Play & Activity February 2019

Campaign calls for two-hour screen time guideline

A new report out today shows for the fi rst time a strong link between recreational screen time and children’s inactivity, with children choosing to spend hours indoors and on screens instead of playing outside.

The report released by the Association of Play Industries -A Movement for Movement –reveals that children have never moved so little and points to substantial evidence

that screens are a key reason.

There appears to be a ‘rapid and dramatic’ change from outdoor to indoor time, with a 50 per cent increase in children’s discretionary screen time (DST) in less than a decade.

By the age of eight, the average child will have spent one full year sitting in front of a screen.

The report’s author, Dr Aric Sigman, a health education

lecturer and leading expert on the effects of recreational screen time on children, says action is urgently required.

“This report confirms what most parents already know, that discretionary screen time is their children’s main activity.

Whether it’s watching TV, playing games on laptops and iPads or spending time on social media, recreational screen time is occupying hours

of their day, and has replaced outdoor play.

Parents are looking for support and guidance on how to go back-to-basics to limit discretionary screen time and get their children outdoors and playing again.

The introduction of a two-hour limit for daily recreational screen time will offer specifi c advice to parents and with the

support of government, we can start to tackle the increasing screen time issue.”

The Association of Play Industries Chair, Mark Hardy, says: “Unless the government takesstepstohelpparentsreduce children’s discretionary screen time, current attempts to tackle childhood obesity and poor mental health are likely to fail.

“At the same time, we also need urgent investment in freeto-use outdoor play facilities, particularly in deprived areas where such facilities can have the greatest impact. Our recent Nowhere To Play report highlights the alarming decline in playgrounds in recent years.”

The Association of Play Industries’ campaign is focussed on two main asks, calling upon the government to: issue an offi cial recommendation of two hours discretionary screen time perdayforchildren;andinvestin outdoorplayprovision,especially in deprived areas, to reverse the decline in playgrounds.

Green spaces become outdoor learning and training venues

Elba Park is a site playing a lead role in The Land Trust’s education work and was awarded Land Trust Education Site of the Year after delivering activities to nearly 1,000 school children over the last 12 months.

Based in Sunderland the team at Elba have built excellent working relationships with local schools which has seen children enjoy activities such as geocaching, pond dipping, meadow sweeps, crafts, surveys and identification, bulb and tree planting and heritage activities.

Students from Portland Academy, a school for young people with special educational needs and disability, attend weekly sessions at the site with

Funding to help children get active

The Daily Mile is aiming to increase children’s activity levels as Sport England invests £1.5 million of National Lottery money in the groundbreaking scheme.

Sport England recently published its first Active Lives Children and Young People report, which showed that more than 2.3 million children do fewer than 30 minutes of physical activity a day. This new partnership

with The Daily Mile will fund the recruitment of national and local coordinators to support and encourage more schools in England to sign up – with a vision of helping all 20,000 primary schools in the country to take part in an active mile a day. A third of children in England do fewer than 30 minutes of physical activity a day.

Sport England

post-16 students undertaking the Duke of Edinburgh award.

The Land Trust

Association of Play Industries

Wicksteed

Feel ‘the power’ with Connor Sport Court

Connor Sport Court, owned by international flooring and interiors specialist Gerflor is the market leader in sports surfacing.

In a testament to improving kids’ lives Connor and Gerflor as companies are constantly looking for opportunities to create a better world. In the sports division, it manifests itself in creating safer places for children to unlock their potential and become champions of life.

A strong partnership with the charity Beyond Sport looks set to enable this commitment to flourish. The safest outdoor court in the world PowerGame® from Connor

Sport Court features the lowest skin abrasion of any outdoor court surface and is made of the highest quality materials and UV stabilisers to protect the specifiers investment and is a perfect fit

for a host of performance sports including; badminton, tennis, basketball, netball and hockey.

Playforce supports children’s hospices across the UK

As part of Playforce’s ‘Nature Month’, the company selected children’s hospices across the UK to receive brand new ‘natural world’ play equipment, free of charge.

The hospices were nominated by national charity, Together for Short Lives, following their 2018 Children’s Hospice Week.

Together for Short Lives is the UK charity for seriously ill children living with lifelimiting or terminal conditions that cannot be cured.

Myra Johnson, Director of Communications & Engagement

at Together for Short Lives said:

“We are here to support and empower children and their families – and to build a strong and sustainable children’s palliative care system – so that no family is left to cope alone.

“Together with the UK’s 54 children’s hospices, we provide a lifeline to families, whenever and wherever they need it.

Children’s Hospice Week is our biggest appeal and this year we asked our children and families to share their favourite things to do – playing outside was one of their top five moments.

Playforce’s donations are a lovely way of supporting

this and the UK’s children’s hospices.”

Emily Northin, Director of Marketing at Playforce, said: “We work with a number of children’s hospices and have long admired. Together for Short Lives for the difference it makes in encouraging support for them. At Playforce we’re passionate about helping children to enjoy the outdoors and nature.

