Adrian Voce succeeds Jan van Gils as child-friendly city network president
The English writer and campaigner Adrian Voce OBE has been elected to succeed Jan van Gils PhD, as President of the European Network for Child Friendly Cities (ENCFC). Dr. Van Gils announced his retirement from the role that he has filled for more than 14 years at the conclusion of the 8th biennial event, held in Ghent, Belgium in November.
Jan Van Gils
Jan van Gils
was the founder of the ENCFC and inaugurated the Child in the City conference in Bruges, Belgium in 2002. Under his leadership, the network and the conference have grown in popularity and influence. Produced every two years in a different European city by a partnership of the ENCFC and the Child in the City Foundation, the conference has become a fixture for children’s rights advocates, academics, practitioners and policy-makers working for more child friendly towns and cities around the world.
Warm tributes were paid by the conference in Ghent to the immensely popular Van Gils, who is a Doctor in Pedagogic Sciences, author of several books and was the director of the Research Centre for Childhood and Society in Belgium, as well as being also President of the International Council for Children’s Play. He was described by the Chair of the Child in the City Foundation, Johan Haarhuis, as ‘a great man to work with; incredibly generous with his time and inspiring with his vision’. His successor, Adrian Voce, speaking on behalf of the whole network, said that Dr Van Gils would be ‘a very tough act to follow’ who had ‘given more to the movement for children-friendly approaches to planning and managing our towns and cites than anyone will ever know’.
New president Adrian Voce
Adrian Voce, who has taken on the role of President for an initial two years, is a former playworker, trainer, special needs assistant and residential social worker who became the first director of London Play in 1998 and then the founding director of Play England in 2006. He is the author of Policy for Play: responding to children’s forgotten right, which documents the story of the play strategy for England of 2008-11 and the influencing and campaigning work that led to it. He played a key role in securing London as the host city for the second Child in the City conference in London in 2004 and has been a member of the ENCFC steering group since 2012.
