Play & Activity December 2019

Report pushes for urgent investment in public playgrounds

The APPG on a Fit & Healthy Childhood has released its 14th report: Mental Health Through Movement and says that ‘movement is the mainspring for children’s mental health’.

The Association of Play Industries (API) has been delighted to contribute significantly to the report, outlining how children are pulled indoors by the power of digital culture and pushed away from outdoor play due to severe cuts to playground provision.

API Chair Mark Hardy says: “Over 1100 parents responded to our Play MustStay survey through Mumsnet telling us loudly and clearly that this is an issue they are extremely worried about.

“All scientific evidence points to the fact that movement is vital for children’s mental health and for normal, healthy development. We have now a generation of children who are being deprived of free, unstructured, outdoor play and as such, a troubled generation.

“Parents know this instinctively. Over a quarter of those parents surveyed who have children with mental health difficulties said that the lack of local playgrounds had played a role in their children’s problems. This result was replicated also for those children experiencing issues with their sleep.

“Frustratingly, one of the core solutions to the mental health crisis is a simple and relatively cheap one: as most children live in urban areas, playgrounds often represent their only opportunity for outdoor play.

“Unless the alarming cuts to playground provision uncovered in our Nowhere To Play research are reversed, and more playgrounds created to secure future outdoor play, the mental health crisis will spiral yet deeper.

“There is now an urgent need to restore outdoor play as the primary leisure activity for children, replacing indoor, solitary and sedentary screenbased time.

“Children sit for hours on end, not moving or socialising and this is having a devastating impact on their mental and physical health.

we have to ‘catch’ children and imbue in them a sense that outdoor play is the norm, so ensuring that movement becomes a lifetime habit.

healthy children, in body and mind. Playgrounds need to be abundant, accessible, safe and convenient to truly meet the needs of communities.

“Free, community playgrounds are absolutely key in this. We must not take them for granted; once a playground is lost it is usually lost for good. As the report points out, this is not about a nanny state interfering, it is about empowering and supporting parents in their endeavours to raise fit and

“We are calling upon the government for urgent and sustained funding for public playground provision; a relatively modest investment now will pay great dividends for this and generations to come.” API

Playscheme calls for public playground investment Thousands of children go out to play for Playday 2019

The playground creators at Playscheme are getting behind the Association of Play Industries (API) “Play Must Stay” campaign, which highlights alarming trends in playground closures and increases in children’s screentime.

The API’s research shows that more than one public playground is closed every week, with a 44% decrease in spend on play facilities forecast by 2020/21 when compared to 2017/18.

Simultaneously, parents are highlighting that having access to playgrounds would make their child more active and that nearly 50% of parents are struggling to persuade their child to leave their screen behind. As API members, Playscheme is echoing the Association’s call for urgent and sustained investment in public

play provision. Steve Danby, Playscheme Managing Director, said, “The API’s research shows that increasing local play provision encourages children to play outside more and to move away from their screens.”

He adds: “As well as sustained local and government investment, we believe there’s a need for us all to play our part in encouraging children to be active. We can set good examples ourselves, and we can also call on those who

“Our research shows that, as early as age 8, children are starting to shun outdoor play in favour of screen time, and by the ages of 10 to 12, 69% of them prefer screens, with parents finding it difficult to persuade them to go outside. There is a critical period when have influence – such as social media companies – to do their part. Today, for example, if you want to post a status update to Facebook to say you’re “playing”, the lead icon that pops up is a games console. If you search for social media gifs on the theme of “play”, you’ll find plenty of cat videos, but scant evidence of children playing. In our view, this does little to encourage children to be active.”

Playscheme

Thousands of children and young people from across the UK went out playing, celebrating Playday – the national day for play – in August. Hundreds of local and regional play events are taking place to promote the importance of children’s right to play. Having plenty of opportunities to explore and play outdoors is essential for children’s physical and mental health, as well as their happiness, learning and development.

The Playday 2019 theme – Play Builds Children – highlights the many ways play is good for children:

• Play Builds Friendships –playing allows children to interact with others, develop relationships, deal with

conflict, and learn respect and tolerance.

