 separated from Indonesia and there was a lot of develop, big development 00:36:51.349 --> 00:36:55.409 work going on there, multi million dollar project and we tried to use the 00:36:55.409 --> 00:37:00.029 Playground Ideas model you know, local and recycled materials to build those 00:37:00.049 --> 00:37:01.589 playgrounds for early childhood centers. 00:37:01.619 --> 00:37:03.279 Very, very low cost. 00:37:03.379 --> 00:37:09.349 We had a very small budget, and, East Timor is mountainous, um, lots of valleys, 00:37:09.869 --> 00:37:17.369 beaches, agricultural areas, cities, very diverse spaces we're building in, and 00:37:17.369 --> 00:37:21.019 we're building in communities where one valley and one community would barely 00:37:21.019 --> 00:37:22.399 talk to people in the other valley. 00:37:22.419 --> 00:37:23.649 They didn't share materials. 00:37:23.649 --> 00:37:27.029 They, you know, they were quite disconnected and the playground ideas 00:37:27.029 --> 00:37:29.429 model just didn't really work very well. 00:37:29.439 --> 00:37:32.209 We, you know, there weren't even enough recycled car tires in the 00:37:32.209 --> 00:37:35.679 entire country that we could find to build those 300 playgrounds. 00:37:36.499 --> 00:37:42.669 And so the challenge of that project to make that work, really spurred us on to 00:37:42.669 --> 00:37:46.239 kind of go, how could we create not just. 00:37:46.799 --> 00:37:52.539 You know, play spaces that were as good as the fixed playgrounds 00:37:52.539 --> 00:37:55.699 that we had planned to build in Timor Leste but actually better. 00:37:56.519 --> 00:38:01.579 I sort of went on to this sort of fanatical kind of, classic me, sort of 00:38:01.649 --> 00:38:03.939 exploration of what could that look like. 00:38:04.519 --> 00:38:09.819 And at the same time as that, an absolutely incredible woman, one of 00:38:09.819 --> 00:38:13.669 the most creative and amazing designers I've ever met called Emma Ribbons. 00:38:14.319 --> 00:38:17.939 Um, just sent me a message through Playground Ideas and said, I've been 00:38:17.939 --> 00:38:25.724 doing these loose parts activations in Greek refugee camps for Syrian refugees. 00:38:25.794 --> 00:38:29.394 You remember when Syrian refugees were crossing the Mediterranean and, you 00:38:29.394 --> 00:38:32.404 know, there was that famous picture of that child that had died on the beach 00:38:32.404 --> 00:38:36.034 that went around the world, that awful, you know, with just thousands of people 00:38:36.084 --> 00:38:39.144 in peril coming across into Greece. 00:38:39.524 --> 00:38:43.944 She was literally taking a, a backpack made out of kind of cardboard 00:38:43.954 --> 00:38:45.934 boxes almost with straps on it. 00:38:46.144 --> 00:38:50.064 This big bulky box full of loose parts and taken into refugee 00:38:50.224 --> 00:38:53.984 camps because they couldn't build physical structures in the space. 00:38:54.074 --> 00:38:54.764 They weren't allowed to. 00:38:54.764 --> 00:38:57.744 The refugee camp was like, look, this is not going to be here forever. 00:38:58.084 --> 00:38:59.454 You can't build a playground. 00:38:59.904 --> 00:39:01.114 She took in loose parts. 00:39:01.804 --> 00:39:08.954 We immediately clicked and, we started exploring this idea of what if you created 00:39:08.954 --> 00:39:17.204 a no compromises, mobile, on wheels space that you could just open up and would 00:39:17.204 --> 00:39:23.334 completely transform any space into a really highly stimulating space that 00:39:23.344 --> 00:39:27.844 taught all of these incredible skills that we saw children learning with loose parts. 00:39:27.844 --> 00:39:31.914 It just so happened that I put a loose, a giant loose part box in 00:39:31.914 --> 00:39:36.324 one of the Timorees playground designs when Emma contacted me. 00:39:36.324 --> 00:39:37.564 So it was something I was really interested in. 00:39:38.354 --> 00:39:42.564 We also have a Loose Parts manual that's freely downloadable from the 00:39:43.144 --> 00:39:46.304 Playground Ideas website if anyone's interested in Loose Parts and sort of 00:39:46.334 --> 00:39:47.914 the theory behind it and the materials. 00:39:49.384 --> 00:39:55.894 That experience with Emma, became the initial trials that we did with Syrian 00:39:55.894 --> 00:40:01.374 refugees in Lebanon, where I sent Emma and a few of my staff over to build the 00:40:01.374 --> 00:40:06.934 very first cart, and to trial it in, I mean, the very first trial we did in a 00:40:06.934 --> 00:40:13.514 refugee community, extremely impoverished area in Lebanon, where it was just all 00:40:13.524 --> 00:40:18.354 ramshackle old apartment blocks that these people were living in, very low rent, very 00:40:18.354 --> 00:40:22.624 low services, they had no playgrounds, they had nothing, and we actually 00:40:23.024 --> 00:40:28.209 trialed the first one on tarpaulins in a lane that smelled like urine. 00:40:28.719 --> 00:40:32.869 We worked with a fantastic organization called Right to Play who found us 00:40:33.379 --> 00:40:36.999 the only open spaces community spaces we could find were laneways and 00:40:36.999 --> 00:40:38.799 other things we blocked them off. 00:40:39.284 --> 00:40:41.964 And we put the loose parts out and it was absolutely incredible. 00:40:42.134 --> 00:40:47.494 That, just purely by chance, um, a guy called Roger Ungers, who I'd sent over 00:40:47.494 --> 00:40:50.884 there to just document the process, take some photos and video and help us. 00:40:52.114 --> 00:40:53.244 He turned that into a film. 00:40:53.314 --> 00:40:54.674 It's called The Wheels of Wonder. 00:40:54.734 --> 00:40:57.484 And it's available from the Nudel Cart website. 00:40:57.484 --> 00:40:58.744 You can just buy a ticket from there. 00:40:58.764 --> 00:41:00.494 And I strongly suggest you do it. 00:41:00.494 --> 00:41:04.884 It's an amazing exploration of that, of that initial experience we had. 00:41:05.464 --> 00:41:09.444 , That was a very costly experience to build the first one and 00:41:09.444 --> 00:41:10.494 we're running out of money. 00:41:10.744 --> 00:41:16.794 Um, and so I decided then the next big shift was I decided then to say, well, 00:41:17.014 --> 00:41:18.944 we can't go to refugee camps anymore. 