Above: New play equipment for Litton in Derbyshire
P.L.A.Y (Playground for Littons’ Active Youth) have been awarded £49,839 from the Community Spaces programme. Here’s Julie Nash’s story so far on the group’s progress with creating a new play facility…
P.L.A.Y is a small committee of mums, who, in response to the Litton Parish Plan, joined together in July 2007 to raise funds for a new playground.
Two old swings were all the play facilities Litton had, so in addition to a new playground, we also hoped to create a small sensory garden to make it usable by all.
We began by getting together quotes from playground companies, to ascertain how much the project was going to cost. Once we knew our target amount, we started local fundraising and held a Race Night (made £1,351) and a Safari Supper (£425) just to name a few.
We have raised over £10,000 locally to date, and gained grants from the Bingham Trust and D.D.D.C. With advice from Derbyshire Dales CVS, we applied to the Changing Spaces/Community Spaces programme.
We were thrilled to get through the first Stage of the application, and grateful to meet with Janice Burley, our Facilitator, whose help, guidance and moral support has been a lifeline through the whole of the second stage application.
It took us the best part of 6 months to complete the form correctly and, to our delight, we were notified in October ‘09 that we had been awarded the full amount.
Groundworks started in Dec ‘09, and the top junior level is almost complete with the toddler area due to be completed in January. The horrendous weather we have had recently hasn’t helped and we have constantly had to review the work and time-schedules we had in place.
Work is progressing on the sensory garden, which is being installed by a local landscaper, with our launch event scheduled for the end of March.
On a personal note, I am proud to have been actively involved in this project. It hasn’t been easy, but each active member of the team has their own individual skills, which have all helped us to achieve our goal.
Julie Nash
P.L.A.Y
I am delighted to see how funding from the Community Spaces programme has enabled a group of committed mums to get the playground they need for their community. I wish you every success with your launch.
Wendy Jenkins
Director of Open Grants
Groundwork UK
Thank-you Wendy, for your kind words of support. It has been really hard work, but is worth it in the end! We can’t wait for our Launch event.
As the facilitator working on this project with Juile and the rest of the group in Litton, it’s been both rewarding and challenging. They are so full of enthusiasm for the project and determined to get this playground for their children (and other local children, obviously) up and running, that it’s a pleasure to work with them.
But they’ve had to contend with all sorts of problems, not least of all the weather and a steeply sloping site. Interestingly enough, in their early consultation they found local people still wanted to use the hill as a sledging hill, so had to position equipment to allow for that. So, even if the playground didn’t open and launch on the original date, at least they could all still go sledging!
Keep up the good work in Litton folks – we’ll get there soon.
Janice Burley
Community Spaces Facilitator
[...] becoming a bit of a regular blogger for us as she wrote to us to give us a progress update back in February – it’s so exciting to see the finished [...]