Play Builds Resilience –playing boosts children’s confidence, creativity, problem-solving skills and perseverance, enabling them to cope with stress and challenges throughout life.

• Play Builds Health and Wellbeing – being active through play helps children physically and emotionally, contributing to their health and happiness.

• Play Builds Communities –playing allows children to learn about the world around them, make connections, and develop a sense of identity and belonging.

Playday

New play area for Birmingham Children’s Hospital

physical and interactive games against each other. Exercises and games are created with the E-Wall via a simple to use app. Children then answer the questions by running and jumping, hitting appropriate flashing satellite buttons.

The play area is finished with colourful wet pour surfacing which includes a train track with train and carriage for imaginative play. Surrounding the space is a huge bespoke mural featuring train tunnels and rolling countryside to let children’s imaginations run wild!

Nursery helps trio of local primary schools to bloom

Commercial nursery Johnsons of Whixley is helping to nurture the next generation of gardeners by donating plants and bulbs to three local primary schools.

Johnsons provided more than 600 daffodil bulbs, 12 bags of compost and 300 pots to Kirk Hammerton Church of England Primary and Tockwith Church of England Primary Academy, where greenfingered pupils will plant and tend the bulbs. Four members of the Richardson family, which owns Johnsons, attended Kirk Hammerton primary school, which is just a mile and a half from the company’s main site.

space for children who wanted ‘quiet time’.

The project was the culmination of several months of design and development between the Wicksteed in-house design team and the Hospital.

The previous play area didn’t offer the children enough play value and would only keep them engaged for short periods.

Children can spend long weeks/ months as patients in the hospital and the play area is an important area for them to enjoy their free time. It was vital that the design for the hospital was inclusive, colourful and packed full of sensory play features.

Birmingham Children’s Hospital now has a play area which caters for a wide age range of children of all abilities. The design features inclusive items such as the Swirl Roundabout and Mini Basket Swing and a football/ basketball area for ball games.

The hospital specified a sensory area so that there was a

The sensory area has an artificial grass surface with seating, musical items and activity panels.

As well as an abundance of exciting new play equipment such as slides and roundabouts, the new play area at the hospital now features our innovative electronic play equipment.

The Wicksteed E-Wall allows children to play educational,

Birmingham Children’s Hospital is our second successful project working alongside the NHS this year.

Adding colourful spaces where children can, for a couple of hours at least, escape to fantasy worlds and go on their own adventure or even just get a bit of quiet time to read their favourite book makes all of our jobs here at Wicksteed tremendously worthwhile.

Wicksteed Playgrounds

In addition, the company donated 60 plants worth £150 to Coppice Valley Primary School in Harrogate, where Johnsons’ client Ray Skeltons (Harrogate) Ltd is carrying out a landscaping project. Among the plants gifted to the school were Lavender Hidcote, Hebe ‘Red Edge’ Photinia ‘Red Robin’, Euonymus ‘Emerald Gaiety’, Skimmia rubella and Choisya ternata ‘sundance’.

This latest round of donations brings the total value of plants given to local schools this year to nearly £4,000. Included in this was a donation of plants worth £2,500 to Springwater Special School, Harrogate, lavenders worth £540 to Tockwith Church of England Primary Academy and £50 of plants to Roecliffe Church

of England Primary School.

Justin Reeve Headteacher at Tockwith School said: “Thank you so much to Johnsons of Whixley’s for giving every child in the school the opportunity to add a bit of colour to their own gardens by donating a daffodil plant. We are very grateful for this generous offering and the chance for our children to plant and tend to the bulbs.”

Emma Meadus Headteacher at Coppice Valley Primary School said: “We are so grateful to Johnson’s of Whixley and their generous donation. With their help, we are working towards redeveloping the space at the front of the school into a community garden with space for enjoying nature and growing food.

“The beautiful plants from Johnson’s have become part of our wellbeing space for all the community to enjoy.”

Kirk Hammerton

“We are so fortunate to have

of Johnsons of Whixley who provided daffodils bulbs for all of the children. The children are patiently awaiting a break in the weather so that they can plant the bulbs in our wilderness garden. We all look forward to them appearing in the spring!”

