Slade Gardens Adventure Playground

24/08/2026

We’re into the final week of our Summer Programme 😭😭. We invite you to come and celebrate six weeks of fantastic activities and outings.

We’ve been bowling 🎳
We’ve been skateboarding 🛹
We’ve been to the Science Museum 🔬
We made a go-kart and won a competition 🥇🏆🍾
We’ve been beekeeping 🐝🍯
We’ve checked out the tiny frogs in our pond 🐸
We grafittied the front of our hut 😎 (and inside it)
We’ve played a lot of football ⚽️
We’ve painted loads of signs and given our yellow submarine a glow-up 🫟
We’ve spent loads of time on our swings and structures 🤸🏾‍♀️🤸
We’ve chilled out in the shade 🌳

We’ve also spent time thinking about our environment at the playground and what we might imagine from a new building. We’ve made mini pizza ovens (and a big one!), and small building structures, and we sewed and used natural dyes and beeswax for batik.

Please pop in on Friday - we’d love to show you what we’ve been up to. Refreshments provided.

22/08/2026

Having a growing space at our adventure playground allows us to explore where materials come from. As we become more aware of human impact on the natural world, we can experience supply chains of the future. Like using beeswax from our beehives and natural dye plants grown in our garden to make our clothes.

As part of this ‘hyperlocal clothing’ activity, we made sweatshirts on Love After Oil s bicycle-powered overlocker, and finished them with our own batik designs, dipped in indigo and marigold dyes.

With thanks to Natural Dye Practitioner Zoë Burt for facilitating and teaching us all about the colours that grow around us!

13/08/2026

As part of the engagement process towards planning for a new building, we invited our young people to design and build mini structures.

They were immersed in the process of building stick frames, stacking the strawbale walls and plastering with cob. As we experience our changing climate, experimenting with ancient materials can help us to consider light, ventilation, insulation (from heat as well as cold!), shelter and shade from eaves and planting; buildings that breathe.

12/08/2026

👆👆 Big BACK TO SCHOOL date for the diary 👀
Thank you Brixton Soup Kitchen for making this happen 🙏

03/08/2026

Fun in the shade for the summer programme!

02/08/2026

The Needometer

We’ve begun an engagement process with our playground users towards our new building project.

The “Needometer” (may need to copyright that…) is based on Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs, and is an invitation to our young people to think about their wishes and needs for the new building and the spaces around it.

In the cool of our “Octopus” structure there emerged some brilliant ideas and beautiful drawings from those who know our playground best. 👏👏👏👏

29/07/2026

24/07/2026

Absolutely delighted that Slade Gardens Community Play Association has been selected as one of this year’s Design for All projects. A huge thank you to alma-nac | B Corp and all the Design for All partners for believing in our vision and investing their expertise into our community.

This is far more than a building project. It is an opportunity to create a community hub that truly reflects the aspirations and needs of the children, young people, families and wider community who use Slade Gardens.

Over the summer, we’ll be engaging with our end users and the wider community to better understand their needs, ideas and ambitions. These conversations will help shape a clear brief and, with the support of the Design for All partnership, place us in a strong position to develop a robust strategy and proposal as we progress towards RIBA Stage 0-1 of the Plan of Work.

This is the beginning of an exciting journey, and we can’t wait to see what we create together!