Current Work Category: Adventure play

PROJECT: Emergency Play Parcels

FUNDER: The National Lottery Community Fund, distributed by City Bridge Trust through the London Community Response Fund.

DATES: July/December 2020

Play was an early casualty of the coronavirus pandemic. Children’s lives were stopped in their tracks: schools and playgrounds closed, families were confined to their homes and social interaction all but ceased.  London Play swung into action.

Although the explosion in food poverty is a widely-recognised consequence of the coronavirus pandemic; play deprivation is the less visible tragedy for the capital’s 1.8m children.  For the 37 per cent of children already living in poverty, or the 22 per cent living in overcrowded homes, the deprivation is even more acute.

London Play’s Emergency Play Parcels were put together at warp speed to alleviate the suffering of children who had been denied the simple opportunity of playing with their friends.

The parcels included a unique deck of 52 playing cards produced by the team at London Play, each describing a game or activity to be played at home or even over the phone with relatives or friends. Small and simple props to support the games they describe, such as chalk, balloons, drawing materials and minifigures, are included in the box.

Thanks to two rounds of funding from The National Lottery Community Fund (TNLCF) Covid-19 Response Fund,  some 5,000 parcels were distributed in two swathes (in July and December 2020) to families most in need via adventure playgrounds and food banks. Most of the capital’s 80 unique adventure playgrounds are located in lower income neighbourhoods where children are most likely to be suffering the worst impacts of the pandemic. These safe, staffed community hubs had been forced to close their gates for play, but many rose to the challenge presented by the pandemic and began distributing food and more for people in need.

PROJECT: Neighbourhood Play Havens

FUNDER: The National Lottery Communities Fund

DATES: July-December 2020

Play was an early casualty of the coronavirus pandemic. Children’s lives were stopped in their tracks: schools and playgrounds closed, families were confined to their homes and social interaction all but ceased.  London Play swung into action.

Following the first lockdown, adventure playgrounds were forced to open only to limited numbers of children, who were usually required to book in advance.

Open access adventure play became a thing of the past.

Excluded were those living in families with clinical vulnerabilities; children unable to access or navigate booking systems and many others.

Funding from the Coronavirus Community Support Fund, distributed by The National Lottery Community Fund, enabled London Play to ensure that adventurous play was within their reach.

The Neighbourhood Play Havens project funded adventure playgrounds to open to individual families for weekly private play sessions; or to offer additional ‘bubble’ sessions for children that had been unable to book into their core offer.

Three case studies can be downloaded below.

Funder: City Bridge Trust

OK, so WE KNOW that adventure playgrounds are worth their weight in gold. But the Play Works project aimed to make sure potential funders could see this too!

Play Works was an exciting joint project between London Play and adventure playground organisations –  developing tools, techniques and resources to monitor, evaluate and sustain London’s unique and precious adventure playgrounds.

Phase I of the project kicked off in 2015 and supported staff in 12 of London’s adventure playgrounds to develop their own systems of monitoring and evaluation. Useable, fun and most importantly, work for adventure play staff, they have been able to demonstrate the huge positive impact they have on the communities they serve.

Play Works II was originally envisaged as a face to face training programme for managers of adventure playgrounds, taking the monitoring and evaluation tools developed during the first phase of the project and embedding them at a senior level.

However it soon became apparent that this was not what was needed most. Management staff across the sector lacked the capacity to take time away from the very immediate pressures of operations and neverending funding applications. So the question became: “How can this project best equip and support adventure playgrounds while demanding very little in terms of commitment from time-stretched staff?”

A new website, which celebrates adventure playgrounds, their value to their communities and London as a global leader for adventure play, is now in development. Scheduled for launch in spring 2021, the site will also feature a members’ area where play workers, volunteers and other adventure playground staff can access online training resources, tools, information and support. With many of these resources commissioned from playgrounds that have successfully used them in practice, we hope that the site, as it develops, will become a valuable source of support and inspiration to anyone with an interest in adventure play.

Find out more by getting in touch with Chrissy Baxter via chrissy@londonplay.org.uk.

And watch this space!