Poringland School – Kindness Project

Poringland School in Norfolk is a long-time friend of CAP.CO and has always believed that self-discovery and co-operation through play and interaction is critical to personal development for their pupils. This is reflected in their vision and values statement where they want to help create happy, active, inspired, healthy learners. So, when they leave, they will be well-equipped for life:

- With a desire to learn, inspired by innovative teaching and active learning;
- With the skills and self-belief to enable them to succeed;
- With the confidence to solve problems, welcome challenges and to be independent learners, who have a love for learning.

Children will understand the importance of a healthy, active lifestyle. They will have a respect for others and a sense of moral responsibility as citizens in a modern world.

So, during one of our regular catch-ups with their team, we discussed the idea of a workshop for their children to help plan and design a whole new type of play, and how it should come to life.

Workshop visit and brainstorming

A workshop visit was organized with a team from Poringland. Bringing a large group of children into a workshop does take a fair amount of planning. Our team were all excited for the day and maybe went over and above in the meticulousness of their planning, to ensure the kids got real value from their day and had great fun too.

Each of the children were involved in the process to create a new type of play that would allow them to bring the essence of their school values to life. After a day of work, deliberation and fun, they all agreed that the word was 'Kindness'.

Bringing the design to life

One aspect of the day planning with the Poringland kids was getting an understanding of what fun looked like to them. What did they really enjoy and what was less fun for them to enjoy together?

The key was active fun together, as individual play is rarely fun for long and interaction with friends is what really brings play to life.

So, with their help we already had the basis of how the play would link and what each letter could include in terms of its individual play value.

Prefabrication

The prefabrication planning began and each of the individual letters that makes up the word 'Kindness' was pored over by our technical design team. This was to enable our steel fabricators to create a frame behind that would support the letters, allow them to link together with the planned play and be well supported in the ground, so there was no movement and also no hazard, in case of a fall from the finished play equipment.

And then the prefabrication began, ready to be loaded onto a trailer for delivery and installation. Installation only took two days as all the site work had been done and the letters themselves were fully finished.

The finished job

Seeing the finished play coming to life with children playing together was quite something. In the words of Pete Dean, the inspirational Head of the school.

"The Poringland playground has been lit up by KINDNESS, a trim trail spelling out a key value of the school. The impact of this build on staff, parents and children is like nothing I have ever seen at any school."

In a simple study carried out by the school with their children, they asked them what their values were as a school. Whilst they could all recall most of the values, the one that was 100% top of their list was Kindness.

The project has had a profound impact at Poringland for the whole community. Children learn through play and playgrounds can be transformed to encourage play, health and happiness! This feels very much like the future.