The Playground Group
Lochwinnoch is a village of some 4000 inhabitants in West Renfrewshire, located 20 miles south west of Glasgow. Through a combination of poor transport infrastructure, inadequate playground facilities and a rapidly expanding young population, parents in 1997 formed a registered charity - the Lochwinnoch Playground Group.
The playground group are parents with a strong belief in the benefits of a stimulating environment for the children. The group consists of professional people with experience in the fields of design, management and business finance. Through this broad experience and strong support from the local community the group has raised over £60,000 to upgrade the decaying play facilities in the village park.
What have we done?
Under 7's - the old play equipment was removed and a new toddler adventure unit was installed. The existing swings were still in reasonable condition and were repainted to match the new primary colour scheme thanks to a donation of paint from Hammerite. A roundabout and animal ride on toys have also been fitted. Because of the open nature of the playground we have used a soft-pour safety surface in the playground.
Over 7's - a more challenging adventure unit was installed with climbing wall, slide, rope net, climbing bars etc. The latest project was to install a rotating bubble net climber and this has proved to be a great hit with the kids.
Over 14's - we have installed the first cycle skills track in Scotland. Working in partnership with SUSTRANS and with local companies we installed a bike skills track in the park. The site is adjacent to the main Glasgow - Irvine cycle route and so the track is a popular stop-off point for visitors to the area as well as local people. Made from recycled materials we managed to secure funding via the ENTRUST program as well as getting help in-kind from Tarmac for construction materials. The project costing £23,000 in total is a challenging facility for older children as well as providing a safe off-road area for younger children to master their skills.
Promoting Ownership
An important element throughout the project has been to promote ownership. It was important to involve the children at every stage from design to implementation to give them some control and hopefully to reduce the risk of vandalism. We asked younger groups to draw pictures of what they liked to play on and what parks they liked to go to. When an older group raised a petition to express their concerns that they were being left out we followed that through to the design of the bike track where kids at the school chose the equipment for the track and designed the layout. Every child in the village primary school came down to the park one day and planted a tree or a bush in the area around the playground. Again, we had tremendous support from parents, from the school, from Starling Learning who incorporated the event into the school environmental studies program and also companies who supplied the trees and shrubs.
-barbara... chairperson