00:41:19.324 --> 00:41:23.874 I wonder whether we could be cheeky enough to send out an email and see if there 00:41:23.874 --> 00:41:27.344 were teachers in Australia who would be willing to bring this crazy thing. 00:41:28.219 --> 00:41:29.999 into Australian schools. 00:41:30.009 --> 00:41:33.479 So by that time we had done some safety testing on it, and we 00:41:33.479 --> 00:41:36.549 knew that it was, you know, safe and could be used with kids. 00:41:37.089 --> 00:41:41.539 So, we, we got 12 schools to immediately sign up within 24 00:41:41.539 --> 00:41:43.189 hours saying, yeah, bring it on. 00:41:43.189 --> 00:41:44.039 We'd love to see it. 00:41:44.509 --> 00:41:49.129 And eight of those schools completely unexpected by me said, 00:41:49.499 --> 00:41:50.559 we'd love to buy one of these. 00:41:51.624 --> 00:41:53.094 And I was like, well, they're not for sale. 00:41:53.134 --> 00:41:57.834 You know, this is our non profit charitable, you know, playground thing. 00:41:58.204 --> 00:42:00.624 And the teacher said, but look at the skills they're learning. 00:42:00.924 --> 00:42:04.954 They're learning, so in the Australian curriculum for US listeners, we've since 00:42:04.954 --> 00:42:10.054 found out to a Bond University study they are learning all of the sub points of the 00:42:10.234 --> 00:42:15.724 critical and creative thinking capability in the Australian curriculum and all of 00:42:15.724 --> 00:42:18.114 the, 28 sub points , in the curriculum. 00:42:18.414 --> 00:42:23.604 All of them were, demonstrated also in the personal and social skills capabilities. 00:42:24.044 --> 00:42:28.264 Now we have not tested the cart for numeracy, literacy, and the other 00:42:28.264 --> 00:42:34.274 curriculum areas, but in those two areas alone, with no, this is really 00:42:34.274 --> 00:42:36.384 important with no teacher direction. 00:42:36.544 --> 00:42:43.304 So you can have your worst teacher, you know, your tired, depressed, burnt out 00:42:43.304 --> 00:42:48.994 teacher sitting in the corner on a banana lounge with a pina colada doing nothing. 00:42:49.184 --> 00:42:53.764 And they will learn and demonstrate and practice all of the 28 sub points 00:42:53.764 --> 00:42:57.384 of those curriculum areas with you doing nothing, no setting challenges, 00:42:57.584 --> 00:43:00.054 nothing just in open ended play. 00:43:00.054 --> 00:43:02.984 So that was another light bulb moment where I went. 00:43:03.719 --> 00:43:08.339 Again, this play drive, which we've really diminished in terms of just 00:43:08.519 --> 00:43:13.709 something frivolous that children do, is now Bond University has shown 00:43:14.209 --> 00:43:18.319 that all of those points were covered with teachers doing nothing, right? 00:43:18.839 --> 00:43:20.169 Let alone the other curriculum areas. 00:43:20.199 --> 00:43:23.739 And that's where we kind of went, well, maybe we could turn this into a 00:43:23.739 --> 00:43:29.574 social enterprise that actually raised funds and supported the charity, right? 00:43:29.714 --> 00:43:33.194 So, we should probably go back a step the Nudel Cart just so people can 00:43:33.194 --> 00:43:39.284 imagine if they're listening to this in audio is, about 3 ft long and 2 ft 00:43:39.294 --> 00:43:42.004 wide for your American listeners or 1. 00:43:42.004 --> 00:43:47.144 2 m long and about 65 cm wide and it sits at about hip height. 00:43:47.774 --> 00:43:50.924 So it just goes to a, it just fits through a standard doorway 00:43:51.024 --> 00:43:53.474 and it's about a long arm long. 00:43:53.474 --> 00:43:57.294 What's interesting about it is it has this, we have this no waste kind of 00:43:57.294 --> 00:44:03.924 theory where every part of the storage device, so the cart on wheels, it looks 00:44:03.924 --> 00:44:05.674 like kind of a Danish piece of furniture. 00:44:05.674 --> 00:44:08.574 When you pull all the parts and you deconstruct that 00:44:08.574 --> 00:44:09.634 cart, there's nothing left. 00:44:09.844 --> 00:44:12.174 There is no storage device anymore. 00:44:12.184 --> 00:44:15.669 The storage device is all of the playable parts. 00:44:16.319 --> 00:44:19.389 So when we make a new car, just as an aside, there's nothing left but 00:44:19.389 --> 00:44:21.879 sawdust and a little tiny plywood frame. 00:44:21.919 --> 00:44:26.869 One noodle cart is made out of exactly four sheets of plywood. 00:44:27.309 --> 00:44:31.869 And so those 350 parts are usable by an entire, classroom of children 00:44:31.869 --> 00:44:36.779 to engage in completely open ended, high quality, high stimulation kind 00:44:36.779 --> 00:44:41.849 of flow state exploration where they can build literally anything. 00:44:41.859 --> 00:44:45.669 If they want to build a rocket ship the other day, I saw seven children build 00:44:45.669 --> 00:44:47.099 a rocket ship that they got inside. 00:44:47.359 --> 00:44:51.139 They're all huddled inside this little this this rocket ship. 00:44:51.189 --> 00:44:56.549 You know, if you want to teach the time instead of going, Oh, I'll get my clock 00:44:56.549 --> 00:45:00.844 resource you know, my plastic kind of clock resource and then here's one for 00:45:00.844 --> 00:45:02.754 each, you know, groups of two or whatever. 00:45:03.244 --> 00:45:04.044 Forget that. 00:45:04.354 --> 00:45:08.714 Just look at the clock on the wall and teach the kids how it works and then 00:45:08.714 --> 00:45:10.784 say, here's a bunch of random parts. 00:45:11.104 --> 00:45:12.144 You build me a clock. 00:45:12.564 --> 00:45:14.664 I don't care what it looks like as long as it works. 00:45:15.044 --> 00:45:17.734 And then you say, can you make that clock show three o'clock? 00:45:17.814 --> 00:45:19.204 Can you make it say quarter past two? 00:45:19.204 --> 00:45:19.614 Blah, blah, blah. 00:45:19.614 --> 00:45:24.744 And then this is where the Nudel, has this, what we call multi layered learning. 00:45:24.744 --> 00:45:29.559 So instead of Instead of doing numeracy and doing literacy or doing these 00:45:29.569 --> 00:45:34.419 separate boxes, which, you know, large organizations love to put things in boxes. 