Eleanor Richardson, marketing and sales co-ordinator at Johnsons, said: “We love helping out local schools and charities where we can, especially when there’s a chance of encouraging the next generation of gardeners.I remember planting bulbs the same way at Kirk Hammerton Church of England Primary School, so it’s great to be providing bulbs in the same way over 18 years later, I always thoroughly enjoyed seeing them pop up in the spring.”

Johnsons of Whixley

Wicksteed was delighted to see the opening of the new inclusive play area at Birmingham Children’s Hospital.

primary school added:

the support

Coastal hit for Gerflor at Atlantic Academy with Taraflex®

The contribution of the school environment to a child’s development with daily physical activity through sport and physical education (PE) cannot be ignored.

The role that sport now plays in the ‘Academies’ environment is proving to be a fundamental building block in the overall pupil’s experience.

Atlantic Academy’s brand-new building at Bucks Cross in North Devon finally opened its doors in September 2018. As part of the overall curriculum Atlantic Academy aim for all students to excel, both in lessons and through extra-curricular activities which includes a huge focus on sport and fitness.

In specifying the new facilities, the team at the main construction firm Willmott Dixon recommended sports flooring that would not only be of the highest quality, but would also be suitable for multiple uses, would be fit for purpose and deliver a future proof solution which is so vital in the education sector.

It would be a challenge wellmet by international flooring specialist Gerflor supplying 621m2 of their world-renowned Taraflex ® Comfort sports flooring in Blue for the sports hall and 582m2 Multi-Use sports flooring in Wood Grey for the performance space.

Specifying Gerflor’s Taraflex® was the ideal choice in terms of delivering a speedy installation, together with providing highend sports performance that the successful school basketball team required as well as the required safety and comfort for players.

The Construction Manager Michael Mackey from Willmott Dixon commented: “This was a Scape 3 Project which we tendered for back in 2012. The tog value of the cushioned vinyl sports flooring needed to be a certain rating in order to achieve the output performance specification for the underfloor heating.

“The Gerflor chosen sports floorings are performing really well and delivering exactly the results we wanted.”

The Taraflex ® ranges have been used by the largest international sports federations (volleyball, handball, badminton, table tennis) for decades. Through partnerships with these federations Gerflor has been present at the Summer Olympic Games since 1976. It’s an Olympic pedigree stretching back over an incredible 43 years.

Taraflex ® sports floorings are not only associated with international sporting events but continue to be a popular choice in a vast array of education markets and applications.

Gerflor understands how important it is to future proof school, college and other learning building interiors, therefore their solutions offer optimum safety, comfort, performance and are competitively priced to meet the needs of most education budgets.

Taraflex® Comfort is a P3 category sports flooring, ideal for a variety of sport and leisure activities.

Offering the highest level of shock absorption, minimising the force of impact on the body and reducing long term injury risk. Taraflex® Comfort is available in 17 colours and three wood-effect designs as standard.

Taraflex ® Multi-use is a P1 category sports flooring designed with both sport and non-sport use in mind, making it ideal for multi-purpose areas including school halls.

It protects players with excellent shock absorption and impact protection. Yet it’s tough enough to protect itself against non-sport demands often found in schools such as tables and chairs.

Taraflex ® Multi-use being available in 5 wood-effect and

2 concrete-effect designs. Both products are available in an extra 110 solid colour options with a 500sqm minimum order quantity.

The products are also treated with Protecsol, which renders

polish redundant and is triple action meaning no polish is ever required, it contributes to easy maintenance and is anti-friction burn and slide/grip.

Spadeoak creates outdoor gym from recycled knives

A majority of the equipment featured in the park in Brixton, South London, is made from recycled knives. It is the latest project from Steel Warriors - a charity that aims to reduce the number of young people carrying knives in the UK through melting down knives that haven’t been used in conflict and creating spaces for exercise.

Spadeoak laid the sub-base, kerbs, equipment and foundations and rubber cumb top-layer on the project, and those involved are delighted to have played their part in such an important project.

