chapter

13Program Delivery and the Many Modes of Recreation

Introduction

• Present types of services and pathways people take in the profession.

• Explain the characteristic that makes recreation unique from every other profession: programming.

• Introduce the following activity groups:– Recreational sport– Fitness and wellness– Outdoor and adventure– Arts and culture

Delivery Systems for Recreation Opportunities

The original source for recreation is the mental self we construct with every choice we make, every moment of each day. • Read or design a page in a journal• Shoot a few hoops or ski in uncharted territory• Wander through a mall to watch people or see

what’s new• Go berry picking if the season is right • Connect with family and friends

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Delivery Systems for Recreation Opportunities

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• Young children engage in inventive play and absorb themselves in creating games, pictures, heroes, and homes.

• During their school years, people explore interesting opportunities.

• Knowledge of a world beyond family and neighborhood grows. It is natural for people to seek firsthand experience with what others are doing and enjoying and to create personal and social communities bound by shared interests and values.

Organized Recreation Happens Through a Variety of Agents

• Religious institutions• Volunteer or nonprofit organizations• Schools and colleges• Community services• Military: Morale, Welfare and Recreation Services

(United States) and Personnel Support Agency (Canada)

• Employee groups• Tourist attractions• Private businesses

These can be distinguished by their source of funding.

Everyone Needs Personal Interests and Opportunities for Choice

• Recreation: doing what is needed to re-create, uplift, and heal the human spirit.

• What makes something recreational is, therefore, a matter of personal experience and learned preference.

• Variations are due to culture, geography or climate, gender, social class, and religion.

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Everyone Needs Personal Interests and Opportunities for Choice (continued)

• Recreation is the most important, if not the only, choice we have control over in everyday life.

• Work, although stimulating to many, is neither awe inspiring nor a rewarding creative challenge.

• Recreation may be our only reliable source for feeling good about ourselves.

Optimal Recreation: When the AHA and WOW Happen

• Discover an interest, work at becoming good at it, and enjoy yourself immensely when doing it.

• Enter whole-heartedly into doing things that challenge you, and work to master them.

• Recreation professionals facilitate design programs for people to learn, to show off, to share with others, and to test themselves in the spotlight.

Recreation Program Develops the Self

Why are recreation choices such powerful factors in developing the self?• Recreation is like a theatrical stage: You act upon

your self. You get involved doing something!• Your life stage is a significant frame of reference in

all the choices you make.• Hold the things you need to learn at each life stage in

the “back of your mind.” They silently guide your perceptions about what would be a good thing to do.

Discussion:Subject: Achieving Goals

Why should recreation allow people to pursue some of their own goals?

• How would this be achieved through recreation programming”

Recreation: Readily Available for Taking Action

• Fewer obligations attached, as close as pencil and paper

• Close to home and readily available or at a distance that requires planning

• Mental pictures, creative ideas, or images of people who are role models

• Alone or with other people

Note that if the mind is not activated and you are not feeling a sense of satisfaction with yourself, probably whatever you are doing is not important. You may just be filling (killing) time.

Programming: Briefly

• The fundamental building block in the field of recreation is programming: designing experiences for people to come together, to engage in challenges, and to have fun.

• Recreation programs take 5 forms:– Instruction– Drop-in– Club– Competition or exhibition– Special event

(Farrell & Lundegren, 1983)

Program Format Examples

1. Instruction: fencing class, swim program, photography class, watercolor painting class

2. Drop-in: open swim, open tennis court, after-school games and crafts, open gym for basketball

3. Club: Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, model railroaders club, drama club, Golden Agers club, teen club

4. Competition: recreation leagues, tournaments, juried art shows, life guard or martial arts tests, swim meets

5. Special event: Fourth of July celebrations, father–daughter dances, pancake breakfasts, recitals, concerts in the park

Intention of Recreation Programming• Programming is a combination of knowledge and

practiced skill. Design opportunities so that people will interact with “leisure objects and environments” deriving a rewarding sense of meaning and self-worth from their personal investment (doing it).

• Programmers envision what “might” happen as people come together with each other and each set of objects as a context for self-discovery, self-expression, learning, sharing, and enjoyment.

• Through envisioning, the program plan is created, edited, revised, and mentally perfected.

Programmatic Areas

• Recreational sport includes individual and team activities and loosely organized games and technically ruled sports played in indoor, field, natural land, and water environments. – Sports and games begin with skills to be learned by

players and advance into more or less organized systems for play.

• Fitness and wellness: A variety of types of weight-loss, stress-reduction, and muscle-toning programs are evident in all recreation organizations. – Individual demand has boosted expansion of spas, health

resorts, and meditation and yoga centers in addition to being prevalent in public and nonprofit organizations.

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Programmatic Areas (continued)

• Outdoor and adventure often seems to cross paths with sports and games.– When the outdoor environment is necessary for

the experience and when participation expands knowledge of the environment and one’s self, the activity can be assigned to this program area.

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Programmatic Areas (continued)

• Arts and culture: The person develops an aesthetic understanding and, if directly participating, performance skills. – Art includes crafts, such as sewing, sculpting, and

designing stained glass, and fine arts, such as painting, drama, music, and formal dance disciplines.

– Culture can include music, dance, art, and literature fads and folk arts that maintain traditions such as ethnic dance, batik, and weaving.

Is This the Life for You? Types of Service and Career Paths

• Imagine working to improve the quality of life for people and their communities.

• Two levels depict a conceptual difference between jobs:– Working directly with clientele or resources– Working primarily to manage the system or

organization

• Most recreation professionals developed their interest in the field from firsthand experiences: playing on a recreational sports team, taking swimming or acting lessons, or joining an interest group or club.

Ponder This

Joseph Lee’s idea that no matter what is provided in recreation, if there is not the opportunity that lights someone up on the inside, or worse, if someone is not offered opportunities from which to choose, life will be unsatisfying.

—Joseph Lee, at the 1911

National Playground Association conference

“Good” Recreation Professionals Need . . .

• Understanding that goes beyond one’s self, one’s family, and others like one’s self

• Ability to think from the perspective of other people . . . to see the world as people see it and experience it

• Desire to dissuade people from lives centered on work and money

• Ability to show people that the freedoms in recreational choices are numerous: join, practice, change, quit; most can’t do that as freely with work

Recreation is not an obligation; it is a choice for happiness.

Discussion

• Consider the following statement: Every moment of each day, with every choice we make, we construct the mental self.

– Discuss how the statement relates to the engagement in, or provision of, recreation and leisure.