00:45:35.329 --> 00:45:39.189 The Kart has this multi layered effect where the kids might be working in a group 00:45:39.879 --> 00:45:44.319 and learning all these social skills like negotiation and design and, you know, 00:45:44.349 --> 00:45:49.849 iteration and collaboration to build their clock, at the same time as learning how a 00:45:49.849 --> 00:45:53.369 clock works, at the same time as, working out, well, how are we going to make these 00:45:53.369 --> 00:45:56.369 hands spin, you know, one on top of the other so they're banging to each other. 00:45:56.369 --> 00:46:01.109 I don't know, whatever those questions are, they're doing all of these sort 00:46:01.109 --> 00:46:05.289 of, I see it like all these transparent layers that build into a block of 00:46:05.289 --> 00:46:09.649 learning, which are much, much more complex than, just learning about 00:46:09.649 --> 00:46:10.889 how to tell the time as a clock. 00:46:10.889 --> 00:46:15.789 And I think that's where, Loose parts in an educational setting are so powerful 00:46:15.799 --> 00:46:19.169 because the children have to do the work. 00:46:19.559 --> 00:46:24.239 One thing we talk about with the pod all the time is the more work the toy does. 00:46:24.969 --> 00:46:28.059 And an iPad is the ultimate example of this. 00:46:28.439 --> 00:46:30.179 It does all the work, right? 00:46:31.029 --> 00:46:32.839 The less that the child is doing. 00:46:33.249 --> 00:46:37.349 And as parents and as educators, what we're trying to do is get the 00:46:37.349 --> 00:46:39.429 children to do the work, right? 00:46:39.959 --> 00:46:44.999 To get, if we want to build those complex neural synapse connections in their 00:46:44.999 --> 00:46:49.789 brains between one thing, social skills, for example, and another thing, telling 00:46:49.789 --> 00:46:55.389 the time or whatever, we want as many connections across and in the brain 00:46:56.189 --> 00:46:59.239 to happen before those pairing events happen where the brain 00:46:59.239 --> 00:47:00.729 goes, Oh, I didn't need that. 00:47:00.799 --> 00:47:03.019 I didn't use it, but just get rid of it. 00:47:03.459 --> 00:47:03.799 Right? 00:47:04.009 --> 00:47:08.619 Cause the brain builds itself and then pairs itself down to what it needs. 00:47:08.619 --> 00:47:11.659 And then it builds itself again, teenage years and pairs it down. 00:47:11.969 --> 00:47:15.139 And if you're not using it, the brain just goes, cut it off. 00:47:15.259 --> 00:47:15.669 What is it? 00:47:15.669 --> 00:47:17.349 If you don't use it, you lose it. 00:47:17.449 --> 00:47:18.029 Exactly. 00:47:18.029 --> 00:47:18.829 It's like a muscle. 00:47:18.829 --> 00:47:22.429 And so, in an extreme example of that, we know that that's, it 00:47:22.429 --> 00:47:23.839 sounds crazy, but we know it's true. 00:47:23.839 --> 00:47:28.369 Those Romanian orphans, they did MRIs of those children's brains and 00:47:28.379 --> 00:47:30.729 you can see it with the naked eye. 00:47:30.889 --> 00:47:35.599 You can see the density and complexity, the rutting and the size of the brain 00:47:35.599 --> 00:47:40.689 in the brain case was physically smaller because of a lack of stimulation. 00:47:40.889 --> 00:47:43.269 Now we're not going to see that in Australia, you know, there's 00:47:43.269 --> 00:47:44.309 plenty of stimulation around. 00:47:44.899 --> 00:47:48.929 It's much harder to see with the naked eye, but we, but I'm just using that 00:47:48.929 --> 00:47:53.899 as an example to say, if you want to maximize children's development, 00:47:54.489 --> 00:47:55.859 which is obviously the goal. 00:47:55.859 --> 00:48:00.359 We want children to have the best opportunity to thrive throughout life. 00:48:00.899 --> 00:48:04.819 And these complex open ended environments, I think, are the 00:48:04.849 --> 00:48:06.429 closest thing to give us that. 00:48:07.164 --> 00:48:07.904 That benefit. 00:48:07.904 --> 00:48:12.284 And so the Nudel Cart and the smaller Nudel Rover, which is for 00:48:12.344 --> 00:48:18.074 8 to 10 children, I think offers the most open ended, we sort of 00:48:18.154 --> 00:48:22.204 just went, what if we turn this up to 11, what would that look like? 00:48:22.244 --> 00:48:25.554 And what came out the other side was the Nudel cart and the Nudel 00:48:25.574 --> 00:48:28.674 Rover for, education, allied health, and those kinds of things. 00:48:28.894 --> 00:48:33.534 Well, you know, it seems to me, as an educator myself who works in a 00:48:33.534 --> 00:48:39.364 school, there's two big words, budget and resources, but it seems to me we 00:48:39.364 --> 00:48:44.324 should be getting rid of a lot of those superfluous resources and plasticky 00:48:44.334 --> 00:48:50.244 things and goodness knows what and just spend our money and get a Nudel cart 00:48:50.504 --> 00:48:56.044 which can do everything that all those or most of those other resources can do 00:48:56.544 --> 00:49:00.694 because now it's open ended and I think and I'm a very big proponent of 00:49:00.734 --> 00:49:05.144 loose parts play And I'm always saying to people it doesn't matter, just get 00:49:05.144 --> 00:49:10.064 whatever you can, you know, just get it and because you can do so much with 00:49:10.214 --> 00:49:13.244 it when people say oh, we don't have the budget I'm saying well look in your 00:49:13.254 --> 00:49:14.994 bin and just get some recycled stuff. 00:49:14.994 --> 00:49:19.554 Take all the plastic tops off bottles, Go to Bunnings get some pebbles, get 00:49:19.554 --> 00:49:24.724 some stones, go for a walk, get sticks, get seed pots, get gum nuts, whatever. 00:49:25.004 --> 00:49:27.774 Those are all loose parts, freely available, right? 00:49:28.504 --> 00:49:32.794 But on the other side of the coin, and I think this comes to what I want to ask 00:49:32.794 --> 00:49:35.594 you about, the materials that we use, 00:49:36.004 --> 00:49:40.714 because very often we're saying, for loose parts, use whatever you've got. 00:49:40.724 --> 00:49:44.214 And I think using whatever you've got is better than not using anything. 00:49:44.754 --> 00:49:51.259 But if you can use something as beautiful and well designed as your 00:49:51.259 --> 00:49:53.579 products, why wouldn't you do that? 00:49:53.999 --> 00:50:01.059 So could you explain the use of materials and your thinking specifically behind 00:50:01.069 --> 00:50:05.059 the materials that you've chosen, the plywood, for example, and the 00:50:05.059 --> 00:50:10.369 construction of the components of the cart, what was your thinking behind that? 00:50:11.059 --> 00:50:13.659 Okay, so there's a bunch of things that I want to talk about. 