Milestone School Sensory Playground
- Client
- Chamwell Centre Charity, associated with the school
- Location
- Gloucester
- Project Leaders
- Robert Walder Zoë Lindgren
Challenge
Milestone is one of the largest special schools in the U.K. whose aim is to enable access to learning for children with severe learning difficulties or autism with additional challenges of complex medical and physical disabilities.
In 2017, Quattro was commissioned to provide an outdoor all-ability play area expressly to encourage exploration and discovery.
Many consultation meetings with the school’s play workers took place where the needs of shy as well as robust children’s play preferences were explained with an aim to providing nesting, hiding and perching opportunities whilst also being mindful of some children’s slower energies counterbalanced with livelier rates of progress.
Playtimes at the school are always supervised with a high staff to child ratio providing security and support for any child requiring empathetic help or physical assistance and it was felt that a small element of risk in some of the activities was acceptable in order to offer an outside space with appeal and capable of sparking feelings of elation.
- Sector
- Education
Special Schools - Services
- Partners
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Funded through a donation by the Pied Piper Appeal
Gallery
Solution
Quattro set about to illustrate and develop the client’s brief in the forms of sketches and zoning diagrams striving to incorporate the many faceted aspirations.
In due course, a looped path connecting the separate activities evolved, allowing the children to arrive at the activities in a sequence if desired, or the choice remained of moving flexibly throughout. Every hub of play was sufficiently distanced from the next so that getting into a tangle risking bewilderment or disorientation would not occur.
Completed in 2018, the new play area bursts with colour engaging the children with a soft bamboo hiding area, a path through the trees where a wigwam is found and a wheelchair accessible tunnel and a bridge. A mud pit and water rill deliver tactile experiences, and springy rubber bumps can be crawled or jumped over for further sensory play. A low platform provides a place for creativity where sculptures are made from recycled scrap metal, or where children can perform.
The project has been like a text book scheme from start to finish, running like clockwork and has provided a superb new facility that we are sure will be put to good use by the residents of Longford.
Robert Hitchins, Cheltenham
The success of the project is mainly down to the team involved in delivering it and this in no small part includes Quattro Design Architects, who have been involved from the outset...Your experience, advice and and input have been invaluable. We very much look forward to working with you again.
Robert Hitchins, Cheltenham
As a headteacher, it is rare to be given a building where the needs of pupils have been at the very heart of the design. With colour, shape and a texture chosen for interest and stimulation, this is certainly a building that will facilitate pupil learning.
Kingsway Primary School, Gloucestershire
The design process had significant challenges not least the time scales to get an agreed scheme in place. I would like to really compliment the team on how they steered through these so calmly and competently and I hope we can work with them again on future projects.
Herefordshire Council