Castleford folk are no strangers to urban regeneration but how did they manage to get the kids involved?
By Caroline Bloor
The most successful urban regeneration projects involve the people who are going to use the final product. It sounds obvious but it doesn’t always happen. And when its facilities for kids you’re planning, it’s even more essential. The schemes to provide new play areas in two of Castleford’s most deprived communities involved local children every step of the way. The results are an enviable level of community ownership, and equipment that has been valued not trashed.
The suburb of Cutsyke (a mile from Castleford town centre) is just a small community of around 700 houses but it’s home to a lot of large families who desperately needed somewhere safe for their kids to play. One of the projects in Kevin McCloud and The Big Town Plan involved transforming a derelict area of former council allotments in Cutsyke from “a drugs haven and fire hazard” into a £220,000 ‘play forest’.
Overlapping grids of high poles, crawl-tubes, scramble nets, raised platforms and tunnel slides all make up the innovative 400m2 structure - created by landscape designers Estell Warren and Allen Tod Architects.
'Prior to the Playforest, kids here had never had a structured play environment beyond a slide and couple of swings,' says Rheta Davison who championed the project and the involvement of the kids which she believes was fundamental to the scheme’s success. 'We had children’s involvement from day one - that way you know they will look after it,' she says.
And they have. Cutsyke Playforest was opened in 2003 and still looks as shiny and new today (very little graffiti, vandalism or littering) as it did then under the watchful eye of the locals. 'The play forest is gelling the people of Cutsyke together and those in the surrounding area,' Rheta continues. 'We get kids coming from all over, even disabled groups, everybody wants to see it.'
'The Cutsyke Play Forest proves that listening to the needs of the community, including the children who play there, can have a lasting and positive effect on the spirit of the community,' says Robin Sutcliffe chairman of Sutcliffe Play, the company that supplied the equipment.
Stuart Surr was just ten years old when he got involved in the project but he says it’s changed his life. Now fifteen he’s still active in the community – keeping the park litter free, organising fund days and trips out. When he leaves school, he plans to study government and law.
'We came up with the whole idea, it’s our park. We all sat down and thought what we wanted, there were loads of designs and loads of talk. The designer came to the drop-in centre and showed us a model. Then he came back with poles and took us out to a field and we put them all up to show how big it was going to be. We were staggered! It was brilliant!' says Stuart.
Getting involved in community regeneration has proved life changing for 56 year old grandmother Rheta Davison too. During the project she gained a higher education certificate in community regeneration and neighbourhood renewal from The Northern College. And last year, she was awarded an MBE for services to young people in the community. 'I had no formal education. I started the project thinking I know it all but we’ve all learned. If you’ve got knowledge you can give it to others,' she says.
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