00:50:13.749 --> 00:50:14.419 One is. 00:50:15.049 --> 00:50:19.409 Those pods, those loose parts, pods, you know, shipping containers full of stuff. 00:50:19.409 --> 00:50:22.259 I'd love to talk a little bit about that. 00:50:22.359 --> 00:50:24.969 And then I'd love to also, yeah, let's talk about the part. 00:50:24.979 --> 00:50:31.109 So just for that first point, we almost before the cart, the Nudel cart, Rover 00:50:31.109 --> 00:50:37.119 pod existed, we almost took over a, uh, shipping container, uh, loose parts. 00:50:38.614 --> 00:50:40.514 organization that was running in Melbourne. 00:50:40.984 --> 00:50:41.904 They were struggling. 00:50:42.364 --> 00:50:46.254 And it's actually, it's working, I think in the UK quite successfully 00:50:46.254 --> 00:50:48.794 when it's scaled up, but it's a really hard business to run. 00:50:48.804 --> 00:50:51.264 They had to run a huge truck that would go around to all these 00:50:51.264 --> 00:50:53.674 factories and pick up all the parts. 00:50:54.279 --> 00:50:58.259 One, one problem I always, and I'm , very conscious to say this because I 00:50:58.259 --> 00:51:01.909 don't want to have any negativity, but you know, one thing I was always 00:51:01.909 --> 00:51:04.929 concerned about was when you're using industrial materials, which they use 00:51:04.929 --> 00:51:07.579 a lot of, which have, yeah, just, you don't know where they've come from. 00:51:07.579 --> 00:51:11.824 So you need to make sure that they're not, they don't have lead or formaldehyde or 00:51:11.834 --> 00:51:16.324 other, VOCs and other chemicals that have been used either in the manufacturer or in 00:51:16.324 --> 00:51:20.044 the, the chemicals used to make sure that the mold doesn't stick into the whatever. 00:51:20.524 --> 00:51:23.044 So that was always something that was a little bit of a liability 00:51:23.044 --> 00:51:24.614 concern that I wasn't sure about. 00:51:24.904 --> 00:51:27.814 And then there were things like, I love cardboard tubes, you know, 00:51:27.814 --> 00:51:30.774 there's giant cardboard tubes and things from fabrics and whatever. 00:51:31.589 --> 00:51:33.909 Um, but they need to be carefully managed because as soon as it 00:51:33.909 --> 00:51:35.949 rains, they get wrecked and moldy. 00:51:35.949 --> 00:51:37.019 And then you've got black mold. 00:51:37.019 --> 00:51:40.009 And you know, there's, there were a bunch of real challenges there. 00:51:40.079 --> 00:51:44.779 Now the places that I've seen that working really well is when a teacher, 00:51:45.279 --> 00:51:49.519 so Coolaroo South Primary School, incredible principal a few years ago, 00:51:49.519 --> 00:51:53.239 they've left now, had a couple of, shipping containers full of stuff. 00:51:53.359 --> 00:51:57.159 It was managed by another incredible playworker called Catherine 00:51:57.169 --> 00:51:59.329 Sewell, who was there every week. 00:51:59.924 --> 00:52:04.404 maintaining, gathering parts, sorting them, making sure that everything worked. 00:52:04.404 --> 00:52:07.354 And they had an absolutely unbelievable program. 00:52:07.354 --> 00:52:08.854 They didn't spend money on playgrounds. 00:52:09.444 --> 00:52:12.604 They spent money , on creating a great learning environment 00:52:12.634 --> 00:52:14.614 within the playground. 00:52:14.834 --> 00:52:16.824 So if it's done right, I think it's great. 00:52:17.144 --> 00:52:22.914 If you end up with just parents bringing whatever, to be honest, from home and 00:52:22.914 --> 00:52:24.774 putting it in a thing, It's a disaster. 00:52:24.814 --> 00:52:28.974 And I've had endless parents tell me how they thought it was a great idea 00:52:29.004 --> 00:52:34.569 they went all in and then six months, 12 months later, it was a poorly managed. 00:52:34.569 --> 00:52:36.749 I saw that was a big problem. 00:52:36.759 --> 00:52:39.649 You know, Coolaroo South, even with their fantastic program had a lot 00:52:39.649 --> 00:52:42.349 of community complaints saying this place looks like a rubbish dump. 00:52:42.349 --> 00:52:42.919 What's going on? 00:52:42.919 --> 00:52:43.909 There's car tires. 00:52:43.949 --> 00:52:46.289 There's, you know, what about mosquitoes forming? 00:52:46.299 --> 00:52:48.039 You know, all sorts of things like that. 00:52:48.049 --> 00:52:50.159 So, you know, car tires, fantastic. 00:52:50.169 --> 00:52:51.089 Just drill holes in them. 00:52:51.579 --> 00:52:53.499 There's all sorts of solutions for those kinds of things, 00:52:53.499 --> 00:52:55.249 but it's not a simple solution. 00:52:55.249 --> 00:52:58.739 There's more to it than people think and that's why we didn't take it over, 00:52:59.279 --> 00:53:01.779 but managed properly, incredible. 00:53:01.779 --> 00:53:04.319 And the UK has hundreds of examples and Australia 00:53:04.339 --> 00:53:06.169 I'm sure has lots of great examples as well. 00:53:06.209 --> 00:53:07.569 I just don't know quite as many. 00:53:07.909 --> 00:53:08.369 I think 00:53:08.379 --> 00:53:11.259 that's what you've just touched on there, managed properly. 00:53:11.539 --> 00:53:11.809 Yes. 00:53:11.819 --> 00:53:16.589 I think loose parts are wonderful, but if you have them on a playground, yes, 00:53:16.619 --> 00:53:19.199 it absolutely can look like a disaster. 00:53:19.989 --> 00:53:24.259 And that's why somebody has to take responsibility for them and 00:53:24.679 --> 00:53:28.809 be, in charge of, or whatever it might be, of looking after 00:53:28.809 --> 00:53:32.439 loose parts play and make sure that things are organized. 00:53:32.499 --> 00:53:37.289 As you said before, that there are no hazards and it cannot just be, 00:53:37.289 --> 00:53:41.029 well, I'm just going to throw all my stuff out there and see what happens. 00:53:41.339 --> 00:53:43.379 That isn't how it's meant to be. 00:53:43.959 --> 00:53:46.309 And student rosters, get the students to help as well. 00:53:46.319 --> 00:53:51.244 If you want to do things properly, In life, whatever it might be, if 00:53:51.244 --> 00:53:56.554 you want to do it well, you actually have to do some work because nothing 00:53:56.564 --> 00:54:01.684 works beautifully just by leaving it out there and hoping for the best. 00:54:01.734 --> 00:54:03.454 You actually have to get involved. 