Every July, the National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA) celebrates Park and Recreation Month. This year's theme, "The Power Of," highlights the power of connection, play, community, nature, belonging, and well-being. But what does that actually look like?
When we posed that question to BerryDunn's Art Thatcher and Nikki Ginger, two longtime parks and recreation professionals who now advise agencies across the country, neither started by talking about facilities, amenities, or capital projects. They talked about people.
By the end of the conversation, a different question emerged: What if the real power of parks and recreation isn't in the places themselves, but in their ability to bring people together?
The power of connection
We live in a world designed to make interaction optional. We can stream entertainment without leaving the couch, order dinner without speaking to anyone, and maintain friendships through text chains and social media updates. Yet people continue to flock to parks, concerts, community events, trails, and recreation programs because technology may help us communicate, but it doesn't replace the human need to connect.
Nikki was reminded of that recently when the Chicago Park District announced plans for moveable outdoor seating, something she first saw during a trip to Paris. This simple, though surprisingly rare, feature allows visitors to pull a chair into the shade, turn it toward a friend, or arrange them into small groups. It's a small design choice, but it reflects a much larger truth. People are looking for opportunities to gather, and parks create the conditions that make those connections possible.
Art sees those opportunities everywhere. He believes parks succeed because they provide something people are increasingly missing: common ground. Walk through a park alone and most people keep to themselves. Walk with a dog, a grandchild, a soccer ball, or even an artist's sketchbook, and the entire dynamic changes. Suddenly people are smiling, asking questions, and striking up conversations.
People look for common ground, and parks create thousands of those moments every day. A soccer game, a walking trail, a community event, or a neighborhood playground may be what brings people to a space, but the relationships that form there are what give it meaning.
Throughout his career, Art has seen parks and recreation bridge generations, cultures, and neighborhoods in ways few other institutions can. As he put it, "A pool table is still a pool table whether you're 12 or 82." The activity may look simple, but it creates a rare opportunity for people of different ages and backgrounds to share an experience. The activity may be different, but the outcome is often the same: people finding a reason to connect.
The power of play
Play tends to get dismissed as something that belongs to children, but Art and Nikki would strongly disagree.
In fact, many of life's most important lessons are learned through recreation. Board games teach strategy and problem solving. Team sports teach collaboration and resilience. Friendly competition teaches us how to win graciously and lose gracefully.
Art laughed as he described a household rule while raising his children in a highly competitive family: "The first one to cry goes to bed." Behind the humor, though, was a serious point. Play gives people a safe environment to experiment, learn, fail, adapt, and grow. The lessons may begin on a playing field or around a game board, but they often carry into school, work, relationships, and everyday life.
Play also has a unique ability to bridge divides. Art pointed to the World Cup as a perfect example. Fans from around the globe gather around a shared love of the game, setting aside cultural differences and preconceived notions. Visitors discover that communities are often more welcoming than expected. Residents discover they have more in common with people from different backgrounds than they realized. For a few hours, politics, geography, and stereotypes take a back seat to a shared experience.
For Nikki, play is also closely tied to wellness and longevity. She pointed to research on Blue Zone communities, where people regularly live longer, healthier lives than average. One of the common threads is meaningful engagement with family, friends, and community. Recreation often provides the vehicle for those interactions, creating opportunities for people to stay active, involved, and connected across generations.
She's seen that firsthand in her own family. When conversations begin heading into uncomfortable territory, Nikki has a simple solution: bring out a game. Almost immediately, the conversation changes. People stop focusing on their differences and start focusing on a shared experience. The atmosphere lightens. Everyone reconnects. It goes beyond being a distraction from real life. It can actually be the catalyst for helping us navigate real life.
The power of community
One theme surfaced repeatedly throughout our conversation: people want to be together.
The growing popularity of community events proves it. Movie nights in the park, outdoor concerts, food truck festivals, and community celebrations continue to draw strong participation, even though people could enjoy the same entertainment from the comfort of home. That's because the attraction isn't really the movie, the concert, or even the food; it's the shared experience.
As Nikki put it, people want to gather. Sometimes they just need an excuse.
Art shared a similar story. When a friend's son was in town playing baseball, a simple invitation went out to a small group of friends. By game time, nearly twenty people had shown up. The baseball game gave them a reason to gather, but seeing one another was what made the evening memorable.
That ability to create community is why Art still remembers something a city manager told him decades ago:
"You are my feel-good department." While police departments respond to emergencies and public works departments maintain infrastructure, parks and recreation creates experiences people look forward to. It creates moments of joy, celebration, connection, and belonging that shape how people experience their community.
In a world where so many conversations focus on what's broken, parks and recreation offers something different: opportunities to build relationships, create memories, and strengthen the ties that make communities feel like home.
The power of nature and belonging
If the pandemic taught communities anything, it was that access to nature isn't a luxury. It's essential.
Both Art and Nikki have watched communities rediscover the value of trails, open spaces, neighborhood parks, and outdoor recreation over the past several years. During COVID, people sought refuge outdoors. What many discovered was that these spaces offered far more than recreation. They offered relief, connection, perspective, and resilience.
The renewed appreciation for outdoor spaces has led to another shift that Art sees in communities across the country. For years, many communities poured resources into destination facilities and large sports complexes. Today, residents increasingly ask for something much simpler: a quality park close to home.
They want a place to walk with their families, sit under a tree, read a book, or simply spend time outside. They want a place where neighbors recognize one another and where the community feels accessible, familiar, and welcoming.
In short, they want a place that feels like theirs. As Art noted, if you want to see how much people value a park, tell them it's going away.
Residents who haven't visited in months will show up at meetings to defend it. Not because they're thinking about a playground or a walking path, but because they're thinking about what that place represents. It's part of their identity, their neighborhood, and their community.
Common ground
Throughout our conversation, Art and Nikki kept returning to the same idea, even when they were answering completely different questions. Whether they were talking about play, nature, community events, or neighborhood parks, the underlying value was remarkably similar: Parks and recreation creates common ground.
A soccer game is a universal language that requires no translation, no matter where in the world you are. A community concert gives friends a reason to gather. A walking trail creates chance encounters. A neighborhood park becomes part of a community's shared identity.
In a time when people often feel isolated, stressed, or divided, parks and recreation provides something increasingly valuable: opportunities to show up, share an experience, and connect with one another. That's what Nikki sees in crowded movie nights, multigenerational programs, and communities rallying around the spaces they love. It's what Art has seen throughout a career spent helping communities build places where relationships can grow.
The parks may bring people in. The programs may get them involved. But the real power of parks and recreation lies in what happens next: the conversation that starts on a walking trail, the friendship that forms at a community event, the neighbors who become connected through a shared place.
Sometimes all it takes is a little common ground to turn a space into a community.
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