On a wet windy morning in October a multiagency and multidisciplinary delegation of people from Sheffield, boarded a minibus and made their way across the Pennines to visit Wrexham in Wales.
The minibus was made up of representatives from Adventure Playgrounds, Family Hubs, Out of School Provisions, Community Youth Services, Local Area Committees, Sheffield City Trust, Gleadless Valley Master Planners and Play Partnerships.
The 16 seater minibus left the Old Sharrow Junior Club at 9.00am and arrived at the Ruabon Centre of Excellence in Wrexham at 11..20am
On arrival we were warmly greeted by Mel Kearsley Wrexham Play Development Team and organiser, Gareth Stacey and the Ruabon Youth Team who were hosting a coffee morning to raise some much needed funds for Macmillan Cancer Care.
Our delegation joined in the fundraising, by purchasing coffees, teas, some lovely cakes and raffle tickets and sat down enjoying the refreshments, whilst having conversations and exchanging stories about the Wrexham and Sheffield Youth Offers with Avril and Dave.
Youth work discussions started straight away as we entered, as we all want to know about each other’s settings, ethos and delivery.
After our lovely refreshments and great interactions, we reboarded our minibus and went to visit our first Adventure Playground. This was called The Land in Plas Madoc. At the Land, David kindly hosted our group and provided an overview of their play journey from its concept through to delivery. The Land is a child only access provision and has been going since 2007 with risk benefit assessments being a vital component of their play offer. It was uplifting to hear Playworkers present information on risks and risk benefits as we now live in a risk averse society and hear how a child only access facility operates.
As people dispersed to explore further, play rich conversations took place all around the site about the benefits of play, outreach play and risk benefit assessments, self build and legislation in Wales and England. Discussions ensued about off site practice on estates and play van activities. The site is all self build and the children are encouraged to build their own equipment. Claire also kindly brought us across to the Kettle Club to show us a space where parent/carers access can enjoy a cup of tea or coffee and also access various support, this is located in a shipping container outside of the playground gates.
As people dispersed to explore further, play rich conversations took place all around the site about the benefits of play, outreach play and risk benefit assessments, self build and legislation in Wales and England. Discussions ensued about off site practice on estates and play van activities. The site is all self build and the children are encouraged to build their own equipment. Claire also kindly brought us across to the Kettle Club to show us a space where parent/carers access can enjoy a cup of tea or coffee and also access various support, this is located in a shipping container outside of the playground gates.
The delegation took some time out for a quick lunch at a lovely chippy before returning to the Centre of Excellence at Ruabon for a ‘loo break’ and to pick up Mel’s car where we received the good news that three of our delegation had won raffle prices!
We then boarded the bus for the visit to our second adventure playground. Gwenfro Valley where we were greeted by Teresa
There was a real buzz too, at this site as it reminded everyone of one of our own areas of Sheffield where some of our delegation work. Our group had some very meaningful conversations about funding, training resources, alternative provision, wrap around care, cost of living crisis and how to best secure additional political support. The site is very much self build with volunteers helping construct play equipment and young people encouraged to be involved.
We then went back onto the bus and headed off to The Venture, where we were greeted by the legendary play champions Malcolm King and Colin Powell. It was lovely to reconnect with Colin and Malcolm, as over 11 years ago, I in another delegation had previously visited them to pick their brains on what a good adventure playground should look like before we began putting in place suitable elements into the local Sheffield Offer
The group split up at this point with the Family Hub representatives going into the flying start part of the building where Karen and Ashleigh facilitated a tour and Q&A session.
The rest of the team led by Malcolm, Colin and Linda scoped out the external part of the site with key findings being that the sheer size and volume of their offer was amazing. The site has some purchased in play equipment and has two shipping containers located within a gigantic pirate ship. A large multi-use games area, fire pit, large structures and an area for growing vegetables was also being put to good use. Colin shared the history of the adventure playground and the political dynamics that had helped their journey whilst highlighting the benefits of having a diverse inclusive play offer. Malcolm kindly provided an overview of the history of the development of the playground and play-worker support and practice in Wales. Colin’s son also kindly baked some amazing cakes to commemorate our visit and we washed them down with tea before boarding our bus to return home.
The visit provided us with an opportunity to promote Sheffield and learn from Wrexham and from Wales’ best practice.
Here in Sheffield we have two award winning playgrounds and the super MASKK team but given the size of our population and needs and demands, we would benefit from more play activities on evenings and weekends for young residents aged 5-13.
This visit was very enriching and rewarding for us all and for Sheffield as a whole. It helped us to learn from the best and exceptional practice being delivered in Wrexham and created an opportunity for us to share with Wrexham our training developments, other innovations and excellence in practice and how we are strengthening Play in the City through our Sheffield Play Partnership too.
Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive about our scoping visit to Wrexham and we were so very appreciative to have been afforded this valuable opportunity to visit Wrexham and to see first hand the wonderful play offer in Wales in operation. A massive thank you to everyone involved for making this visit a success and we very much look forward to reciprocating the visit of the Wrexham team soon.