If you ask the kids what they want up in Broomhill, they will reply with one answer, a play park! The Broomy doesn’t have a playground for the kids at the moment, and so they are making do with the bare bits of land between the buildings. While we think creative play in all sorts if areas that aren’t necessarily playgrounds is important, and can help to develop imagination, independence and a sense if freedom, there is no denying that a well designed playground can feel like another world.

Although we haven’t got the framework to begin developing a project for a playground just yet, we thought we would get the kids designing their own imaginary playgrounds for the area.

We showed them some inspirational playgrounds from around the world at the beginning of the sessions, to get their minds thinking big and wild!

Description: Hong Kong children having fun at the new adventure playground, scramble up the “strap” of a giant wrist watch lying on its side. Location: Kowloon, Hong Kong Date: 1969 —————————————————— Our Catalogue Reference: Part of CO 1069/471. This image is part of the Colonial Office photographic collection held at The National Archives. Feel free to share it within the spirit of the Commons. Please use the comments section below the pictures to share any information you have about the people, places or events shown. We have attempted to provide place information for the images automatically but our software may not have found the correct location. For high quality reproductions of any item from our collection please contact our image library

The kids were so excited by the colours and different shapes. They loved the black and white image of the 1960s curved climbing frame with circular holes, having never seen anything so unconventional. Artist Niki De Saint Phalle’s ‘Golem’ slide, where the kids can choose to make their way down one of three tongues, got lots of giggles and wide eyes. These examples go to prove that play parks needn’t be made of the same old metal slides and rubber swings, but can be made as interactive art pieces.

First of all we got the children to draw ideas for their on playgrounds using paint-pens and pencils. You can definitely see some designs inspired by Niki De Saint Phalle’s ‘Golem’ such as the apple with the three slides below – perhaps they’re worms…

Then, we handed each of them a printout of the photos we took last week of each one pretending to be on play equipment, and got them to cut them out, and draw slides, swings and climbing frames to stick themselves on to. These were then mounted on to background images of Broomhill and Greenock past and present.

The kids loved this activity and created some vibrant, exciting and imaginative pictures. They had to think with forethought when posing for their photographs, imagining how they would place themselves on their drawings; consider composition when building their collages; and use their imagination to come up with original designs.

We hope that one day as part of the regeneration happening in Broomhill we’ll be able to design our very own adventure play ground, and we’d of course use these collages as our inspiration.

Here’s a slideshow of all the images collected from this session:

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Remember,  if your kiddies want to come to the art class, we’re on from 3.30pm-5.30pm every Wednesday at 12 Broomhill Court from 3.30pm-5.30pm.

Want to find out more? Email us at info@rigarts.org, call us on 01475 649815, visit the RIG Arts Facebook page, or join ‘The Broomhill Project’ Facebook group.