Communities in Fingal are taking part in a pilot this summer that aims to replace cars with kids, transforming neighbourhood streets into safe places to play.

The pilot is the first of its kind in Ireland and sees Fingal County Council partnered with not-for-profit organisation, A Playful City, which works to engage communities to create more playful, healthy and inclusive public places.

It describes playful streets as a low cost, safe and easy way to create play areas children and adults to play and socialise by limiting vehicular access for a specified period of time.

Communities are currently being invited to register their interest in joining the Playful Street Pilot Scheme through this form

Those who are selected to participate in the pilot will run a Playful Street on at least two Playful Street pilot days this summer, and will receive a handbook and other helpful resources.

Fingal County Council will support the participating areas by reducing access to vehicles to their streets on the Playful Street pilot days.

A Playful City will help the communities to get started and will be there to answer questions and support residents over the course of the pilot.

Robert Burns, director of housing and community development at Fingal County Council said:

“What’s crucial about this initiative is we’re involving the community. We want it to be led by the community, we want the community to be at the heart of it.

“It’s about looking at the streets where people live and maybe looking at them in a different way. We’ll be running an open day at the end of May within Fingal, and then in June, July and August we’ll be running pilot events across the county.

“I think the local authority being involved in this is crucial because we want to be there as facilitators for the community. We want to enable the community to get the most out of the resources that they have and allow them to enjoy the places where they live, and for children, adults, older people, to have somewhere that’s close to home for them where they can rest, they can play, communities can come together.

“While we call it playful streets, it’s very much a community street, it’s about allowing communities to be closer, and we know in people’s busy daily lives, it can be hard to find the time. This is an opportunity for neighbours and their children to come together, to meet, to chat, to get to know one another, and I think it will help in that wider sense of providing sustainable communities across Fingal.”

The benefits of spontaneous free play to children’s physical, mental and emotional wellbeing have been well documented.

However, many children do not have the same freedom to play on their streets that previous generations enjoyed, and may not have even heard of some of the street games their parents used to play.

In 2016 the Early Childhood Convention heard that two thirds of Irish children spend more time indoors than prisoners in maximum security prisons.

Playful Streets allow communities to connect, and for parents to get involved and teach their children the games they used to play.

Neasa Ni Bhriain, creative director, A Playful City commented:

“Playful street is all about giving communities back their streets to use like we all did when we were young.

“The key thing about playful streets is they should be regular. So they should happen once a month or once every couple of weeks. And it’s really back to the old school games, if you remember red rover, tip the can, hopscotch. It’s about the adults coming out and showing the games to the children, the games that they used to play. It’s about getting children outdoors, it’s about seeing the space, the road and the street outside your own home as a place to play.”

“One of the key things about playful streets is making it safer, so that’s about reducing access to drivers onto the street, stewarding them on if they absolutely need to come onto the street. It’s really about creating the safe and playful space, a place for the community right outside your front door.”

A Playful Street Open Day will take place on May 27, from 1pm-3pm at Taylor Hill Grange, Balbriggan.

For more information or to register your interest in joining the pilot programme, visit the Council’s website: https://www.fingal.ie/playful-streets.

A PLAYFUL CITY

A Playful City was launched in 2017 and soon led to neighbours on Sheriff Street closing their street to traffic and coming out to play. The organisation takes a community development approach through “listening to and collaborating with community members and stakeholders of all ages”.

Its colourful website has many suggestions, although clicking through for more information is almost as tricky as hopscotch! A Playful City is also on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.