The Power of Play: A Member Impact Story

By Natalie Hickerson

For the past five years, Cynthia Gentry has been using biophilic design principles to meet the developmental needs of children by building nature-based play environments. These “living playgrounds” provide spaces for kids to safely explore and interact with nature, which Cynthia explains is crucial for the growth of a healthy and happy child.

Even before her work on living playgrounds, Cynthia has long been an advocate for both nature-inspired building and a child’s right to play. Upon leaving her previous career of almost two decades working with international consulting firms, she began creating rainforest murals for inner city hospitals in Atlanta and started her first nonprofit, Art Heals. She later founded Play Atlanta, an organization dedicated to advocating for and educating about the child’s right to play. Since 2010, she has served on the executive board of the International Play Association (IPA) which advocates for children’s access to free play as a fundamental human right.

Today, Cynthia’s impressive and diverse work in the pursuit of a healthier and more playful world for children continues with Living Playgrounds. One accomplishment that exemplifies the value and potential of this work is the play space at the YMCA of Metropolitan Atlanta Headquarters, a project Cynthia describes as one of the peak experiences of her life. The finished playground is brimming with implementations of biophilic design philosophy. Natural light shines into the sandbox through leaf and butterfly-shaped cutouts on the ceiling. Green vines weave up tunnel walls and bright flowers create living roofs. The wood used for the play structures is sourced from trees native to the Georgia mountains. When the play space finally opened, Cynthia recalls that the adults who worked there were “just as excited as the children themselves”- a testament to the inspirational power that nature-based design can have.

As a firm believer in a future of harmony between humanity and nature, Cynthia feels there is a lot to gain from working with ILFI. She is pursuing her LFA and plans to use what she learns to inform her evaluation of which sustainable manufacturers she chooses for her projects. Of the ILFI community, Cynthia says, “I’m excited that there are people out there that understand this, and I have so much to learn from them.”  We are proud to have Cynthia as a member here at ILFI and are excited to follow her work in the future. 

Check out Living Playgrounds to see more of Cynthia’s projects.

About Cynthia Gentry

For over twenty years, Atlanta-based Cynthia Gentry has used her many creative interests to help make the world a better place for children. Her passionate belief in the power of play to help all children blossom artistically, intellectually, socially, emotionally, and physically has led to her intense focus on designing biophilic play spaces for children through her design/build company, Living Playgrounds LLC. Cynthia is in her third term on the Executive Board of the International Play Association (IPAworld.org) where she is also the Editor of PlayRights Magazine.

Cynthia recently worked on the Access to Play in Crisis project which has recently been translated into Ukrainian, Romanian, and Hungarian.  A video Cynthia made to show at the UN in Geneva to celebrate IPA’s work on the General Comment (#17) on article 31 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child is still actively shared around the world. Recent projects include curating an exhibit on play at the Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA) and designing a natural learning playground for the new YMCA headquarters in downtown Atlanta. This space will be used as a prototype for Head Start early learning play environments throughout the United States.

Cynthia lives in Atlanta with her husband Al Dale, a retired two-time Emmy Award-winning correspondent from ABC World News Tonight. She is the devoted grandmother to five unusually brilliant and talented children.

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