The Modest Air Symposium
Saturday 10th March 2007

A small group of children gathers around the pile of wooden blocks and planks that forms a ramp on the footpath. One stoops to adjust the arrangement of timber.

Thirty metres along the footpath Hazel circles lazily on her bicycle, like an aircraft in a holding pattern. She is a blaze of red on the suburban street: red bicycle, red helmet, red school uniform.

There is a brief command from the group – a signal. Hazel turns, purposeful now, aims her bike at the heap of wood and pumps her legs on the pedals. The bike wobbles and straightens, accelerating. The children stand back, eyes fixed on the ramp.

Hazel hits the ramp hard, the bicycle lifts, clears the top of the pile and, for a perhaps a metre, is airborne, with Hazel standing tall and angled like a ski jumper, hands gripping the handlebars, eyes fixed on the end of the street.

The bicycle lands hard on its front wheel. Hazel pulls up in a skid, turns and pedals calmly back to the group which has gathered around the ramp again. There is a brief, subdued conversation and another child peels out of the group towards the take-off point.

This is the Modest Air Symposium, a small society of neighbourhood children whose wooden ramp has become a fixture on the footpath outside my house.

The game originates from the summer holidays when Nick, our 8 year old neighbour, found some off-cuts of timber and piled them up to make a small ramp for his bike. He tinkered with the size and shape of the ramp and gradually accumulated more pieces of timber to expand it.

For the first couple of weeks Nick played alone, as he usually does.

One evening Nick was away and the kids from across the road, who moved into the neighbourhood a few months ago, brought their bikes over to play on the ramp.

A few days later I noticed Nick and the neighbours were playing together on the ramp. By the following week they had been joined by two more children who live around the corner.

The group has remained constant. Every evening when I come home they are playing on the ramp with their bikes. Sometimes the ramp relocates to the other side of the street.

On the face of it the purpose of their game is to ‘get some air’. Snowboarders at Mt Hutt and skateboarders on the local half-pipe aspire to ‘big air’ – high, sustained periods of flight. Hazel’s work off the small wooden ramp qualifies as only ‘modest air,’ although I am sure it is no less exhilarating for all that.

But I notice the game has many more dimensions than the simple thrill of defying gravity for a second or two. Its main purpose seems to be a fascination with the technology of the ramp; moving and changing the wooden blocks for new effect.

Within this purpose there is a metaphysical dimension expressed in the demeanour of gravity and deep discourse among the children as they rearrange the blocks of wood.

This is a game without obvious excitement. It is conducted in solemn reverence – a symposium, in fact. Dress these kids in togas and they could be classical Greek philosophers, dress them in overalls and they could be engineers testing a new structure or vehicle. They could be farmers at a fielday: kicking tyres, stroking chins, moving slowly but inexorably towards decision.

This pile of planks and off-cuts possesses an astonishing power. It has captivated the group for weeks and broken down barriers of shyness and isolation. The children have become a small society, exploring relationships, experimenting with control over their physical and social world.

As far as I am aware there are never any arguments or falling-outs. There are few rules and no winners or losers. The purpose of the game lies in the deep satisfaction of imaginative play.

As an adult and parent the Modest Air Symposium reinforces some simple but vital lessons about childhood. The best games are sometimes the most simple and least structured. The most improbable material can become a toy.

Above all, the Modest Air Symposium affirms childhood as an adult-free zone.

As parents we are guilty of over-organising our children’s lives. We drive them from one activity to another. We manage their recreation and friendships.

Perhaps we are spurred by media reports of children whose lives are blighted by parental neglect. But in wanting the best for our children we risk neglecting a vital part of their development – the time and space to explore the world through the society of children.

You may observe how positive that society can be by visiting my street for a few minutes on any evening and watching the Modest Air Symposium.