10 Street Play facts
1. The Big Lottery funds the Street Play project to support residents on 100 London residential streets to have an afternoon of fun for neighbours big and small by closing the street to traffic and opening the road for play.
2. The project began May 2009 and runs to May 2011.
3. Of the 100 parties we are aiming to support we have organized 46 so far in a third of London's 33 boroughs including Barnet, Croydon, Ealing, Hammersmith & Fulham, Haringey, Hounslow, Islington, Lambeth, Southwark, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest.
4. Children are less and less visible nowadays in the public realm. The simple excitement of knocking for friends on your street to play kick the can or sticky buds outside your front door has disappeared. Children are too often to be found indoors playing sedentary computer games or passively watching television, activities that their natural energy and inquisitive natures are not designed for. A 2007 ICM survey commissioned by our colleagues at Play England revealed that 71 per cent of adults played outside in the street when they were children, compared to only 21 per cent of children today.
5. Street Parties are the perfect credit crunch-defiant day out as they cost very little to put on but offer a return in social capital second to none. Our research shows that on average adult residents meet between seven to 10 neighbours for the first time at a street party. One resident at a Street Play party in Haringey said ‘It has made a massive difference to the experience of walking down the street. I now have so many people to say hello to, it was always a friendly street but now people seem to be looking out for each and the children more'.
6. The project has also established a quarterly Safer Streets forum made up of road safety professionals, representatives from the Department of Transport and traffic-free organisations, academics and parents to ensure Street Play has a strong road safety / road awareness ethos underpinning it.
7. The Street Play Project has provided advice and support on Street Party development for institutions as varied as The Mayor of London to Firstsite in Colchester.
8. Some residents have asked London Play to help them create a permanent play space on their street by using powers under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 which allows local authorities to designate streets as ‘Play Streets'. Under this designation streets can be closed to through traffic between certain hours (usually 7:00am to Sunset on weekends and holidays) to give children a valuable space to play.
9. In the USA, communities of enlightened parents are turning this tide by creating Playborhoods. These are streets where parents take it in turns to watch out for the neighbourhood's children as they play out.
10. The project was the 2009 winner of Children and Young People Now prestigious Play Award.