We saw our recent Nature Month as an opportunity to help more children – and those closest to them – to do this, at a time when they need it most.”

Playforce

StreetGames to expand in 50 areas

Young people in 50 of England’s most disadvantaged areas are being given the chance to get more active thanks to a £6.6 million, three-year partnership with StreetGames.

The awarding of the National Lottery funds follows a £500,000 grant made to the charity last year, and will allow them to build on their 11 years of using sport to enhance the life chances of young people growing up in deprived areas.

StreetGames uses the experience of their award-winning coaches, local know-how and the latest in community sport, research and insight to help communities throughout our nation to become healthier, safer and more successful.

The charity has welcomed 3.86 million total attendees to their sessions and events in 11 years. The charity has worked with more than 1,000 locally trusted organisations that are embedded in communities, bringing the benefits of sport and physical activity to more than 530,000 young people.

Their CEO and co-founder, Jane Ashworth, has overseen the charity welcome a total of 3.8 million attendees to their sessions and events, involving 6,182 coaches and 15,000 volunteers – and she is still determined to see it grow.

“StreetGames is absolutely committed to improving the lives of disadvantaged young people and their communities through sport,” she said.

“Not only getting them more active but ensuring we support their mental and physical wellbeing, develop them as individuals within their communities, combat inequalities and help build an activity habit that stays with them for a lifetime.

“This critical Sport England investment will allow us to continue using sport and physical activity to help create stronger, more resilient communities in these 50 areas and beyond.”

Gerflor

New Wicksteed outdoor gyms for London borough

Wicksteed are delighted to open some fantastic new outdoor fitness zones in the London Borough of Croydon.

The sites are a great showcase for some of the best pieces from our comprehensive range of outdoor fitness equipment from the Wicksteed Fitness Legacy Zone range, including the Calisthenics Zone, Pull Down Exerciser and Cycle Bike.

The new Calisthenics Zone at Purley Way in Croydon has been received incredibly well with the Kinetick Kontrol

Calisthenics group. Kinetick Kontrol are a fitness group based in Croydon with members coming from a broad range of athletic backgrounds including sprinters, triple jumpers, footballers and basketballers.

Edris Kizito of Kinetick Kontrol commented: “It (Wicksteed Calisthenics Zone) has been amazing. It has allowed us to be able to promote these free sessions on Saturday. In an area where there was not much to do for young people, alternatives being unhealthy or getting in trouble with local enforcement.

“To summarise, it has been the tool we needed to help our community.Breakingstereotypes, promoting health and wellness, and giving our community relatablepositiveinfl uences.”

Wicksteed understands the importance of a fi t and healthy lifestyle and as such has created the Wicksteed Fit app to accompany their Fitness Zones.

The app can be found on the home page of the Wicksteed websitewicksteed.co.uk

Wicksteed

New report finds screens are displacing play

‘A Movement for Movement’ report addresses the relationship between an increasingly screenbased, sedentary, reduced-sleep lifestyle, declining outdoor physical activity, and the implications for children’s physical and mental health outcomes.

By the time they finish primary school many children have the highest levels of body fat on record. Rates of child type 2 diabetes and mental illness are also the highest in our history. Children now sleep less and have the highest level of admissions to NHS hospitals for sleep disorders. At the same time British children are spending the highest ever amount of their discretionary time in front of screens.

“These issues are often presented as separate lifestyle factors yet there is growing evidence that they are not unrelated,” says Dr Sigman. “Increasingly, interrelationships are being identified between physical activity, free play, sedentary behaviour, discretionary screen time, sleep, mental illness, body fat and type 2 diabetes.

A bird’s eye view

The Priory Parish CE Primary School contacted Creative Play as they were looking to redevelop their existing play area. They wanted to remove the whole area and start from scratch to create a new environment that would allow children to explore the outdoors whilst developing fundamental movement skills and building confidence.

The area was to be used by both KS1 & KS2 children, therefore Creative Play had to provide something that would be suitable for a wide range

of ages and abilities.After removing their current steel equipment, fencing, bushes & shrubs as well as excavating the ground, Creative Play installed a wide selection of equipment including a Jigsaw Tower System, suitable for a wide age range, a variety of Trim Trail items including a Jelly Board, Stepping Logs and Parallel Ropes, and a bespoke Octavia Shelter with planters, chalk board and trellis archway entrance.

Now the new area now offers a great mixture of equipment for not

only play but outdoor learning and exploration, too.

In addition to the play equipment we laid multiple safety surfaces; Wetpour, Rubber Mulch and Artificial Grass, throughout the area. This helped to enhance the natural feel and complemented the surrounding area perfectly whilst, more importantly, ensuring the new playground met all the BSEN 1176/1177 standards.

Creative Play

“There is an urgent need to reconceptualise these behaviours not as separate components but as inextricably linked. Parents and policy-makers must now work in tandem to ensure that all elements of children’s movement behaviours are considered together, rather than being seen as the responsibility of separate government departments.”

