Outdoor play at Pategill with Stomping Ground

Since Spring this year, the play area on the Pategill Estate has seen a weekly outdoor play session for kids on Tuesdays after school. These sessions have been delivered by Cumbrian based not-for-profit Stomping Ground CIC. The Pategill project is all about encouraging kids to “play out” more and each week we provide craft, a snack, games if the kids want them and it’s free to attend, thanks to funding.

Stomping Ground is a Community Interest Company inspiring creative workshops, community events and projects in Cumbria and the North of Lancashire since 2011. We work with communities, charities and companies to make spaces for people to come together, create and play. Gem Webb, Di Larfynn and Lily Horseman are the directors of Stomping Ground and have a collective experience of creative arts workshops and commissions, outdoor play and Forest School, event organising and community consultation.

Gem leads on the Pategill project and has lived in Penrith since 2016. Working with local Forest School leader Caitlin Nugent, we’ve run 24 sessions since March at the Pategill play area as well as 2 much larger family friendly events on the Thacka Beck field behind the hospital this Summer. This project has been funded by the Community Fund National Lottery and Penrith Town Council, and we’ve reached approximately 175 people throughout.

None of this would have been possible without the support of the residents who welcomed us at the start of the project before we even had the funding in place, and the assistance of local councillors and the resident’s association, not to mention the families who come and chatted to us and allowed the kids out to play in all kinds of weather.

We’ve really enjoyed being able to provide a fun, safe way for the kids to get outside and get to know each other better, and they’ve been a lot of fun, really creative and worked really hard to get on with each other. Our main aim of this project was to make “playing out” something that people wanted to do and felt safe to do so, we know that regularly playing outdoors has load of benefits, like better physical health, improved mental health and after two years of the play area being shut and the Covid lockdowns we thought this was really important.

The special bit about any Stomping Ground session is that anyone participating always has a choice if they want to join in or not, as long as they’re keeping themselves and others safe, they can choose what they want to do. This means that those attending can reap the benefits of outdoor play including trying out risky play and social skills, which don’t tend to happen as much in organised adult led activities.

After recently securing funding from Eden District Council this means we’ll be back March 7th at 4pm – 6:30pm for another 5 months of sessions and a family event on the 30th May during the Half Term.

Thanks for having us, Pategill, we’ve had loads of fun!

For more information about Stomping Ground and what we can do, find us at: www.stompingground.org.uk or www. facebook.com/StompingGroundCIC