Conference Themes

Scotland is recognised as one of the world’s leading nations for its support and practical action for children’s play. The right to play is backed by policy and practice across all sectors. The conference examined how UN General Comment No 17 on article 31 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child has impacted policy and practice in Scotland, and worldwide, to improve children’s right to play and to create possibilities for the future. As Scotland was setting out to implement and integrate children's rights into all parts of Scottish life by making the Convention on the Rights of the Child part of Scottish law, we had the opportunity to explore what this means for the right to play. We also explored how play reduces pressure and increases resilience in children’s lives, supporting their positive mental health and wellbeing.

Children's experiences and direct input were woven through the conference, with presentations of visual media, papers, projects and research. Delegates also had the opportunity to find out about children’s experiences in Scotland first-hand through our programme of visits, and by spending time at our special Playday, held on Glasgow Green.

The conference also had five sub-themes:

Play and the realisation of other rights

Play and the creation of environments

Play and the quality of childhood

Play and children’s entitlement to optimum development

Play and resilience

As part of conference preparations, the conference organisers created some support materials, and we are happy to provide them here for anyone who might find them useful.

Guidance and assistance on how to submit an abstract to the conference were put together.

A recording of a workshop on creating and presenting a poster for IPAGlasgow2023 is available.

We developed guidelines for potential presenters on increasing children and young people’s participation in abstracts and presentations, and another for groups bringing children and young people to the conference.

Presenter guidelines were also created for all those presenting and moderating, particularly to support participation and inclusion.

In the weeks leading up to the conference, a conference pack was sent to all delegates and presenters. It included:

The Book of Abstracts - a document that provided summaries, presenter details and ID numbers for every session across the conference.

Conference Programme Handbook - This document contains the conference programme in full, giving attendees the timing and locations for all contributions. It also contains lots of useful information about the conference itself. We also released a programme amendments document just before the conference, listing any changes to the programme or book of abstracts.

We produced a blank timetable, that attendees could complete and personalise themselves. We left it editable so attendees could tweak it, according to their preferences.