There is an ideal ‘routine’ of activity within a day, also known as Sweat, Step, Sleep and Sit. Dr Sigman recommends these behaviours are adopted by parents in their back-to-basics approach to encourage more movement.

“Parental monitoring and the establishing of discretionary screen time limits can shape longterm media consumption habits and may prove a major preventer of mental health problems including screen dependency disorders,” says Dr Sigman.

“And as children move far more when they are outside than inside, and the majority live in urban areas, investment in attractive, good quality, free

and local playground provision is vital so they have somewhere to play.” API Chair Mark Hardy adds: “We commissioned A Movement for Movement to draw together the alarming body of evidence showing the effects that less play and more screens are having on children.

“In light of the shocking statistics in this report, there is a real urgency to drive change before the long-term and permanent effects on children’s health and wellbeing become irreversible. This requires action from both the government and parents to counteract the effects of too much recreational screen time. Parents need to be supported in imposing limits on this and provided with easily accessible areas in which their children can play.

“Play is such a huge part of a child’s development and playgrounds are a much-needed resource that are sadly under threat. This urgently needs to be reversed to ensure the health of a generation.”

API

A healthier approach to weed control in playgrounds

A question often posed by residents to their local councils is whether there is still a need to continue spraying traditional herbicides such as glyphosate in public areas when chemicalfree options exist.

Typically, glyphosate is used across all public spaces on streets, in parks and in playgrounds where children and animals play.

Whether herbicides are proven to harm people and animals is

Sutcliffe Play spins into 2019

Sutcliffe Play, one of the UK’s leading manufacturers of children’s playground equipment, is introducing a new range of spinners and rotators for 2019.

“We’re always looking to go that extra mile with equipment that’s guaranteed to excite and delight, and our new range of rotators and spinners is no exception,” says Andy Love from Sutcliffe Play.

New products include: Whirlybob Roundabout; Hula Rotator; Space Trainer; and Maelstrom.

Andy continues: “Our range of spinners and rotators is perfect for any child looking for an exhilarating play experience, whether that be as a standalone item, or as a playground filler when used in conjunction with our wider play offering.”

Sutcliffe Play

Orchard range continues to grow

Sutcliffe Play is introducing innovative new additions to the wooden Orchard play equipment range for 2019.

“We’ve been hard at work developing exciting pieces for our popular Orchard range, which is specifi cally designed to enable inclusive play in a more natural environment,” says Andy Love from Sutcliffe Play. “We’ve developed an indepth understanding of inclusive play over the years, allowing us to design kit that’s functional,

durable and fun for children from all walks of life. These new additions offer a combination of physically challenging activities that children of all ages and abilities can enjoy, complementing a more natural setting where required.”

The new equipment includes:

• Orchard Ship – this themed unit will make an impact in any play area. Complete with a central mast with a top sail, as well as Moon sail and Flying Jib, the fore deck

includes a climbing wall, vertical rungs and binocular lookout. A rigging net also connects the deck to the aft deck; a larger platform with five sides which enables crawling or shuffling to reach the various inclusive elements.

• Hazel – the first unit in the Orchard range to be designed with inclusivity front of mind, this unit can be linked with a variety of other units in the range for a unique playground design.

Inspired by nature, with 12 play activities, the central deck features five sides with a variety of access points for users of different abilities and inclinations.

Andy continues: “Every child should have equal access to opportunities to play side-byside; our new additions to the Orchard range offer something for everyone, to stimulate the senses, for a unique play experience.”

New Proludic outdoor gym takes residents’ workouts to the max

Charnwood Borough Council has invested £40,000 in a new outdoor gym with its own phone app at Southfields Park in Loughborough to improve the open space and encourage people to get active.

Designed and installed by Proludic, the outdoor gym comprises 12 stations from Proludic’s Urbanix range, set in dedicated zones – upper body, lower body and cardio – to provide a full body workout.

Certified to gym standard EN16630, the Urbanix fi tness range allows users to exercise all of the main core muscle groups as well as undertaking cardiovascular workouts.

The patented bi-directional hydraulic system can be set in eight different positions,

enabling people of all abilities to exercise at a pace suitable for them and to progress the diffi culty as fi tness improves. The Polysafe seats and handles are user friendly, and designed to stand up to intensive use in an outdoor environment.

Proludic also installed a Calisthenics Rig for users to create bespoke workouts and surfaced the area with a mixture of Wet Pour and Rubber Mulch to create an all-weather surface, making it accessible all year round.

Users can download the free Proludic Sports app for instructions on how to use the equipment, track their workouts and set up fitness groups.

“The new outdoor gym is a great addition to the park. We asked residents what they

wanted and introducing a wider range of facilities was popular among respondents,” says Councillor Jenny Bokor, lead member for Loughborough.

“The gym means residents and visitors can get some fresh air

and a bit of additional exercise and the app can provide some guidance and a bit of motivation. We hope people will enjoy using both.”

Proludic

Sutcliffe Play