In September Play England, Yorkshire Play and the Forestry Commission together provided a unique one day event entitled: If you go down to the woods today…
The event created an opportunity for all those involved in children’s play across the country to experience the benefits of nature play, which enables children to explore, learn, develop, be creative and discover.
The environmentally friendly event had a nature play theme and was fully flexible to give each delegate the opportunity to learn new skills, network with colleagues and gather useful information. This included a mixture of strategic workshops and practical activities.
The event also provided an opportunity for Proludic to talk to those involved in Playbuilder schemes and share experiences and ideas.
Proludic were on-hand to talk to delegates about the advantages of the MUSA both in terms of engaging teenage girls and success stories around helping to reduce anti-social behaviour.
In some cases and with many Playbuilder play areas, there is an imbalance between the encouragement to provide ‘natural play’ and the need to engage 8 – 13 year olds. These needs are very different!
8 – 13 year olds need physical challenge, exercise and stimulation – opportunities to engage and even compete with each other.
Proludic believe that ‘Natural play’ has a benefit to younger children, but provides little for the target group of 8 – 13 year olds.
Proludic’s approach is to design a landscape setting alongside well designed equipment that meets the needs of the prescribed users. This ‘best of both worlds’ approach has resulted in a string of successful wave one Playbuilder play areas and includes the integration of the MUSA.
View MUSA case studies and video – simply Google search on ‘MUSA concept’ Or search under the Playbuilder menu on this website.
“The Government is investing significantly in new and improved play spaces that can be used free of charge by all children, with a particular focus on 8-13 year olds.”
The Play Strategy – DCSF