Isle of Play (charity number 1245) is a leading children’s charity that promotes and creates opportunities for children to play.

It works directly with around 1,000 children each week through its projects, which include school holiday play scheme Playing Out, which travels around the island with a van ‘full of fun’.

The Isle of Man Examiner spoke to chief executive officer Chris Gregory.

Who are you / What do you do?

We focus on children’s ‘right to play’.

We rock up at playgrounds and green spaces around the island to build rope swings, zip lines, bring in go karts, scooters, bikes and paint.

The children have an absolute blast.

In term time we run the island’s only Forest School project, working with classes of children for a sustained period of weeks.

Situated in a private woodland the children experience that natural world through their play.

They spend the time finding bugs, building tree houses, making bows and arrows and using woodcraft tools.

Forest School has become so popular that the whole academic year was fully subscribed in a matter of hours.

Meanwhile, after school and throughout the holidays, Lester’s Yard Adventure Playground opens its gates.

Unlike most traditional playgrounds, Lester’s Yard is a playground that the children build themselves.

Using hammers, nails, drills and saws, they (with the help of adults) build dens, climbing frames, tree houses and bridges.

It is a place they can create and destroy, have fires, cook food and play as they like.

Over the summer holidays we piloted ‘Play Streets’, a project which closed a residential street to traffic and allowed children to play outside their own homes without the threat of vehicles.

Children who had never played on their street before came out to play and the pilot was considered a huge success by all those involved.

As well as all this, Isle of Play delivers training, playground consultation and advocates for children’s rights, speaking out on the issues that affect children that politicians and decision makers would otherwise ignore.

Why / When did you form?

Isle of Play formed in 2018.

Where others deemed play not to be important, Isle of Play understood that play is the ‘defining feature of childhood’.

Recognising if opportunities for children to play were to continue to decline in our communities, then not only would children be robbed of the best years and experiences of their lives, but the impact on wider society would be catastrophic.

Play is the fundamental building block to positive physical and mental health, it is key to human creativity, is great fun, accessible anywhere and should never have to be paid for.

What has been your biggest achievement or proudest moment since forming?

Opening Lester’s Yard has got to be one of the biggest and most important moments of Isle of Plays brief history.

Douglas Corporation showed their faith in Isle of Play to give us a massive plot of land to open the island’s first adventure playground.

It’s not a venue that is necessarily easy on the eyes, constructed out of pallets and donated bits of wood.

You’re as likely to see a child cooking on an open fire as you are to see a child being pushed on a swing at your regular playground.

Lester’s Yard quickly became a place where those children local to it attends most days.

To these children our staff aren’t figures of authority (although we can be when we must) but are trusted individuals who may help them build a den, but also someone they can talk to about the troubles that they face at home or school.

What is your biggest ambition / goal for the future?

Isle of Play wants to realise this potential of the Isle of Man by creating an island-wide ethos that values children and their right to play.

With safer roads, challenging and creative play spaces, an education system which embraces play throughout its curriculum, we will have created the best place in the world for children to play and grow.

How can people get involved?

If you’d like to get involved, bring your children along to our holiday play scheme.

If you’re someone that works with children, enquire about what Forest School and play training we offer.

If you’re a business or organisation and would like to sponsor a project or make a donation, please get in touch.

We are incredibly proud that we don’t have any back-office costs, all our accounting and legal is taken care of by our group of brilliant trustees so every penny donated goes straight to the delivery of services.

However, unlike many charities we don’t have a fundraising department, meaning we are heavily reliant on donations and grant applications.

If you would like to run a fundraising event for isle of Play, please do get in touch.

Contact

For more information please contact: [email protected]

Website: www.isleofplay.im

Facebook: www.facebook.com/isleofplay