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HereNicola and Lesley are Playing Out activators – they have supported many other parents and residents across St Albans Hertfordshire to run a play street or hold a street party. Here’s why and how they’ve helped so much playing out to happen where they live over the years.
We’re both part of Sustainable St Albans, a group finding positive and creative ways to live more sustainably. In 2014, Rob from Sustainable Tring spoke at one of our meetings about an experimental Playing Out trial that was taking place on his street. We both had young children and decided we wanted to run a play street too. We grew up playing out every day (Lesley in Cornwall and Nicola on her street in Harpenden) and have strong memories of how good and important this is.
There was no way to apply for a play street with our council, so we started with a street party. We came to a Playing Out Activator Day in Bristol with Rob for inspiration. Over lunch that day, the three of us decided to set up a group called ‘Our Street Party’.
Through Rob’s connections, a local hospitality business, Oakman Inns, set up our website and bought us our first set of road closure kit and chalk. They also let us hold some events at their pub to promote the street party idea. Sometimes only three residents would turn up. But eventually a large proportion of the street parties happening in Hertfordshire were in our district because of our work. Oakman Inns still support us to this day.
Early on, we set up a mailing list and kept promoting the play streets idea. We even offered free chalk to everyone having a street party! By the time we’d got Playing Out started, we had a list of people who were interested in applying. If you’re looking to grow play streets where you live, we’d really recommend asking for people’s email addresses and sending out the odd newsletter to keep them interested.
We initially sought to build on the experiment in Tring to have a county-wide scheme in Hertfordshire, however this did not prove possible at that time. We were joined in our activator work by a public health specialist, Kirstie, and a local district councillor, Caroline. We then discovered that a council in West Sussex – Adur and Worthing – had a model working at the district level instead. We contacted our District Council, who were very enthusiastic, and set up a scheme with them.
Our district council uses the Town Police Clauses Act as the legislation to allow road closures. We found it needed both councillors and councillor officers to get things off the ground. Officers understand how to set up the process, but they are also guided in their priorities by the political will and enthusiasm coming from the council. It was clear that play streets fitted well with the council’s strategic plans in the areas of health, community and children’s physical activity. However resources were a constraint so we developed a partnership whereby we helped support play streets to happen.
We finally had a trial in 2019 with 11 streets and 550 people taking part and it was a huge success! It’s always heart-warming to see kids meeting other children on their road for the first time. And it was so good for adults too. During our trial, a chap who was recently widowed came out and then got invited to lunch with neighbours he didn’t know before. Another neighbour always baked a cake for her play street but wouldn’t come along. We eventually persuaded her to join in and she really enjoyed it and got stuck in!
It’s a lot of work to support so many streets. For many years we volunteered for Our Street Party, supporting residents to have street parties. Once we had a play streets scheme agreed with the council, we needed to get some funding. Lesley was already a trustee of Sustainable St Albans and we felt that play streets and street parties are a natural fit with sustainability – they are on the doorstep, and you can’t have sustainability without community! From then on, we supported play streets under this umbrella.
Our first support was from Playing Out in Bristol. They invested in us and the work we were doing and gave us a microgrant to pay for some of Nicola’s time and some kit for the trial. We then received several community grants from the council to work in specific areas and grants from the local parish councils, county councillors and a local charity. Most recently we have a one-year grant from the National Lottery.
In 2020, we had big plans for play streets. We had launched the scheme, the council had put out a press release and lots of streets were applying. But then Covid hit and play streets weren’t possible. However, we created resources to encourage people to think creatively about children’s free play indoors and about spending time outdoors with children without breaking lockdown rules.
We also tried something else that helped us to build play streets again after lockdowns. We set up a new project called Festive Streets, based on Living Advent Calendars and Window Wanderland, to support people cheer up their neighbours in the winter of 2020 and brighten their daily walks. Over 1,000 households on 80 streets across the district participated. We were blown away by how successful it was! And we used it to promote play streets when they were possible. It also helped us to realise that taking action on our streets is as much about building community as children playing.
Finding new ways to reach people! We often find people have never heard of play streets even though we’ve been going for years. Children grow up and parents lose interest, meaning the streets need to start again or find someone new. A solution to this is to encourage every street to have a ‘team’ of up to 4 people so you can share the load. And if someone leaves the street, there are others ready to take up the baton.
Funding is also a challenge if you need it because grants are small and short term. So we always need to find new avenues. Also, it can be quite lonely doing this work on your own. For us the link with Playing Out has been essential: coming to Activator Days to meet others doing the same thing, to share learning and inspiration, and also linking up with others on-line.
Children on our street who see us and say, “When’s the next playing out?!” Also, when a new street starts up and we get lovely photos and feedback about how wonderful it was. We love seeing how streets come together as communities and start to expand their activities, from wildlife gardening to community recycling points.
Getting started, overcoming all the challenges with legislation and then the trial being such a success. There have been an estimated 314 playing out sessions in the St Albans district since we started, not including all the street parties that we have supported too. All because we made it possible for people!
Also, changing the emphasis to ‘meet your neighbours’ has broadened the reach and given it more longevity. We started it for the children but now people can close their street to get to know and support each other. There are different ways to get involved – book swap, plant swap, collections for charities and food banks – and people can really make this their own. It can appeal to everyone, whether they have children or not! It’s exciting to see all the additional impact of play streets, far greater than we originally expected!
Go for it! It’s so worth it. Look into all the different ways to get started and if you’re getting fobbed off, try a different route. If you hit a road block (!) with play streets, do street parties to start things off if you have that legislation and share learning about road closures. People who’ve done a street party are not intimidated by play streets because they’ve already been through a lot of the process. They’re the best audience! Then once street play is happening, others see how brilliant it is and it starts to grow street by street.
Nicola: it made me laugh when the Playing Out team called me a radical activator! I don’t think of myself like that because I am quite conventional. But this work has helped me to make a positive difference in the world.
Lesley: I really like watching the kids playing together, because when I was little people of all ages played together but nowadays there aren’t the opportunities. It’s very motivating. The fact that I know people on my street has also had a positive impact on my life because I feel a strong sense of belonging. That also gave our community a strong foundation so we were ready to support each other when lockdown hit.