00:54:03.454 --> 00:54:04.594 Yeah. 00:54:04.674 --> 00:54:06.044 And it's similar to it. 00:54:06.244 --> 00:54:10.284 I saw a carpenter on YouTube, a video of a carpenter the other day who did 00:54:10.284 --> 00:54:13.984 an experiment and said, I've seen all these woodworkers making tables out 00:54:13.984 --> 00:54:17.034 of pallets, , like wooden recycled pallets and he said, I'm going to do 00:54:17.034 --> 00:54:20.614 an experiment where I build a table out of pallets and then I'd build a table 00:54:20.644 --> 00:54:25.664 out of poplar, which is the lowest cost hardwood you could use for a table. 00:54:26.614 --> 00:54:28.354 And he did a calculation of the cost. 00:54:28.354 --> 00:54:32.354 And what was fascinating was the pallet would actually cost significantly more, 00:54:32.744 --> 00:54:36.704 not even though the materials were free, the amount of time to prepare everything 00:54:36.704 --> 00:54:40.784 and maintain everything was significantly higher than the poplar table. 00:54:41.194 --> 00:54:44.824 Now, if you want the recycled table and if that's what you want for your 00:54:44.824 --> 00:54:47.654 kids, it's totally possible, but you just, I'm just saying you need to go 00:54:47.774 --> 00:54:52.934 in with your eyes open, that there is no free lunch for any of this stuff. 00:54:52.984 --> 00:54:53.974 So materials. 00:54:53.984 --> 00:54:59.654 So first of all, uh, Corpus Christi in Kingsville in Melbourne, use our carts 00:54:59.724 --> 00:55:01.954 as almost like a play pod response. 00:55:01.954 --> 00:55:05.744 They've created an accordoned off area with AstroTurf on the ground. 00:55:06.374 --> 00:55:09.774 Really fantastic principal, , lovely person, just really trying to 00:55:09.774 --> 00:55:11.744 encourage, great, great spaces for kids. 00:55:12.584 --> 00:55:17.604 Cordoned off area, AstroTurf, and the grade sixes manage a roster where 00:55:17.604 --> 00:55:21.974 they push the card out, deconstruct it, and a different class gets to 00:55:21.974 --> 00:55:25.954 use it each lunchtime over, say, two weeks, and then the roster repeats. 00:55:26.294 --> 00:55:28.974 And the grade sixes manage that, there's a bell that goes, 00:55:29.024 --> 00:55:30.004 and they start to pack it up. 00:55:30.584 --> 00:55:31.524 and they bring it inside. 00:55:31.584 --> 00:55:33.624 I don't know if they're still doing that, but they were definitely doing 00:55:33.624 --> 00:55:34.924 that last time I checked with them. 00:55:35.494 --> 00:55:40.064 Fantastic, simple program, and then the cart is stored inside, no mess, no fuss. 00:55:40.679 --> 00:55:45.029 No maintenance., The cart comes with a maintenance pack, just extra screws and 00:55:45.029 --> 00:55:48.299 other things to keep it going because we see it more like a car that, you 00:55:48.299 --> 00:55:53.139 know, you look after over time will last you over a decade, but with, very, 00:55:53.139 --> 00:55:57.559 very little work to do that to remove a lot of these issues that we we saw 00:55:57.559 --> 00:55:59.489 in other different types of programs. 00:55:59.569 --> 00:56:00.439 We really worked hard on that. 00:56:01.109 --> 00:56:04.929 Materials, unlike a lot of loose parts. 00:56:05.469 --> 00:56:08.409 , construction sets and systems and other things. 00:56:09.219 --> 00:56:13.399 The pod doesn't use hardly any plastic, at all. 00:56:14.289 --> 00:56:18.719 But more importantly, it's not just, , one material. 00:56:19.169 --> 00:56:21.709 So, you know, for instance, I was talking to the lovely guys at Play 00:56:21.719 --> 00:56:23.779 Silky, so you make these silk scarves. 00:56:23.949 --> 00:56:25.549 It's just, it's, it's fantastic. 00:56:25.549 --> 00:56:28.989 It's one material and then it gets blended with other loose parts. 00:56:29.619 --> 00:56:32.574 The cart has inside it hard plastic. 00:56:32.974 --> 00:56:39.024 wooden pieces that are both large and heavy, which by the way, if you don't 00:56:39.034 --> 00:56:42.164 have large heavy parts, you don't get social skills and collaboration. 00:56:42.184 --> 00:56:42.734 That was clear. 00:56:42.784 --> 00:56:45.774 That was, found very clearly from the Sydney playground project. 00:56:46.424 --> 00:56:53.894 Anita Bundy, uh, fantastic researcher with, Oh, Shirley Wyver, W Y V 00:56:53.914 --> 00:56:57.734 E R did some incredible studies in loose parts over a decade. 00:56:58.364 --> 00:57:00.834 Anita's now in the States, Shirley's still in Australia. 00:57:01.704 --> 00:57:03.054 two American researchers. 00:57:03.104 --> 00:57:03.994 Absolutely incredible. 00:57:04.614 --> 00:57:08.734 They found that heavy, heavy parts in encourage collaboration. 00:57:08.734 --> 00:57:12.094 It's a bit like the, you don't think about the, the lowering number of 00:57:12.094 --> 00:57:15.484 siblings affecting play heavy parts. 00:57:15.484 --> 00:57:18.724 Some people avoid them in, um, loose path spaces because they're 00:57:18.724 --> 00:57:20.684 worried that someone's going to drop them on their toe or whatever. 00:57:20.894 --> 00:57:23.014 But if you don't have them, kids don't have to work together. 00:57:23.474 --> 00:57:26.234 If you have a lower number of large heavy parts, that was one thing 00:57:26.244 --> 00:57:27.964 that they found as a, as a real key. 00:57:28.534 --> 00:57:32.064 And one of this sort of six or seven findings of the, of what makes loose 00:57:32.064 --> 00:57:33.524 path playgrounds work really well. 00:57:34.264 --> 00:57:37.844 Along with those, and then we have small timber parts, we have wooden 00:57:37.844 --> 00:57:42.064 dowels that fit perfectly through all of the holes in the plywood, but those 00:57:42.084 --> 00:57:47.484 wooden dowels also fit through the loops , in the tensile webbing straps. 00:57:47.504 --> 00:57:51.254 Tensile is an incredible, it looks like polyester, that strong sort of rock 00:57:51.254 --> 00:57:54.584 climbing webbing or, backpack strap webbing, but it's made of wood fiber. 00:57:55.154 --> 00:58:00.294 And then there are silicon pieces, which also stretch over the sticks 00:58:00.824 --> 00:58:03.574 and stretch onto the wooden pieces. 