The Land

14 Kortrijk 1302, Begijnhofpark

tue-sun 13h-17h (mon closed)

The Land is a short documentary film about the nature of play, risk and hazard, set in The Land, a Welsh experimental ‘adventure’ playground. At The Land children climb trees, light fires and use mud, sand, wood, hammers and nails in a play-space rooted in the belief that kids are empowered when they learn to manage risks on their own. One can witness how children are clever enough to be conscious of possible danger and that they are intelligent enough to spontaneously organise an autonomous independent ‘state’, in which they decide and invent the necessary rules themselves. The landscape architect, Carl Teodor Sørensen, created the first adventure playground, which opened in Emdrup, Copenhagen, in 1943, when the town was under German occupation. Sørensen’s playground, then known as a 'junk playground,' served as a model for many other adventure playgrounds. There are currently about a thousand adventure playgrounds in Europe, mostly in Denmark, Switzerland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and England, but also in Japan and the United States.