Why an adventure playground?
Hackney Young Voices is a pilot project to try out different models in different settings. Adventure playgrounds are really unique and only too rare urban environments, often mistaken for ‘just another playground’. But what they actually offer is a safe space for children 6-16 to play on their own terms with no parents or teachers around, under the caring expert eye of play workers who understand the value of free exploration. We believe all young people benefit and should have access to such spaces, but for some children, they can provide a true lifeline where everything else fails.
We wondered what would happen if we took our structured project all about play in a place what is all about unstructured play. Could we get a group together to work together over several weeks when they normally ebb and flow at they please?
The wild bunch
SWAPA kindly allowed us to take the playground over on Monday afternoons when normally closed, so we could have the whole place to ourselves. We added a poster to sign up and got the word out about the project, but we had no idea who would come.
But on session 1, we already had a few keen beans around 30 mins before we were due to start and everyone helping us out.
This became very much the norm, with the children bringing friends, treats and a lot of enthusiasm to the ‘party’. Once again we found that there was a lot more movement in this group depending on who was around that week, but a small group of 5-6 children became the core artists on the project.
The billboard concept
As we explored themes, likes and activities, it became obvious early on that we needed to work on something that could accommodate and reflect the nature of the playground – the children there have free access to spray paint and regularly redecorate the site to their taste.
So we decided to capture this by getting them to paint a background that we could use for the billboard. We stuck canvas to a large board and let them loose, using cut out shapes, spray paints and whatever else they fancied adding to it – Ja’viah, 12, now famously started spray-painting over his hand, creating some of the most striking marks on the artwork (and it took a mixture of olive oil and sugar to remove it, if you must know!).
They all came together beautifully, adding, commenting, taking a moment to look back, until they decided it was done. And it was! In itself, this could have made a fantastic piece of artwork – but we wanted to push things further.
Photoshoot
During the sessions, the children often ran to use the (pretty deadly) zipline and other climbing frames – all key features of the playground. So it made sense to embrace this. We set up a couple of photoshoots where they could choose their set up, pose and accessories if wanted. Out of this, we selected and cut out a few pictures for each of them, and asked them to choose their favourite and how they might appear on the final billboard.
‘But what message you would like to share with the people of Hackney?’ we asked. Emma, 9 had an idea. She showed immense creativity from the start, always coming up with ideas and visual stories. But for the past few sessions, she was pretty fixed on being a duck. So when she came up to us with a message idea, we fully expected her to share one of her quack quack moments. But instead she whispered:’Creativity is a key to unlock an unknown door’. We shared it with the group who agreed it would be a great way to represent them.
Working with graphic designer Kathryn Corlett, we developed a few options using the three elements of background, photos and message, and the group decided on the final layout.
The billboard feels like a true expression of the children”s experience at SWAPA, a place where they can be free to be themselves, explore their world and let their imagination run wild.
And of course it is tribute to the power of play, as we hoped it would be.
Project Team
SWAPA’s project team have been collaboration on this Billboard.
