Harewood Adventure Playscape launched in time for Leeds Easter school holidays

A new adventurous play area has opened in the grounds of Harewood House in time for the Easter school holidays.

Transcript

00:00We're in our new adventure playscape here at Harewood House and we've been

00:05working on this project for a couple of years now and this playscape replaces an

00:11old play area that was here for nearly 30 years. We decided to work with a

00:16company called Touchwood because we really liked the way they work with

00:21natural wood so we very much wanted that natural feel for children to explore, to

00:27climb, to really engage with all the different elements in the playscape.

00:31If I asked many people what their favourite memories would be in their

00:35growing up years it would probably be related to play and often with family

00:41members on a beach or something like that and so here we have a whole load of

00:45different play opportunities which ask you to play in different kinds of ways

00:51often with people you've never met before so it's all about creating

00:57connections to this place and connections to each other and I think

01:02this we're very proud we think it's really achieved that. We really believe

01:07here in getting children into the outdoors and the benefits that that

01:11brings in terms of their well-being, their fitness, their engagement with the

01:16natural world and that's very much what we wanted to do here with this

01:20playscape. It is fair to say that children live in a fairly impoverished

01:25world with regard to play opportunities. Free playing in and around where they

01:31might live or their school or on their way to school is largely speaking not

01:35available to many children and so I take my role as a playground designer

01:40incredibly seriously because children have this natural instinct to play and a

01:45natural instinct to relate and interact with nature and by setting a

01:50natural player in a natural setting you're actually creating an

01:54opportunity for them to develop physically, emotionally, socially which we

01:58all know happens through playing. You can spend hours within this area and

02:05while you're here you can also be engaging with the trees. We have some

02:10sky seats that you can lie on and look up at the sky and look at the red kites

02:13flying above you. You can see the lake from here and the gardens beyond so what

02:20we're hoping people will do is they'll come and enjoy the playscape but then

02:24they'll go and walk around the grounds. I was just talking to Lord Harewood about

02:29what it means to run an estate like this in the modern age and it's

02:35about making it relevant he said to this coming generation and the

02:40existing generation and for that it's about delivering messages and

02:47opening up its doors to really positive wonderful memories so from my

02:54perspective that's created through play and I think we had a meeting of minds

02:59about that.