00:58:04.054 --> 00:58:05.814 And then the straps fit over the silicon pieces. 00:58:06.174 --> 00:58:08.504 And so what we've essentially done is instead of having a linear kind 00:58:08.514 --> 00:58:12.514 of this fits this, and then this fits this, it's almost like a circle where 00:58:12.524 --> 00:58:16.274 all the materials are in a circle, and the connections are zigzagged 00:58:16.334 --> 00:58:18.684 like a star between everything. 00:58:19.424 --> 00:58:23.544 So, the functionality of each different material does totally different things. 00:58:23.764 --> 00:58:26.994 So some of them, the straps work really well under tension, but they 00:58:27.014 --> 00:58:28.814 obviously are floppy under compression. 00:58:29.344 --> 00:58:32.244 The silicon pieces are stretchy , and have kind of inbuilt 00:58:32.274 --> 00:58:33.754 kind of springiness to them. 00:58:33.764 --> 00:58:35.704 So you can flick things and move things. 00:58:36.149 --> 00:58:40.969 The wooden pieces are obviously hard both ways , the, the dowels are round 00:58:40.969 --> 00:58:42.709 so things will spin around them. 00:58:42.709 --> 00:58:46.139 So all of these different physics principles are embedded in it. 00:58:46.149 --> 00:58:50.399 So if you want to build a right angle, you can use a right angle plywood piece. 00:58:50.419 --> 00:58:52.929 If you want something to rotate around a hinge, you can use a 00:58:52.929 --> 00:58:54.899 stick with a something over a hole. 00:58:55.289 --> 00:58:58.069 You know, for instance, like the middle of a clock, if you want to 00:58:58.069 --> 00:59:02.919 rotate an arm around something, it's messy and it's organic. 00:59:03.419 --> 00:59:07.279 But if you want to do that thing that's in your mind, whatever it is, 00:59:08.289 --> 00:59:12.469 you can just, use a kind of a hacker mentality, which I absolutely love. 00:59:12.499 --> 00:59:17.459 People who do well and are innovative and creative, they hack things together. 00:59:17.469 --> 00:59:18.889 They go, you know what, this will do. 00:59:19.249 --> 00:59:23.589 And I want to encourage that mindset in children to go, I don't, I don't 00:59:23.599 --> 00:59:27.599 have the perfect product, so I don't have the perfect thing to do this 00:59:27.599 --> 00:59:31.239 thing, but if I want to generally get that direction, I'm going to just 00:59:31.299 --> 00:59:34.809 iterate and find these pieces and put them together in interesting ways. 00:59:35.259 --> 00:59:38.199 Until I find a sufficient solution to demonstrate the thing that I'm 00:59:38.199 --> 00:59:43.059 thinking about, whether it's a rocket ship or a rainbow or a horse or in one 00:59:43.064 --> 00:59:47.099 little story that we had in, in terms of the cart and schools, a Canberra 00:59:47.099 --> 00:59:52.654 school ran, , noodle cart sessions for kids over an entire term every week. 00:59:53.864 --> 00:59:56.594 And at the start they did the usual thing where they build cars and 00:59:56.594 --> 00:59:57.679 trucks and helicopters and whatever. 00:59:58.434 --> 01:00:02.594 By the 10th session at the end of the term, I saw this incredible write 01:00:02.594 --> 01:00:07.314 up of, a kind of in the play world you might call a play frame or in 01:00:07.314 --> 01:00:11.274 our, Nudel cart world, just a sort of a vignette and narrative story. 01:00:12.074 --> 01:00:18.664 One child garnered a bunch of kids to come together and build an, MRI machine. 01:00:19.614 --> 01:00:22.154 It was just basically a flat board with a bunch of these 01:00:22.154 --> 01:00:23.624 silicon hoops going over the top. 01:00:24.064 --> 01:00:27.344 The child got inside that, got scanned. 01:00:27.604 --> 01:00:28.594 They were very sick. 01:00:29.319 --> 01:00:35.229 , they died and then the MRI machine, which was this whiteboard, became a 01:00:35.279 --> 01:00:40.179 coffin, which was then picked up by the children and carried to a funeral. 01:00:40.889 --> 01:00:42.979 And they held an entire funeral for that child. 01:00:43.289 --> 01:00:47.649 And this entire thing happened within sort of this 10 week program 01:00:47.649 --> 01:00:48.699 that went from one to another. 01:00:48.769 --> 01:00:54.049 And some people might go, Oh, that's a bit weird and morbid and macabre, whatever. 01:00:55.119 --> 01:00:59.589 That child is going through, I guarantee you that child is going through 01:00:59.929 --> 01:01:04.959 their own self initiated therapeutic process to understand what on earth 01:01:04.959 --> 01:01:07.029 has just happened in my life, right? 01:01:07.139 --> 01:01:10.519 And they've garnered five or six other children to have that experience, and 01:01:10.519 --> 01:01:16.321 to, they, essentially, using their kind, empathic friends to play through that 01:01:16.331 --> 01:01:19.761 narrative, you know, and, and over the other side of the room, you know, there 01:01:19.761 --> 01:01:23.151 were other kids probably having a fashion show or building an airplane, you know, 01:01:23.181 --> 01:01:27.711 nothing to do with, but for that child, that moment, this was an opportunity 01:01:27.711 --> 01:01:31.031 to explore and process something in their lives that was very important. 01:01:31.691 --> 01:01:34.851 And again, that comes back to that multi layered learning with loose parts 01:01:34.851 --> 01:01:40.421 where you're doing, hardcore curriculum learning mixed with these psychological 01:01:40.421 --> 01:01:44.891 and therapeutic layers and the social layers Brings together a really complete 01:01:44.911 --> 01:01:48.161 package of learning and processing and all that stuff for children. 01:01:48.171 --> 01:01:54.191 So, that's just a little vignette in this school sort of therapeutic context. 01:01:54.541 --> 01:01:59.491 You know, as you've been talking, as a teacher, the one thing that I am a big 01:01:59.521 --> 01:02:05.666 proponent of is integrating Different subject areas into one because people 01:02:05.666 --> 01:02:09.606 are always talking about, how busy and overcrowded the curriculum is so 01:02:09.646 --> 01:02:13.306 I'm a really big one Well, let's see how we can actually kill a couple of 01:02:13.306 --> 01:02:17.116 birds with one stone and I actually think while you've been talking that 01:02:17.146 --> 01:02:24.086 this Nudel cart is really the ultimate experience because as you've said 01:02:24.086 --> 01:02:31.276 before there's math, there's social and emotional well being, there's language, 01:02:31.506 --> 01:02:34.996 there's cooperation, and storytelling. 