February 12, 2018
The Mulberry Bush School
The team arrived on site today for the start of a build at the Mulberry Bush School in the peaceful tranquility of the Oxfordshire countryside. The school is almost unique in what it does in that it takes children of primary school age who arrive from environments of family breakdown, high anxiety and trauma. Their work is about long-term change and to achieve this takes time, rather than any quick fix or miracle cures. They take children on a three-year residential programme which runs for 38 weeks. Their aim is to get the children back into the mainstream community. So whilst they make huge progress against the educational curriculum, they also aim to make huge progress on social integration too.
Here's a short video about their work.
It's a very special place indeed.
The children stay in one of five houses around the grounds and what we have done is create a bespoke designed play area for each of them. You can see the outline of these below.
During this half term break our team will be building the Area Five play area with the others to follow in a few months, so we will obviously show you more of the pictures during the build and then again when it's completed.
Whilst we do build a lot of adventure play across the world, it's this work that makes us the most proud. It can make a real difference to childrens' lives when they have somewhere special and unique and they can call their own.