Sunday 7 May 2017

History


I took this image in 2001, I was building the wooden castle in the background.  My friend Steve Edwards was a great play-worker and I have a memory of sitting on the platforms we built together sharing saltfish and ackee that his Gran would deliver and drinking loads of full sugar pop to give us energy.   I don't think this was the first time I got involved with the adventure playground, I had walked past it a lot since moving into our house in 1992 but playgrounds do not seem important when you don't have kids.  As my own children got bigger we would go down there a bit, but not really that often.  My kids were not really adventure playground children, it was a more occasional sunny day thing, I think they never felt one hundred percent comfortable there.

My first encounter with Patrick was probably 1998 when he came to the playground as a new play leader.  To be honest I don't remember much about this time other than his very blond hair and the fact we drank tea together in long grass that smelt damp but the sun was out, perhaps it was spring or it had just rained.  I remember not really understanding what the playground did or why it was there.  It felt like a very urban thing, I grew up in the countryside where the farm or the greenhouse became the playground, it's not quite the same in a city where the rules on waste-ground seem more prescriptive.  In the country space is more up for grabs.

As my children got bigger and I moved further away from doing anything other than looking after them, the adventure playground became a place where I had a chance to do practical things, to build and to make and for the things I built and made to have a value.  After graduating in fine art I had a phase of making sculptures that had no connection to the outside world.  This period of life is well illustrated by the construction of an air brick tester which consisted of a set of bellows and an device to hold an air brick.  When you pumped the bellows, air would flow through the brick.  Air would always flow through the brick, the pointless nature of the air brick tester was the point but the point in the end felt pretty pointless.  I kept the contraption in my cellar for a year or so then took it to the tip and reused the bellows to make something else and then took that to the tip.

Making play equipment ticked lots of the same boxes as making sculpture, it used the same bit of my brain.  The cogs that trundle around as the problem at hand is logically worked through, the making and shaping of materials, the bending them to your will, the irony and absurdity of what is constructed and the things that are unexpected that emerge from materialising something out of nothing.  These were and are important things for me, they ground me and distract me, they are not something I'm naturally good at, I have to work at it. I say this not from modesty more from working with people who are very talented with their hands. I value the space of calm, dirty hands, an aching body, being reliant on the help of others, realising something that only lives in your head.  The building of play equipment is worthwhile because of the future life, The thousands of imaginings and memories, the landscape of childhood, the creation of a shared place of play.

Patrick did a great job at the adventure playground then.  There were a few other people; a man called Ralph then a space where there was trouble, or talk of trouble, two women workers threatened with a knife.  Then Steve came along and sorted out any trouble.  He had been head doorman at The Unit, a tough old club  in town. He put his success in keeping on top of things down to his network of African Caribbean Grandmas who would police their grandchildren and demand respect.  At this time things got complex as our area was successful in bidding for New deal for communities funding.  This happened in 2000 Alice was 2, Tom was 4, and Holly was 6 .  I had been at home with them for six years and although not ready for work I was ready for something else.  I sat on the advisory board and flung myself into the mix of toxic local and national politics, I can't remember how long this lasted but I did get in to deep, became to frustrated and probably from the accounts of others, a little overbearing.  Again the adventure playground presented itself as a place where I could do something constructive.  Me and my friend Lisa, who was an artist that had given up on art, set up a group called the Pitsmoor Adventure playground Users Group.  We managed by hook and by crook to raise £80,000, we did lots of work, paid for far too much time planning new buildings that would never get built but essentially pushed to make sure the Council kept the funding in place to staff it.

The reason for this was a feeling we both had about our area's capacity to run things, the population is transitory, waves of migration move through, peoples' day to day needs conflict with the future.   Understandably, the long term strategic planning needed to support a playground didn't and doesn't  get prioritised.  When I look at the adventure playground I'm reminded of  Ruskin's quote about his inability to feel angry when looking at a penguin.  There are things that are difficult and hard to deal with yet the purpose of the playground and it's ability to bind community together, to provide a place for people from all backgrounds and cultures to rub up against each other, in many ways a place my community can feel proud of - it is almost impossible to feel negative about the work we do there. Essentially this is why I return, this is why I take myself seriously there.  Much of the other work I find myself doing reminds me of the air brick tester that lived in my cellar and ended up at the tip.


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