Tag: Playwork future

Call to SAVE Oasisplay

According to a post on Instagram, a community meeting is being held tonight at Stockwell Adventure Playground to discuss the future of Oasisplay.

On the Oasisplay website, it explains how, due to the closure of funding bodies and diminishing donations, Oasisplay is facing “a huge deficit” this financial year – going so far as to say that, without substantial fundraising, they will be forced to “close with immediate effect”.

Copyright © 2024 Oasis Children’s Venture

In addition to attending the meeting tonight, Oasisplay have suggested other ways you can support their cause:

  1. Spread the word – share this post or write your own on your social media or websites
  2. Display a poster in your window – printed copes are available at any Oasisplay site

Oasisplay have also launched a JustGiving fundraising page where people can donate to their cause.

“We feel confident that with the support of the community Oasisplay will survive the current situation. Please help by spreading the word and link to our fundraising page”

Further information from the JustGiving fundraising page:

Oasisplay describes its four sites as “a Nature Garden, a youth led Go Kart Track and two amazing Adventure Playgrounds, catering for children from birth to 18 years of age, or 25 years for disabled people” and how the organisation has been a part of the local community for 50 years.

According to the JustGiving page, each year they provide over 2000 hours of free and inclusive environmental play sessions, playwork provision on their adventure playgrounds, karting and mechanics sessions, holiday playschemes, day trips, community events, educational sessions and youth leadership opportunities.

In addition to these core provisions, Oasisplay also host a weekly food hub at each of their sites, distribute free tickets to local attractions and events to support local families, offer volunteering opportunities, and host activity sessions for schools.

At the time of publishing, £38,200 had been raised equating to 25% of their £150,000 goal

Like most open-access playwork provision, their services are open to all those who wish to use them. However, many referrals come from local authority and other multi-agency groups such as social services, youth offending teams, schools and other community organisations. This may be part of the reason why their services are in higher demand than ever.

Whilst many similar organisations and provisions have been lost in recent years, the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and cost-of-living crisis continue to significantly affect the both the financial and health status of their community. .

Unfortunately Oasisplay has not been immune to the tough economic climate and we too have had to scale back significantly in the last 2 months, despite intense need. We are determined that this is a temporary measure and with your support we will not only be able to save Oasis from complete closure, but also bring back all of the services that we have recently cut.

How might your donation help?

Their JustGiving page describes how:

  • £10 will pay for 1 child to attend an After School Club at the playground
  • £50 will pay for 3 children to attend a Saturday Club at the playground
  • £100 will pay for petrol and spare parts for 2 weeks of Karting sessions at the Kart Track
  • £150 will pay for an under-5’s Forest School Foragers session at the Nature Garden
  • £250 will pay for a kart maintenance and mechanics session for young people at the Kart Track

With their goal set at £150,000, what exactly will that funding be put towards?

  • £60,000 will fill their shortfall for the current financial year, keeping their gates open until April 2025.
  • £100,000 will keep sites open until August 2025 for the paying groups and projects for which additional funding can be secured.
  • £150,000 would allow Oasisplay to reinstate some of their free services until August 2025 and provide time to find further funding.

We are making a robust financial plan for the future, including significant cost cutting measures. We continue to explore all possible funding options and are in talks with Lambeth Council about how they may be able to help us to keep this vital service open.

For further information or to get involved, contact save@oasisplay.org.uk.

Adventure Playground Network announcement

After an (unintentionally) extended period of quiet, the Adventure Playground Network is pleased to announce Friday 8th November, 11am – 1pm, as the next meeting date. To ensure you receive the most up-to-date information, including the link to the meeting, please ensure you sign up.

The Network has also been liaising with the Raising The Nation Play Commission to ensure that adventure playgrounds have an opportunity to contribute to the call for evidence. Please see the open letter to Adventure Playgrounds below:

Dear Playworkers,

Last week, Sereena, from Haringey Play Association and Mike from Play Bradford met with Policy Researchers from the Centre for Young Lives / Raising The Nation Play Commission.

Read our article on the commission here.

The aim of the meeting was to amplify the voice of England’s adventure playgrounds in the Centre for Young Lives’ and Raising the Nation Play Commission’s ‘ENQUIRY INTO WHY PLAY IS SO CRITICAL TO CHILDREN’S WELLBEING AND HOW A NATIONAL PLAY STRATEGY CAN BE ESTABLISHED.’

The aim of the meeting was threefold:

  1. Ensure that the crucial role of adventure playgrounds is not overlooked in the course of the Enquiry
  2. Maximise the time available for contributions from adventure playgrounds to be made to the Enquiry
  3. Offer the assistance of the adventure playground sector’s collective wealth of knowledge and experience to the development of a national play strategy for England.

The Centre for Young Lives has received evidence from all sectors including Health, Sport, Education, Early Years etc. Some adventure playgrounds have already submitted evidence, but the closing date is October 31st.

HOWEVER, the Adventure Playground Network has negotiated a rolling deadline, which means that the Centre will continue to welcome contributions from adventure playgrounds – via the Network – on an ongoing basis.

