photo by: Submitted photo: City PlayCorps

Children play at a reason session at City PlayCorps, a new downtown Lawrence pop-up business that provides an "adventure playground" for area children.

In Richard Renner’s eyes, there was no better playground for a young boy than a junkyard.

His grandfather owned one, and the instructions Renner received on his many visits were simple: “He gave me a hammer and a wrench and said ‘I don’t want to see you until 4 p.m.'”

Renner said wandering a junkyard — complete with the mud and the occasional blood of scraped knuckles — taught him a lot about creativity and problem solving. But looking back on the experience also reminded Renner of a fact of modern life.

Not many kids have their own junkyards.

Renner — a local artist, performer and founder of the Lawrence Busker Fest — hasn’t exactly opened a junkyard in downtown Lawrence, but he has an inventory that might make you wonder.

“Appliance boxes, huge ones,” Renner said as he started to list the items inside his pop-up business City PlayCorps, 926 Massachusetts St. “Car tires, mannequins, rope, bicycle wheels, those wooden spools that wire comes on. All sizes of those. Foam noodles, big tubs of costumes and fabrics … and lots of duct tape. Everything gets duct-taped together here.”

The items aren’t for sale at City PlayCorps, but rather they exist for children to play with, basically in whatever fashion they desire. Renner and his staff don’t lead any exercises or classes. That would go against the junkyard philosophy of experimenting and figuring it out for yourself.

“We have two rules here,” Renner said of the business that is in the spot that previously housed Stitch On Needlework before it converted to a home-based business earlier this year. “We tell the kids, if you want help, ask another kid first. We tell the parents that you cannot help your kid unless they ask you to.”

photo by: Submitted photo: City Play Corps

Children use pool noodles, boxes, duct tape and many other items to create unique play spaces at City PlayCorps in downtown Lawrence.

The idea for the business came to Renner via a car — but not one in a junkyard. As part of his performance business, Renner has a car he’s modified with a host of recycled items that can be removed, pulled, tugged, turned and otherwise messed with. As Renner would take the car to events ranging from birthday parties to the Kansas State Fair, he often would provide kids with an explanation and a speech and demonstration about the car’s features and what you could do with it.

“And usually, the kids would stay for 10 or 15 minutes and play with it,” he said.

But one day, he decided to skip all the talking and simply stand to the side and let kids go to the car on their own.

“The kids were staying for hours after I started doing that,” he said. “I said ‘something is going on here.'”

After doing a little research, Renner found there is a whole movement devoted to the idea of putting a bunch of items in front of kids and letting them figure out what to do with them. The movement believes in “adventure playgrounds,” which can be either indoors or outdoors and feature lots of nonstandard play equipment and very few adult-imposed rules.

Renner started offering mobile versions of adventure playgrounds in 2018 at community festivals and events. The concept was picking up steam in 2019 as part of his performance business, but it then faltered when the pandemic shut down most events in 2020. The City PlayCorps space is the first time he’s brought the idea to a storefront venue.

He’s doing so with the help of a grant, which makes the space really unique in one way — there’s no admission charge for parents to bring their kids to play at the space. The grant from the Kansas Creative Arts and Industries Commission is covering the operating costs of the business through at least the end of January, Renner said.

He said area parents are starting to warm up to the idea of a different type of play experience for kids, although he said some parents are better than others at following the rule of not helping unless asked.

Some may have concerns about safety issues, but Renner said he and his staff have been trained as facilitators in the adventure playground movement. He describes the role of a facilitator as being similar to a “ninja lifeguard.” He desires to be invisible most times, but can quickly swoop into a scene if needed.

Even then, he does so in a way that tries to let the kid retain some control. For example, if he sees a kid jumping a bit dangerously on one of the wooden wire spools, “I might come up and ask ‘what’s the plan here?'” Renner said. “If he says he’s going to jump from that spool to that spool to that spool, I’ll probably ask him what he’s going to do if he falls. We try to allow the kids to take risks and help them assess their own risks.”

Renner, though, said the business makes a distinction between risks and hazards, and works hard to remove any hazards from the play area.

“A risk is climbing a tree, while a hazard would be having a bunch of broken glass on the floor,” he said.

Most of the time, Renner isn’t doing any guiding, steering or talking. Instead, he’s just watching, and often is pretty impressed with what kids come up with. He said one kid — most of the kids have been 12 or younger but the business doesn’t put age limits on who can play — created a planetary model out of the items at the shop. Another created a Mars rover-like device, while many use the items to invent new games that they play with the other kids.

Currently, City PlayCorps is open from noon to 5 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Beginning Jan. 2, it will be open from noon to 5 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays and from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Wednesdays. The pop-up business is scheduled to close at the end of January.

But Renner said there is a possibility it may remain open longer. While he continues to remain busy producing the Lawrence Busker Fest — it will be over Memorial Day weekend in 2022 — Renner said he really would like to figure out how to have a permanent adventure playground in Lawrence, either in the form of City PlayCorps or some other version.

“This has been a ton of fun,” Renner said. “Do you remember when you’ve been so happy that you just jump up and down? Well, I see that every day now.”

photo by: Submitted photo: City PlayCorps

Children stack and build using a variety of random items at City PlayCorps, a new downtown Lawrence business that offers a unique play space for area children.