Greenway Adventure Playground

Wester Hailes Growing Communities have received a large grant from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund to build an adventure playground in the Greenway between Murrayburn and Hailesland.  This funding has been a long time in coming, we started working towards this goal in 2019 (see below), but we will have limited time to pull the project off as it needs to be completed before the end of March 2026 due to the restrictions of the grant – it will be a challenge!

The playground will be on Council land and we intend for the Council to ‘adopt’ the playground and so be responsible for its maintenance.  We will need to make sure the playground is safe and meets the Council’s standards for design and build.  We hope that ultimately, the Council will contract Wester Hailes Growers to maintain the playground and we will continue to repair and improve it.

How We Will Do It

Being as we have very little time to deliver the playground we are going to base the design on the consultations we carried out in 2019-20, and some amazing playgrounds we have visited in Dundee (see photos), which use ‘Robinia’ wood which is very long lasting and makes amazing shapes.  There will never be a ‘flying fox’, swings, climbing structures etc.  We will be looking to involve local children in further discussions about the designs.  We will be looking to create opportunities for young adults to participate in Growing Youth workshops to help build the playground, we will provide more information on this as soon as we have it.

We are to contract local Robin Wood a play designer and builder to work with us and volunteers to community self-build the adventure playground.  Robin is an amazing wood sculptor and has created some imaginative works around the Lothians (see his website).  Robin also works for Edinburgh Council repairing play grounds across the city and so knows what the Council will accept.

The adventure playground will be open 24/7.  We haven’t decided whether we will put a fence around it to keep out dogs.  Once completed, we intend to raise funds to hire a play worker who will support activities like loose parts play and children with additional needs, materials will be stored in the ‘Natural Play’ shed in the Greenway Garden.

Project Background

In 2019-20, Wester Hailes Growing Communities commissioned City of Play architects to work with local residents to prepare a masterplan for the improvement of the greenspace and facilities around the Greenway between Murrayburn & Hailesland.  The plan recognised the lack of play opportunities and community facilities in Dumbryden, Murrayburn and Hailesland, and recommended the development of an adventure playground.  Since then we have been working towards this goal.

Our inspiration for the adventure playground was the ‘Venchie’ playgrounds build in Wester Hailes and other parts of Edinburgh by local organisations and parents.

City of Play prepared designs for play structures which we still have and may yet make use of, but City of Play have since stopped doing this kind of work.  After this, we worked with Adventure Play Engineers, a London based organisation that community self builds amazing adventure playgrounds, unfortunately, they went bust during Covid.  We asked Timber Play Scotland, to prepare a concept design for an adventure playground, but their approach had too little opportunity for resident involvement in design and particularly in construction, and were on the high end price wise as to what we were looking for.