01:02:35.386 --> 01:02:41.186 So I think it actually encompasses the entire curriculum, as an educator, 01:02:42.096 --> 01:02:46.856 you can actually empty most of your storeroom of all that rubbish that's 01:02:46.866 --> 01:02:52.926 in there and rather spend your money and get one of these things, which 01:02:52.926 --> 01:02:56.941 can do so much and you can integrate it into different areas as well. 01:02:57.291 --> 01:02:59.981 And meet curriculum outcomes with one thing. 01:02:59.981 --> 01:03:01.211 So why wouldn't we do that? 01:03:01.261 --> 01:03:04.221 It just makes perfect sense to me So and 01:03:04.221 --> 01:03:06.611 one one thing you just said just to touch on that that study. 01:03:06.611 --> 01:03:11.701 So with that, um, funeral that when we were doing that study that was actually 01:03:11.701 --> 01:03:16.381 a mathematics study and it wasn't we didn't get the results we got were 01:03:16.381 --> 01:03:21.881 non conclusive because the study wasn't written very well, but anecdotally when 01:03:21.881 --> 01:03:26.461 this when it was finishing up this math study, the principal came to me and 01:03:26.461 --> 01:03:29.361 said, look, I don't know about maths, and the math skills that have been 01:03:29.361 --> 01:03:32.751 garnered from this process, we had some troubles with a couple of people running 01:03:32.751 --> 01:03:36.231 the study got COVID in the middle and we had a whole bunch of complexities, 01:03:36.261 --> 01:03:41.561 but the principal said, whatever happened in that study, what I saw was 01:03:41.601 --> 01:03:43.871 an unbelievable increase in vocabulary. 01:03:44.941 --> 01:03:49.631 The kids, the amount of words per minute that the children were speaking 01:03:49.631 --> 01:03:53.311 and listening and all those, all those language skills is through the 01:03:53.311 --> 01:03:56.241 roof compared to a normal classroom because the kids for the whole 01:03:56.261 --> 01:04:02.291 time are running on this sort of high engagement, um, negotiation 01:04:02.301 --> 01:04:03.621 and collaboration in that space. 01:04:04.201 --> 01:04:08.871 And so definitely that was just a weird, just a very strange thing that we saw that 01:04:08.911 --> 01:04:11.081 was unexpected was their language skills. 01:04:11.931 --> 01:04:12.691 So really, 01:04:12.781 --> 01:04:14.291 it's the opposite of an iPad. 01:04:15.461 --> 01:04:18.731 Well, yeah, but again, because it's not, like, when you look at, when you look 01:04:18.731 --> 01:04:20.391 at loose parts, they don't do anything. 01:04:20.671 --> 01:04:23.921 When you look at loose parts, they're just a bunch of highly connectable, 01:04:24.421 --> 01:04:28.261 very beautifully designed pieces that connect in billions of ways. 01:04:28.401 --> 01:04:31.171 But if you do no work, They have zero value. 01:04:31.621 --> 01:04:33.891 They don't look like something, they don't function in any way, they 01:04:33.891 --> 01:04:36.281 don't beep or flash or say anything. 01:04:36.281 --> 01:04:37.661 Actually, I haven't talked about this for ages. 01:04:37.711 --> 01:04:42.031 One thing I think that that does in the brain, you know those, ink blot tests 01:04:42.241 --> 01:04:44.821 that, um, psychologists use, right? 01:04:44.901 --> 01:04:45.151 Yeah. 01:04:45.151 --> 01:04:47.201 So, you know, it's just a bunch of random paint. 01:04:47.201 --> 01:04:47.521 Yeah. 01:04:47.831 --> 01:04:50.351 That's a little bit like, I think, what loose parts do in the brain. 01:04:50.721 --> 01:04:56.431 They, they give you an itch to scratch because they are so unhelpful. 01:04:56.451 --> 01:04:57.871 They don't say anything. 01:04:57.881 --> 01:05:01.401 And so that, so similar to an ink blot test, you go, when your brain goes, 01:05:01.861 --> 01:05:06.941 Because humans are pattern makers and meaning finders, tool makers, you know, 01:05:06.941 --> 01:05:08.771 we, we make connections between things. 01:05:08.771 --> 01:05:11.771 That's the, our brain is literally just a connection machine. 01:05:12.281 --> 01:05:16.271 Children see the pieces and they can't, it's like they can't help, 01:05:16.301 --> 01:05:18.291 but put them, make sense out of them. 01:05:18.691 --> 01:05:23.021 And that sense that they make is through an individual drive in their brain 01:05:23.041 --> 01:05:24.381 to understand how the world works. 01:05:24.851 --> 01:05:25.401 That makes sense. 01:05:25.431 --> 01:05:28.411 There's a weird psychological thing that I think is happening in a child's brain 01:05:28.411 --> 01:05:32.956 where they run towards it and they go, You need to make a pattern or make sense. 01:05:32.976 --> 01:05:34.886 And at the moment it does nothing. 01:05:35.676 --> 01:05:38.016 And I've got to make that meaning for it to make sense. 01:05:38.701 --> 01:05:43.841 Marcus, this is a fascinating talk and one that I think we can talk about for 01:05:43.841 --> 01:05:53.331 days, but how can teachers, parents, school administrators, principals, how 01:05:53.331 --> 01:05:55.461 do they get hold of one of these things? 01:05:55.501 --> 01:05:58.301 And I think in the beginning of our talk, you mentioned something about 01:05:58.301 --> 01:06:01.491 going on there or whether it was that just for the playground, setting up 01:06:01.491 --> 01:06:05.801 a PayPal or whatever it was, how do we go about, how can people. 01:06:06.521 --> 01:06:07.581 Teachers listening. 01:06:07.691 --> 01:06:09.271 Principals, hopefully, listening. 01:06:09.631 --> 01:06:12.811 How can they get hold of a Nudel cart for their school? 01:06:13.471 --> 01:06:14.611 So there's three things. 01:06:15.216 --> 01:06:17.836 The Noodle Cart is for 30 children, for teachers. 01:06:17.886 --> 01:06:20.426 The Noodle Rover is for 8 to 10 children. 01:06:21.026 --> 01:06:25.626 Fantastic meltdown mitigation tool outside the vice principal or assistant 01:06:25.626 --> 01:06:28.896 principal's office is one of the most common things, and schools often 01:06:28.896 --> 01:06:30.616 buy one of each for those purposes. 