If you have any evidence of the wonderful work that you do, which you’d like to inform the enquiry, please consider sending it to Mike at m.wragg@leedsbeckett.ac.uk and we will ensure that your adventure playground is represented in this national enquiry into why play is so critical to children’s wellbeing and how a national play strategy can be established.

Evidence may consist of anything at all from data concerning numbers and backgrounds of beneficiaries, through to case-studies, presentations, testimonies, reflective diaries and films or video.

The Centre for Young Lives is also keen to visit adventure playgrounds across the country, so if you would be willing to show someone round your site, please let us know and we’ll pass on your details.

And if you have any questions, please let us know at m.wragg@leedsbeckett.ac.uk

Dr Mike Wragg

Senior Lecturer, Childhood Development & Playwork

The School of Health, Leeds Beckett University.

Play England AGM 2023

Following on from our earlier post, interested parties can now register to attend the 2023 Play England AGM which will be taking place Monday 6th November at 3pm.

Full details of the event can be found here, including an agenda and a Trustees’ End of Year Report.

We look forward to seeing some of you there!

DON’T FORGET: The following day, Tuesday 7th November, will be the inaugural meeting of the Network of Adventure Playgrounds. A busy week for playworkers!

A situated ethos of playwork

Turning the playwork story into a narrative for change.

In this new collaboration, Adrian Voce and Gordon Sturrock cast their collective eye over the recent history of playwork in the UK to draw out some lessons for the field on how it might regroup and take a leading role in making the case for a comprehensive national play policy: one consistent with its distinct ethos and approach. 

Abstract

Playwork is a distinct approach to working with children, and a particular set of perspectives on the nature of children’s play in a broader context. We concur with others (e.g. Brown, 2017) that its theory and practice – on play and development, constructs of childhood, the role of adults with children, the allocation and use of space, and children’s rights – are unique among the children’s professions.

This paper attempts to describe some of these perspectives, the practice tenets that arise from them, and the distinct ethos we suggest they comprise. We then propose a broad rationale for playwork advocacy, ­congruent with this ethos and its political dimension.

Vision

We also attempt to set out a long-term vision for the place of playwork practice within a renewed, reimagined public realm; and we suggest some specific shorter-term, more tangible objectives, towards the aim of formulating a sustained government policy framework that recognises and supports playwork without compromising it: achievable milestones on a roadmap to the longer-term vision.

Through a critical appraisal of the field’s recent history, the paper considers how organisational structures for playwork advocacy and professional development have, until now, with the odd exception, been ultimately run not by practitioners but by various branches of government, its agents, employer bodies or established children’s charities – generally more aligned with the current hegemony than with anything approximating to the playwork ethos. We argue that, in the absence of a cohesive and authoritative playwork representative body, this has led to near fatal compromises in the development and dissemination of the playwork approach.

Conundrum

The paper addresses the perennial conundrum of a community of practice that profoundly challenges the status quo; yet which, nevertheless, needs to find sufficient leverage in the mainstream policy discourse to secure the resources it needs to sustain its work. As the professional playwork fraternity attempts to regroup after eight years of austerity and UK government policy reversals, we suggest there is an urgent need for the field to coalesce around a binding narrative – accommodating the plurality of perspectives and approaches that have evolved – to explicitly articulate its ethos in a way that can both speak to a wide public audience and impact on the policymaking process.

The paper concludes that the framework for this narrative should be children’s rights, refracted through the prism of the playwork ethos, which is a bulwark against instrumentalist agendas. We suggest that the playwork field, though greatly incapacitated by the dismantling of its infrastructure and the closure of many of its services and courses, has a legitimate claim to be the practice community best qualified to interpret General Comment 17 of the UNCRC (CRC, 2013) for the UK context. We propose that fully engaging with the rights discourse is the logical strategy for playwork advocates; aligning our ethos to an authoritative, coherent policy case that also resonates with a wider political narrative of social and spatial justice, universal human rights and full citizenship for all.

Adrian Voce and Gordon Sturrock
June 2018

Download the full paper here

Adrian Voce is a founding trustee of the Playwork Foundation. His contribution to this paper is in his personal capacity and does not represent the collective view of the charity.

Photo: Adrian Voce (Tiverton adventure playground, Devon).

Hughes and Sturrock announce Play Ed 2018 

The playwork pioneers Bob Hughes and Gordon Sturrock have invited applications for a new Play Ed event on 2-3 May 2018, at the University Centre in Cambridge. We publish their announcement here

Play Ed 2018
2nd and 3rd May 2018
Where are we now? Is playwork passing into myth?

Dear Colleague,

If, like us, you are concerned about the future of playwork – its philosophical direction, political identity and practical applications, then you may be interested in applying for one of a limited number of places at this event being organised at the University Centre in Cambridge and designed to provide interested parties with an opportunity to discuss and plan for these issues.

The two-day event is free, but travel, accommodation and subsistence will be the sole responsibility of those attending.

Places are open to all with a genuine interest and concern about playwork, but sadly because space is limited, not everyone who applies will be able to participate.

We would be grateful if you would consider applying yourself and if you would also distribute this invitation as widely as you can.

To register your interest, just e-mail Bob Hughes at PlayEd and he will send out further information as it becomes available.

Sincerely,

Bob Hughes and Gordon Sturrock

playeducation@ntlworld.com