The Joy Retreat: No Toys Week, Reimagined

No Toys Week began as a simple experiment: take the commercial toys out of our classrooms and see what children do instead. We have run it, learned from it and rebuilt it across several editions. In 2025 we asked it to do something more. Through the gloom of a London winter, could a week about play also be a week about bringing everyone together?

The Joy Retreat turned Rocket Productions’ four London Pre-Preps into an urban oasis: a playful collective curatorial pedagogy to slow down, connect and reclaim joy and wellbeing in early childhood.

Many toys now light up, move and talk. They often play more than the child does. Behind the retreat sat a question drawn from research on slow pedagogy and self-determination: what becomes possible when products stop telling children what to do?

Children and families moved between a Gratitude Garden, a Bubble and Breath Zone, a cosy reading nook and a Relaxation Station, with lavender bags to make and yoga and scarf dancing in Movement Magic. Seva-inspired shared meals had children serving snack to one another. Each classroom shaped its own Joy of Generations: where grandparents lived close enough to visit, they came in to share the games of their own childhoods, and classes whose families are spread across the world found their own ways to bring those generations into the room.

What teachers described afterwards was less about the toys than about themselves. Their reflections kept returning to letting go, and to the freedom, permission and trust that came with it. Parents, it turned out, wanted to join in too.

Article 31 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child names play as a right, not a reward. The Joy Retreat is our attempt to take that seriously: to protect time to tinker, potter and explore, and to notice what children reach for when nothing is reaching for them.

▶ Watch our short video below