It started with a stack of cardboard boxes and a few bins of loose parts.
One Sunday morning in June, I showed up at a city park in Albany, New York with a wild idea: What if we just let kids play? No rules. No directions. No structure. Just space, materials, and freedom.
That first event had eight people. But something about it clicked.
I didn’t ask permission. I didn’t go through the city or the parks department or the conservancy. I wasn’t trying to launch a program. I just wanted to give kids a chance to play without being micromanaged or corrected.
So I did it again the next month.
Thirty people came. Then sixty. Then a hundred. By the end of that first summer, I was hauling a car full of materials across town every month, building something from nothing, literally and figuratively.
By year two, it had exploded. Families were driving over an hour to be part of it. Someone donated storage space. I rented a U-Haul. I created a sponsor packet. We started getting press. A local photojournalist captured the magic of it all and turned it into a exhibit that hung for months in a local coffee shop.
The park conservancy invited me to speak. Then the mayor. I’ll never forget when she asked, “How much help do you want from me?”
“None, please,” I said.
Because that was the whole point. No bureaucracy. No permission slips. No overcomplication. Just cardboard, community, and courage.
I poured myself into it for three full years. Out of pocket. Month after month. I dreamed of building a permanent location. I imagined hiring teens to help set up. I saw the potential for this model to spread to every city that had a patch of grass and a group of kids hungry to build something real.
Then came 2020.
The world was shut down. And so were we.
What I thought would be a short pause turned into two years. I had to leave Albany. Life changed.
But the dream didn’t die.
If anything, the pause gave me perspective. What we built in Albany wasn’t just a local project. It was a model. A living, breathing proof that kids don’t need fancy playgrounds or adult-led games. They need freedom. They need cardboard and rope and friends and a place to make a mess.
Albany’s Pop-up Adventure Playground was just the beginning.
And now, I’m ready to build it again. Bigger. Broader. With the same spirit of trust and play that made it work in the first place.
Have you ever witnessed the power of unstructured play in your own community?
Share your story. I’d love to hear how this idea could take root where you are.
– Moira