St Pauls Adventure PLayground

St Paul's Adventure Playground

The Phoenix rising from the ashes! There was a very successful crowd funder immediately after the fire earlier this year so with that £35,000 plus the insurance and various wonderful people, the playground is having a complete and amazing make over. Guy Dobson and Rachel Davies, the Executive Directors, after tenders from 5 different firms, have brought in Master Designer John O'Drsicoll of Apes at Play – playground engineers – to bring about this project. John designed the Gorilla House at London Zoo and the play area at London's Olympic Park. He and his team are reusing just about every bit of the massive London Plane Tree that was holding so much of the original swings and levels. Other artists have been busy with the help of children in Covid compliant groups making a new metal gate from scrap materials and the wonderful chameleon made of old tyres. Coco and Booboo of No time to waste arts! led these groups. Regine Babaei, a local Iranian artist, made the metal roundabout with some children during the summer. Kids have been involved with all sorts of the project during this rebuild. One of my favourites is the Hobbit like seating area that will be part of the new garden still to be planted. There will be tooled up work spaces in several containers for the children once the building work has been completed and the Lockdown situation has changed.

Electric lights light up the tower at night and CCTV cameras will be in position to protect the site. There is a playroom at the top of the tower with splendid views out across the city, seating and a piano. A Cafe is under construction as well by locals, Tommy and Jessie from the Granite and Grain Company. Benches and tables outside have been provided by the Architect Centre and different people will eventually be providing a changing program of foods reflecting our diverse population served up to order through the new cafe windows. The Children's' Bike Exchange run by Robbie Warin and Alex Sharpe has kept running throughout this massive build. The opening hours have remained the same, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 12 – 6 and Saturday 12 – 5pm. Once more normal distancing measures are in place they will again be training youngsters to fix bikes. Various outreach schemes are run from the site and 130 dinners have been supplied for collection on Thursdays on National Lottery Funding. This has reached capacity but well being packs for kids are also being given out. I give a massive thank you to all the contributors who are putting together what promises to be a magnificent adventure playground. Now what we need is some kind of normal to be able to use it fully again.

Words & Pictures Hilary Finch