Runner up - Darnley Park, Stirling, Scotland

Darnley Park play area was designed for Stirling Council to provide children and young people in the area with a space that stimulated their imagination and allowed them to play in a way that incorporated an element of risk and challenge.

Sue Gutteridge, Play Services manager at Stirling Council Children’s Services said: “Children’s play spaces are often nothing more than a collection of equipment on a rubber safety surface.

“Darnley Park, a formerly neglected city centre space, has become an enticing and, in this area of high density housing, a much needed ‘play landscape’.

“It challenges the limitations often imposed on children’s play through misplaced health and safety concerns.”

The space offers loose materials including sand and grit, which can be played with and moved around. High mounds joined by a long swinging rope bridge provide opportunities for climbing, rolling, sliding and sledging. With the help of the children a three-metre high ‘tree’ from several felled beeches has been built. Paths and decking of various textures and materials accommodate bikes, scooters and buggies. Areas of space have deliberately been left wild, for children to explore and use as they will. An unconventionally shaped ball games area cut into a screen of green larches is a change from the usual metal cage.

Other key features include a long flight of steps that lead from the lower part of the city up to the park and the introduction of lighting, which has led to increased use of the park as a throughway.

It was the local residents who flagged up the need for a park in the first place and they, including children and young people, were consulted and involved throughout the process of design and construction, and were represented on the project group that monitored the construction process. Local residents have formed a ‘Friends of Darnley Park’ group, and there is continuing work with the local community to develop the use of the space.  This is backed up by council maintenance and cleaning.

Children were involved in aspects of the actual construction. A mobile forge was brought to a nearby site and over a two-week period local children working with playworkers, an artist and a sculptor, made special boulders incorporating smelted metal casts of objects found on site and their own hand and foot prints.

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