PLACES for PLAY: Photo Exhibition

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PLACES for PLAY, Buy online

What makes an outdoor space a good place to play? Too often poor design robs children of vital opportunities to learn and be healthy and wastes public money.

PLACES for PLAY, by Sandra Melville, is a PLAYLINK publication, which illustrates some of the many creative ways in which children's play outdoors is being catered for.

Printed copies of PLACES for PLAY cost £10 each and are available from the Free Play Network. To buy online using a credit or debit card, please go to: http://www.freeplaynetwork.org.uk/pubs/pfporder.htm.

To pay for copies of PLACES for PLAY by cheque, please print out and complete the order form below. Send it, along with payment to Free Play Network, 129 Lancaster Road, New Barnet, Hertfordshire, EN4 8AJ. Please make cheques payable to 'Free Play Network'.

More about PLACES for PLAY

Inspiring a more imaginative approach

Charlie Chaplin is a long established inner city adventure playground in Lambeth.

It caters well for children with disabilities (the site is threaded with paths for wheelchair users, and special mobility trikes can be provided).

However, it is very entertaining for any child and there is no segregation between 'more able' and 'less able'. Children have freedom to build their own structures (supervised, where necessary), which gives them huge satisfaction.

All Mead Gardens is a renovated play space within a large housing estate in a low income area of London. It is designed to meet the needs of all the resident children, their parents and other members of the local community.

Children participated closely in the design. A series of events and workshops, many run by local people, encouraged children to contribute ideas and many of their designs and artworks were then included in the site.

Somerset House is a fine set of eighteenth century buildings by the Thames in central London.

The cobbled courtyard has been exuberantly transformed as a public space by installation of the Edmond J Saffra Fountain, fifty-five water jets which rise and fall in computer controlled patterns. The principal motivation in installing the fountain court was aesthetic but the space has proved a magnet for families.

Eveline Lowe Primary School in the London Borough of Southwark has taken over a derelict site which has been converted to a garden designed for both school and community use.

Within are a grassy amphitheatre, a pond with boulders, winding brick pathways and hedged enclosures hiding a barbecue and a sandpit with seating, and there are wild spaces to explore around the outer edges.

Printed copies of PLACES for PLAY cost £10 each and are available from the Free Play Network.

To buy online using a credit or debit card, using the Paypal payment system, please click here and proceed to checkout:

To pay for copies of PLACES for PLAY by cheque, please print out and complete this Order Form. Send it, along with payment to Free Play Network, 129 Lancaster Road, New Barnet, Hertfordshire, EN4 8AJ. Please make cheques payable to 'Free Play Network'.