On a dusty sunny day we entered in through that front gate of Buckingham Palace. We were ushered across the gravel, under the famous balcony and through an archway into a large closed courtyard. The way then led through a gallery and onto the lawn for RoSPA’s Garden Party with Prince Andrew and some 3,500 […]
Playing Out began in Birmingham 2013. Here’s an interview with John Hill-Daniel who helped coordinate in those early years. How did you find out about Playing out? I first heard about Playing Out in Bristol online, on Facebook I think. I was already running the Space Explorers community project with funding from Near Neighbours, but struggling to […]
It’s great to be a part of the larger playing out community – in the UK, Leeds, Bristol, Hackney and a few other places are all working with their councils to make playing happen on streets. Even though Birmingham is implementing a slightly different model from the way street play and others are organised, it’s great […]
Obesity in the UK govt statistics 2015 Obesity in young people and children is on the rise – it’s widespread, growing and the consequences are costly. The solutions themselves are pretty straight forward (improved diet, exercise etc) so why is it health professionals seem powerless to get their message through, and could social media help? […]
Our car breakdown cover provided us with a nice new car for a few days which had an ‘automatic start-stop‘ after our old car died (thank you LV=). It’s a nifty bit of technology which helps reduce car emissions, but you don’t have to buy a new car to stop idling; The first UK Clean […]
When a new street becomes an ActiveStreet, Playing Out for the first time like Main Street in Sparkbrook, it’s hard not to get excited.
Today I read about the Greenhouse of Abundance, a course teaching the principles of building a passive (i.e. heated only by sunlight) greenhouse attached to your home to provide a year-round food growing space. I was initially excited about the idea, but had to reality-check it against my situation. The house pictured on the course website […]
You could guess what problems there are on Main Street in Sparkbrook, but the only way to understand them is to meet the people who live there. And how to make things better? Active Streets and KIKIT are working together to support residents.
This is Just a quick post to let you know that we are reactivating Space Explorers! Our first job has been to rebuild the website and we’ve taken the opportunity to apply a new design and a new name. We loved ‘Space Explorers’ as a project name but a lot of people did get the […]
It all started on Swan Corner when Oz, the Neighbourhood watch man thought we could do something about it. He provided the pickers and the bags in 2015, and now we do it every year – next one for Swan Corner is 10:30 on 8th April meet corner of Cold Bath and Brook Lane .