Ellen Weaver - Chair of the Board

We first came across Ellen through her academic paper about playing out in Germany and the UK: “Residential Environment and Types of Childhood”. Having been a legal aid and law centre solicitor, Ellen has a particular interest in understanding how law, and misapprehension of the law, may have diminished children’s rights.

Ellen’s voluntary work has included management of Women’s Aid refuges, community camps with kids who wouldn’t otherwise go on holiday, maternity care user group, community theatre projects, projects tackling homelessness, cycling campaigns and human rights legal action in Guatemala. She’s trained and has worked as a forest school leader, and now works as an advocate, supporting children under local authority protection plans and in care to have their views and feelings taken into account in decisions affecting them.

Zoe Gross-Banks - Community and Spatial Justice

Zoe spent 15 years working in the US, Germany and in the UK as an environmental scientist before she got involved in the community sector in Bristol in 2013. She founded East Bristol Kidical Mass, carried out extensive community energy engagement activities, has been teaching women to cycle, and has been running Playing Out on her street since 2014. She’s passionate about social justice, health and sustainability and how these intersect. Her “day job” is at Sustrans, enabling more people to walk and cycle in their everyday lives. Follow Zoe on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZoeBanksGross

Alison Stenning - Research, play streets, community

Alison is a Professor of Human Geography at Newcastle University. She started organising playing out on her own street in 2014 and soon afterwards set up Play.Meet.Street with other local playing out activators, to support and grow the play streets movement across North Tyneside. During this time, her academic research has also come to focus on play streets and children’s wider access to street space. Follow Alison on Twitter: https://twitter.com/alisonstenning

Alice Ferguson - Co-founder

Alongside her current role as an Associate to Playing Out (see here), Alice is a legal director on the Board.

Ingrid Skeels - Co-founder

Alongside her current role as an Associate to Playing Out (see here), Ingrid is a legal director on the Board.

Taylor Brown

1967 – 2020

To find out about Taylor, please see this page