It’s pizza all round for three London adventure playgrounds that kept the spirit of adventure play alive during the ongoing pandemic.

[London Play press release]

Three London adventure playgrounds that went to extraordinary lengths to keep children playing – and in some cases, fed too – during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic were yesterday announced as joint winners of the coveted London Adventure Playground of the Year Award. Excited children and staff at Triangle and Max Roach Adventure Playgrounds in Lambeth and Hackney Marsh Adventure Playground heard the news via a premiere on London Play’s YouTube channel.

Usually celebrated in noisy style with hundreds of children at the Prince Charles Cinema excited to see their own films about the places they play on the big screen, this year’s online event was very different. But the message – that play, and adventure playgrounds in particular, are vital for children’s wellbeing and happiness – endures, and has, if anything, been amplified by circumstances which have seen children’s right and opportunities to play curtailed like never before.

There is no doubt that it has been a challenge for adventure playgrounds, whose ethos is open, tactile and very much ‘hands on’, to adapt their services to the restrictions imposed by the coronavirus pandemic. Located in neighbourhoods where families are more likely to be living in flats with no open space and in potentially challenging circumstances – being forced to close their gates on these children was difficult.  But adapt they did, and the three winning playgrounds stood out for their innovative approaches, demonstrated in the films they submitted as their award entries and in their stories from a summer like no other.