The role and benefit of manufactured play equipment
Andy Furze was the Parks manager at Thurrock Council for many years. He was instrumental in developing many great park playgrounds, including the huge Greys Beach destination play area, a lovely day out for local people with children, who will not be able to afford a holiday away from home.
There are many smaller community play areas as well, some developed in consultation with youth services to cater for teenagers. Most use sand as a safety surface, and few have fences around them, mainly because Andy thought it best to spend the entire budget on improving children's play opportunities.
Andy was concerned when he first read Play England's Planning for Play - it seemed to him to not pay sufficient attention to the importance of fixed or manufactured play equipment, but focused mainly on the benefit of play in natural environments. The paper downloadable at the end of the page argues for the importance of fixed and manufactured play environments, mostly from the child's perspective.
PLAYLINK - Playground Procurement and Maintenance Survey
The leading play consultancy PLAYLINK has recently completed a research report on the practices of park and public housing managers when they order new playgrounds or maintenance contracts on play areas. PLAYLINK has worked to try to identify exactly why some public play areas are not interesting and fun to children, and why so many contain only manufactured equipment. Full details. The report's author, Sarah Cheverton is quoted in a "Children and Young People Now" magazine article explaining, "The underlying ethos of local authority service provision is often predominantly risk averse. But exposure to risk is vital to encourage creativity and personal development"
This is particularly interesting in the context of discussions with manufacturers, who when confronted with particularly boring playgrounds they have installed, always blame the site owners who have ordered them. London Play has some sympathy with this view. On a recent trip to Denmark sponsored by Kompan, we saw their equipment in public parks and a school with no fence or walls around its playground blended seamlessly into natural play environments, with sand, trees, grassy slopes, planting, streams and ponds all offering further play potential to the equipment itself.
The Association of Play Industries
The API is the lead trade body within the play sector representing the interests of manufacturers, designers and distributors of both indoor and outdoor play equipment and play area surfacing. The API website contains listings of most of the major manufacturers of fixed play equipment.
