Dixons Marchbank get a new outdoor play area
Posted 8th June 2023
Plans for an exciting new play area at Dixons Marchbank started over a year ago when Better Place Bradford got in touch about The Better Place Nursery Project Fund, a fund supporting Bradford Nurseries to improve their outdoor space.
As a community school, Dixons Marchank maximises the use of the portacabin on their playing field to deliver courses to the local community. Better Start Bradford facilitate their HENRY and Incredible Years programmes, delivering courses to parents of children under five years of age, alongside other course providers including Bradford College, Safety First, Realise Education and the NHS. To maximise parent involvement, they have a popular crèche facility running alongside courses and also hold ‘stay and play’ sessions every Monday, which give local families an opportunity to meet and play together. Despite having a fantastic green outside space to enjoy, they haven’t had the funds available to improve it.
With support from Adele Adams, Project Manager for Better Place Bradford, Sameera Khan, Parent Involvement Worker at Dixons Marchbank, secured significant funding which has provided the opportunity for visiting artists to decorate the portacabin with wildlife murals as well as enabling the design and build of an eco-friendly, sustainable outdoor space which includes a wooden castle and slide, canopy, mud kitchen, trim trail, birdhouses, wild flowers, and shrubs.
To promote a sense of ownership and pride, children and parents have played their part in completing the play area and improving air quality in the community by joining in with tree planting sessions. 11 fruit trees were funded by Trees for Cities, along with 20 trees and 120 saplings which came from the Tree for Every Child project.
Sameera is delighted with the transformation: "The work has finally reached completion and we can’t wait to see our Under 5s making the most of this fantastic space this summer."