01:06:31.346 --> 01:06:32.626 And we didn't even talk about the pod. 01:06:32.696 --> 01:06:34.991 So we've just launched the pod Um, over 800. 01:06:34.991 --> 01:06:35.751 Which is what I 01:06:35.761 --> 01:06:36.661 saw actually. 01:06:37.051 --> 01:06:37.271 Yeah. 01:06:37.271 --> 01:06:37.381 Yeah. 01:06:37.481 --> 01:06:39.551 My first introduction was the Nudel pod. 01:06:39.561 --> 01:06:42.671 No, I love talking about the, the background philosophy of all this stuff 01:06:42.671 --> 01:06:47.061 so much we didn't even talk about, but the pod is basically a home based 01:06:47.211 --> 01:06:50.691 family, version of the cart and rover. 01:06:51.231 --> 01:06:54.291 It just very briefly, it only, it does two main things. 01:06:54.311 --> 01:06:59.001 Number one, it reduces the clutter by becoming all of 01:06:59.001 --> 01:07:01.421 those large and some small scale 01:07:02.096 --> 01:07:06.676 toys that are completely filling up the square space of your child's bedroom. 01:07:06.846 --> 01:07:09.116 You know, people are moving into apartments. 01:07:09.116 --> 01:07:10.786 They have less space than ever before. 01:07:11.056 --> 01:07:15.256 Their houses are full of stuff that removes the square meterage in the house 01:07:15.416 --> 01:07:18.266 to do those open ended adventurous things. 01:07:18.646 --> 01:07:22.236 The cart just becomes all of those toys so you can put all that stuff on 01:07:22.236 --> 01:07:24.416 marketplace or not buy it in the future. 01:07:24.956 --> 01:07:25.036 I 01:07:25.036 --> 01:07:28.626 was just writing an email actually, to pod users about this mentality 01:07:28.626 --> 01:07:30.246 of experience is not stuff. 01:07:31.001 --> 01:07:33.861 If it doesn't create great experiences, get rid of it. 01:07:34.251 --> 01:07:38.901 And then for birthdays, when often this single use plastic toy rubbish comes 01:07:38.901 --> 01:07:42.751 into the house, just tell people, I want you to buy me experiences, not stuff. 01:07:42.801 --> 01:07:46.771 I want a present which encourages my child, a dance class, an art 01:07:46.771 --> 01:07:50.641 class, you know, some bushwalking boots so we can get outside more, 01:07:50.641 --> 01:07:54.111 you know, a jumpsuit for the rain so that they can go outside, whatever. 01:07:54.111 --> 01:07:58.201 Whatever, things that encourage experiences and memories. 01:07:58.766 --> 01:08:02.316 not more stuff, so, so the pod gets rid of the clutter. 01:08:02.986 --> 01:08:05.556 And then the second thing it does is it creates an open ended 01:08:05.556 --> 01:08:09.696 environment where the child becomes the toy maker, not the toy user. 01:08:10.166 --> 01:08:11.716 They don't become a consumer of toys. 01:08:12.096 --> 01:08:16.986 They become a maker and a tinkerer and create their own unique 01:08:17.206 --> 01:08:20.716 customized toys that work for their unique quirkiness, right? 01:08:20.766 --> 01:08:21.826 Their individuality. 01:08:22.506 --> 01:08:26.366 And the pod, other than the making of the toys does all of that same great 01:08:26.366 --> 01:08:30.156 stuff that the cart and Rover do, but, you know, really small package. 01:08:30.326 --> 01:08:35.716 Um, and it's really enjoyable to use between parents and children 01:08:35.736 --> 01:08:39.126 to fill that gap of, you know, we were talking about how parents are 01:08:39.126 --> 01:08:40.646 much more their child's friend. 01:08:40.836 --> 01:08:41.796 I don't really like that term. 01:08:42.166 --> 01:08:43.756 Even when I said it, I was like, that's not what I mean. 01:08:43.756 --> 01:08:48.516 I mean, when giving an enjoyable experience to the parent to engage 01:08:48.516 --> 01:08:52.056 with the child in that connected space where parents and children 01:08:52.061 --> 01:08:56.046 share time together instead of sitting there with some beeping, flashing, 01:08:56.051 --> 01:08:58.896 annoying, plastic whatever instead. 01:08:59.161 --> 01:09:04.671 but to answer your last question nudel dot shop n u d e l. 01:09:05.031 --> 01:09:10.401 I'll put all these links onto the show notes so that it's very easy and clear 01:09:10.401 --> 01:09:16.121 for anybody who's listening to Click on it and go to your shop and really 01:09:16.491 --> 01:09:21.091 start Nudel fying their play experiences. 01:09:21.421 --> 01:09:26.321 It's been fascinating Marcus and I hope that our listeners Really 01:09:26.331 --> 01:09:29.771 get to listen and experience all these things that we're so clearly 01:09:29.771 --> 01:09:34.551 so passionate about And i'd really love to see that change in the world. 01:09:34.571 --> 01:09:40.801 And I think I've been watching your videos and including that little I 01:09:40.801 --> 01:09:45.821 think it's just a short version right the wheels of wonder documentary It's 01:09:45.821 --> 01:09:49.961 really an eye opener and I would really recommend and i'll put links to all these 01:09:49.971 --> 01:09:53.841 things in the show notes for listeners to just go and have a look because I 01:09:53.861 --> 01:09:57.851 think we need to get a little bit more curious and see what else is out there. 01:09:57.891 --> 01:10:04.071 And I just think that this contraption is the answer to everything really. 01:10:04.491 --> 01:10:08.061 It's, it's to get kids playing, and I really, really appreciate you 01:10:08.071 --> 01:10:12.391 coming on to Blooming Curious and sharing this with our listeners. 01:10:12.431 --> 01:10:17.646 And I wish you guys and your company and your charity , every success. 01:10:17.686 --> 01:10:22.586 I hope this is something that just will blossom because it's ultimately 01:10:22.586 --> 01:10:23.986 for the benefit of our children. 01:10:24.336 --> 01:10:26.276 And that's what it really is all about. 01:10:26.326 --> 01:10:30.906 It's not for us, it's for our children and their growth and the development 01:10:30.946 --> 01:10:33.096 and it does the best for them. 01:10:33.146 --> 01:10:34.116 And that's amazing. 01:10:34.126 --> 01:10:35.966 And we can't ask for more than that. 01:10:35.966 --> 01:10:37.336 So thank you so much for sharing. 01:10:37.416 --> 01:10:37.946 It's very kind. 01:10:38.026 --> 01:10:38.686 Thank you very much. 01:10:38.716 --> 01:10:39.446 It's great to be here.