Mounted spreader with adjustable stainless steel deflectors and manual or hydraulic shutter control. Available in 250 litre, 560 litre and 750 litre hopper capacities.

See our landscape mainenance range at www.kuhn-amenitypro.co.uk

Gerflor

Contractor Spadeoak has completed work on a new outdoor calisthenics gym with a difference.

The Steel Warriors project aims to create 20 gyms in total, is supported by the Co-op and contractor Harry Grover, and boasts patrons like former world heavyweight champion boxer Anthony Joshua.

Spadeoak

Building a robust maintenance program is vital for the preservation of play

The nation’s parks are in peril. With the rate of playground closures at an all-time high, maintenance is in the spotlight with high ongoing costs being identified as the primary cause of playgrounds being decommissioned.

With the health of our children at risk, it is more important than ever that doorstep play facilities are available for all, and addressing the issue of maintenance is a key element of the ongoing preservation of play.

A large scale research program carried out by The Association of Play Industries (API) recently highlighted the alarming rate of closures. By 2020 there will have been a 44% decrease in spend on play, and around 500 play areas will have been closed nationally.

Cash strapped local authorities do not have the manpower or the budgets to ensure that the play areas are being kept in a safe condition, so the alternative is simply to rip out the equipment.

Paul Collings, Managing Director at Timberplay comments: “Maintenance should be a key consideration in any play development. Typically clients focus all of their budget into the initial design, creating a play area that delivers the ‘wow factor’ without any consideration for how this will look a few years down the line.

Whereas this is understandable, it is a shortcoming that needs addressing, particularly when local authorities are struggling with diminishing budgets.”Of course maintenance costs will vary from project to project, but in terms of ball park figures, it is prudent to allow between 5% and 10% of the initial cost as an ongoing maintenance budget.

German play supplier, Richter Spielgeräte manufactures some of the most highly regarded play equipment in the world.

Although the initial cost is high, great efforts have been made to ensure that the product will perform over the long term. However, wear and tear is unavoidable, which is why they try to isolate the parts that are likely to deteriorate so that these elements can be easily replaced, minimising the repair costs and ensuring longevity of the products.

Timberplay have a dedicated maintenance service, which clients can sign up to at a level suitable for the usage of their play area. Although waterplay is one of the most beneficial sources of play it can also be one of the most susceptible to maintenance issues.

Maintenance Manager, Steve Juggins comments: “To a certain extent waterplay is a victim of its own success. The popularity and

fantastic play value of this type of equipment can sometimes result in unexpected repair costs. The likelihood of this scenario can easily be avoided if the parks management adopt the policy of pre-planned, routine maintenance.

The main problem occurs when the recommended winter decommissioning procedure is not implemented. Freezing conditions can have a detrimental effect on the internal parts of the equipment which often lead to the failure of that particular valve. When the potentially problematic weather has passed the equipment can be re-commissioned the following spring.

Timberplay and Richter therefore strongly advise that park managers follow these recommendations in order to preserve longevity and reliability of the equipment.”

In addition to offering a

Safety first at major shopping venue

Westfield Shopping Centre, the largest shopping centre in the UK, recently contacted RTC Safety Services with a unique request.

Dave Green, Technical Production/Project Manager at Westfield Europe Ltd required 309 square metres of beige wet pour to be installed directly onto DPC membrane to create a curved pathway in the centre of the shopping centre.

What made this project unique, was that the wet pour safety surfacing was in fact installed as part of a summer event display. As over 20 million people are expected to visit Westfield Shopping Centre throughout the year during daytime hours, this unique installation proved to be challenging.

de-commissioning / recommissioning service for Waterplay, Timberplay are more than happy to instruct the park managers and staff on how to carry out this procedure as a one off at no extra cost.

The rate of playground closures currently happening on a National Scale represents a failure of our children and young people. With emerging health issues on the rise with our younger generations, playgrounds serve a

very significant purpose, and one that Public Authorities cannot undervalue.

For many children, a visit to a neighbourhood play park is one of the only physical activities they regularly participate in, moreover play areas also provide a fundamental space for building community interaction. A nation without play spaces will be a poorer place for everyone.

