Marlborough Playground
Our big open sports ground needs some care
BOST is working with local residents, Southwark Council and other partners to design and build permanent sporting facilities at the Marlborough Playground. The site is a public park, it is a large rectangle of tarmac embraced by schools and important to residents as an open place for sports and cycle training.
We had a brilliant consultation event to engage local families in the space in mid September, everyone enjoyed hoola hoops, swingball, badminton, music from the LETs Swing band, bouncy castle, face paints, herbal workshops from the Old Operating Theatre, and some highly entertaining discussions of how bodies and fitness works from Doctor Bones.
We carried out a survey last summer/autumn which showed us lots of families need somewhere local they can play tennis, and other sports. Soft surfacing was also very popular. We also found that the Marlborough is a little known park despite having such a prominent location, simply because with nothing in it, most people don’t realise they can go in there.
Here are some of the responses
‘I never knew this space was here, its huge!’
‘Hi there! My son is so happy today! We really hope that something nice is coming for this area!’
‘We would love to do sports activities here after school’
The permanent improvements will be designed to maximise movements around the site, to give as many different relevant sports as possible, and to encourage people to use and enjoy this valuable space. We will work at the same time to make sure we minimise fences as these can be intimidating and cut up the open nature of the park.
We are in the process of fundraising for all these and also gathering ideas for a ‘Mini Olympics’ event to take place this summer. Click here for more information about the pop up Mini Olympics.
