About Tim
Tim Gill is one of the UK's leading thinkers on childhood and an effective advocate for change. His writing, research and consultancy work focuses on children's play and free time. Tim's book No Fear: Growing up in a risk averse society was published by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 2007. He appears regularly on radio and television, has given talks to audiences in Europe, the USA, Australasia and Japan, and has been widely published in the mainstream, academic and trade media.
Tim has advised political parties and thinktanks across the political spectrum. His consultancy clients include the Forestry Commission, the Mayor of London, the National Trust and Play England. He is an enabler for the Commission on Architecture and the Built Environment and is advising Argent plc on Kings Cross Central, one of London's largest and most significant new developments.
Tim was Director of the Children's Play Council (now Play England) from 1997 to 2004. In 2009 Edge Hill University, Lancashire, awarded Tim an honorary doctorate for his "outstanding contribution to improving children's lives through challenging our views of childhood in a 'no risk' culture." He also holds degrees from Keble College Oxford, where he studied philosophy and psychology, and Birkbeck College London, where he completed a Master's in philosophy.
Tim believes that children have the potential to be more resilient, capable, creative and able to learn than we give them credit for. Yet their lives are becoming ever more scheduled, controlled and directed.
If children and young people are to enjoy and make the most of their lives, we need to revisit and revise our ideas of what a good childhood looks and feels like. We need to improve play and recreational spaces and services, and make neighbourhoods and communities more child-friendly. We need to ensure that children in schools, nurseries and childcare settings have some time and space to play freely. We need to support parents so they feel able to give their children back some of the freedoms that they enjoyed when they were young. Perhaps most important of all, we need to accept that it is natural and healthy for children to explore, take risks, make mistakes, seek out adventure and test boundaries.
Tim lives in East London with his partner and their eleven-year-old daughter. As a parent, he is trying hard to practice what he preaches.