Celebration of 'Ourspace' - Making the playground a better place

The celebration centred around the screening of a 10 minute DVD featuring the exciting work of the playground committees and charting their creative journeys throughout the last year.

Facilitated by Creative Partnerships Forest of Dean, Ourspace aims to increase confidence and leadership ability, and to improve skills in speaking, listening and literacy. The work also aims to foster a sense of responsibility amongst the pupils, for both their playgrounds and for managing their own time.

Led by year 5 and year 6 pupils and supported by outdoor play specialist Nicky Moscrop, local writer Brian Thompson and brilliant teaching assistants in both schools, the scheme of work builds on previous explorations around structured play and investigates how school pupils could organise, lead and disseminate playground activities to their peers.

The young people have developed their own aims and focus for the work and have investigated ways of making the best use of their play resources, developing activities for children in the school to do at play time, piloting their ideas, organising fundraising events to implement their ideas and evaluating the outcomes.

Commenting on the impact of this work on the young people, Nicky Moscrop, an Outdoor Play Specialist from the Wilderness Centre said 'The children have obviously enjoyed themselves and got a lot out of it. They’ve also improved in their speaking and listening skills - working together, organising themselves and putting their case to various members of staff'