Children’s right to play: Tak Takut Kids Club and steps towards human rights-based education in Singapore

This is a documentary analysis of Tak Takut Kids Club (TTKC), a community space for children, exploring ways in which TTKC uses play to enhance children’s lives and improve their future life chances. It frames TTKC’s activities within Singapore’s highly competitive schooling system. It asks: How might Article 31 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the right to play be effectively enabled in Singapore? It considers how TTKC’s practices might inform the State’s duty to guarantee Article 31. It concludes that the right to play is an enabling right, helping to secure other rights, including child participation, freedom of expression, and safety. TTKC models a relational approach to human rights education by centring play, which is distinct from play-based education, as content and process. The changes necessary require a rethinking of adult-child relationships and interactions, and recognising children, in Freire’s words, as ‘fully human’.