Timberplay

With a detailed design and numerous phone calls, the RTC team were able to fulfil the demands initially without a site visit due to our technical knowledge and expertise.

From the initial enquiry to the completed installation, RTC was able to meet additional requirements with a turnaround in less than a month.

What also challenged the team was that this brief required an overnight installation as the shopping centre’s customers caused near impossible access for us during the day as RTC had to take into account the Health and Safety implications.

Over three night shifts, the installation was completed comprising of beige wet pour

laid to a curved path design in London’s biggest mall. The wet pour pathway became part of The Beach Club event.

Dave Green commented: “We chose RTC because of their obvious experience in the field, and their impressive portfolio online. It was also obvious to me that they would be able to fulfil our stringent health and safety requirements.

“RTC supported us at a budget level and were very attentive in a relatively short lead time. The team onsite were courteous, pleasant and cooperative, which is even harder on a night shift. RTC will be our first choice in another similar challenge.”

RTC Safety Services

Lilly Elbra, Marketing Manager at Timberplay takes a look at the current climate for play, and the threats it is facing.

Say goodbye to ordinary ball courts and hello to familyinclusive zones

When we think of a ball court, we tend to picture a grey, rectangular, asphalt area with a set of goals or hoops at either end – usually with some kind of wired caging around the perimeter.

Pretty uninspiring, right? Well, that’s all changed… thanks to the vision and mission of a leading innovator –Playinnovation.

Playinnovation, one of the world’s most exciting playground equipment designers and installers, has spent the past 10 years redefining the ball court to create a new type of recreation space; one that enables all ages and abilities to enjoy being active – bringing friends, families and communities together.

Breaking from tradition, Playinnovation divides its ball courts into different, familyinclusive zones to provide something for everyone.

Using its unique target games (both fun and educational), basketball hoops with supercool backboards, and bespoke surfacing, it creates vibrant and inspirational environments, unlike

anything you’ve seen before. What’s more, Playinnovation offers an all-in-one solution for basketball and football with its innovative, multi-purpose goal.

Whatever your vision, Playinnovation has the creativity and expertise to bring your ball court to life.

Playinnovation

Going green for primary school project

Vicar’s Green Primary School approached Creative Play looking to develop a blank grassed area to introduce a selection of physical equipment to challenge KS2 children, along with a seated area.

We visited the school to assess the area understand the requirements of the school.

Following the visit, we sat with our design team to create an area that offers physical play through a variety of equipment such as one of our Jigsaw Play Towers that provides many play features to allow multiple children to enjoy at one time, a selection of Trim Trail including items such as a Tyre Crossing, Zigzag Beam and Overhead Ladder.

To keep in line with the appearance of the surrounding area we have laid artificial grass beneath and around the equipment – this also guaranteed the area to meet BSEN standards.

One of our Octavia Shelters was also incorporated to offer a seating area for children to take that well deserved break but also encourages children to take shelter from the sun during peak

times and provides a resource to take learning outdoors and using it as an outdoor classroom.

The area has been completely transformed to offer many benefits and includes so much play value for children to enjoy for many years to come – it is amazing what you can do with a blank area you think has no use!

A Flywheel first

Eythorne Parish Council has become the first playground in the UK to install our innovative new Flywheel roundabout.

The Elvington Play Area in Kent is the proud owner of the roundabout that has room for up to nine children to enjoy at once. The Flywheel features a central seating area for up to six children and three support bars to allow three more children to stand up. The bars also enable three children at once

to generate movement creating an exhilarating ride.We added the Flywheel alongside a new seesaw to an existing playground to improve the play value of an already much-loved playground.

Suzanne Collins from Eythorne Parish Council says: “We love the new equipment and we’re delighted that the children in our community are the first to enjoy Sutcliffe Play’s new Flywheel. The response has already been fantastic and it’s a

pleasure to watch children playing together on the new equipment.”

Modern roundabouts are a playground classic that come in many different forms and whilst children love the fun and speed they add to playgrounds there are many other benefits. Roundabouts help children to develop a better understanding of risk, they improve balance and encourage teamwork.

Sutcliffe Play

Creative Play