Outdoor Learning and Play
Celebrating Love Parks 2024!
Summer is here and a great English tradition is for people to go out and have fun with friends, kids or pets and explore and play in their local parks, holiday park playgrounds, and wonderful green spaces.
With Love Parks Week fast approaching, now is the perfect time for local authorities to think about revamping their public parks and encouraging local communities to visit them.
What is Love Parks Week?
Love Parks is a week-long celebration that highlights the vital role green spaces play in boosting the health and well-being of residents and communities.
It is a chance for parks across the country to shine, to show off their wonderful facilities, and, their Green Flag Award (if they have one)!
Here are three great reasons why Pentagon Play Loves Parks:
- Healthier communities: Parks promote physical activity, lower stress, and provide a great environment for social interaction, which in turn makes residents happier and healthier.
- Stronger communities: Parks that are looked after become focal points for community events, encouraging a sense of community and pride.
- Sustainable future: Parks improve the air and water quality due to the large amount of greenery (trees, plants, grass) within it while modifying climate change effects.
This year Love Parks Week runs from July 26th to August 4th. It’s a wonderful occasion to engage with local communities, encourage park pride, and get local communities enjoying the wonderful green space around them!
More than 500 local authorities and landowners take part in Love Parks Week, by hosting a wide array of outdoor activities like building bug hotels, holding local farmers markets, Zumba sessions, and live music events in local parks and green spaces.
The essence of Park Loves Week is to help local communities of all ages from little ones to the elderly become healthier, feel part of the local community, and give people the enjoyment of being outside in natural green surroundings.
Who Created Love Parks?
Love Parks Week is an exciting and collaborative team effort on behalf of various organisations and local authorities that promote the event across the UK. Here is a glimpse of its evolution:
- Keep Britain Tidy: Love Parks Week was founded in the UK and is supported by Keep Britain Tidy, a leading independent environmental charity. Keep Britain Tidy promotes the importance and value of the environment that surrounds them. It plays a key role in organising Love Parks Week by communicating and collaborating with local communities, park managers, and volunteers to get involved and organise events, showcase park facilities, and promote park pride.
- Community Engagement: Over 500 local authorities and landowners take park in Park Loves Week. Enhancing local community bonds and aiding people to discover and value their local green spaces.
What is Keep Britain Tidy?
Keep Britain Tidy is an independent charity that is passionate about maintaining a cleaner environment. It has three key goals:
- To eliminate litter
- To end waste
- To improve public spaces
Their flagship event is the “Great British Spring Clean” where they get half a million #LittleHearos to collect nearly a million bags of litter, cleaning up streets, parks, and beaches across the country. On top of this event, Keep Britain Tidy runs several exciting and impactful environmental programs in the UK, with Love Parks Week being one of them.
Why Is Love Parks So Important For Your Park?
Love Parks is a wonderful yearly event celebrating the importance of urban parks and green spaces.
But why do these natural spaces matter:
- Health and Well-being: It is widely researched that being in nature (whether walking in a park, wood, or garden), has many positive effects on people’s health and well-being such as reducing stress, improving mental health, and enhancing physical fitness.
- Community Connection: Urban parks bring people together and aid as social hubs for local communities. People will come together in green areas for picnicking, walking, playing football, and many more activities promoting social bonds and a sense of togetherness.
- Environmental Benefits: Parks and green spaces help to keep an ecological balance by purifying the air, removing pollution, lowering noise pollution, buffering cold temperatures, managing storm waters, minimising flooding, and improving water quality.
- Economic Impact: Parks and green spaces influence the local economy as they draw visitors to the area, which in turn brings business to the local shops and cafes, as well as increasing house prices. People using the parks regularly for physical activities are also less likely to use the local healthcare system reducing their costs.
- Climate Resilience: Parks and green spaces are a wonderful oasis for providing shade and cool areas. They help regulate temperatures in densely populated areas, making Urban spaces less hot!
- Nature Encounters: All parks and green spaces whatever their size offer valuable natural settings and vital green spaces that benefit both health and the environment.
Love Parks Week is a celebration of the multifaceted impact that parks and green spaces have on our lives, the community, and our planet.
How Can Your Park Celebrate Love Parks?
There are a few ways that your local park can celebrate:
- Show Love to Your Park: Encourage the local community and outside visitors to respect your park by taking care of it. An easy way is to take your rubbish home with you if the park bins are overflowing!
- Respect Park Workers: Without park workers, our local parks would be a mess. So, show some appreciation to all the park workers who do a wonderful job maintaining our local parks.
- Promote Safety Initiatives: This week could help highlight safety issues within your local parks. These can be looked at to ensure they are safe environments for all those who visit them.
Use Love Parks Resource Pack
Keep Britain Tidy has produced a free resource pack for anyone who manages or helps to take care of local parks and green spaces. It is found on their website. The pack has lots of great ideas and tools to help promote Love Parks in your area.
The resource pack consists of:
- Posters – A3/A4
- Banners for display in your park
- Social Media posts and header images
- Selfie boards
- A Love Parks sample social media post documents
How Pentagon Play Has Helped Parks Improve Their Facilities
Our team at Pentagon Play prides itself in being experts in the playground equipment industry and has worked in over 15,000 locations across the UK. We look at each holiday park, park, and green space individually, to help create the perfect outdoor play environment, and bring the “wow” factor to your local community!
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Our playground equipment products are robust, guaranteed, and designed to withstand the elements. We pride ourselves on our innovative ideas and options for all-weather surfacing, shelter from the rain, and shade from the sun.
Lake District National Park in Cumbria
The Lake District National Authorities approached Pentagon Play this year as they were looking for new equipment and fun ideas to help the millions of visitors per year who visit the area have sheltered focal points along the “Rydal Water and Grassmere” walking trails.
Pentagon Play installed 2 of our famous 5M Hexagonal Gazebos along the trail to enhance visitors' experience and provide a comfortable shelter to relax come rain or shine in a beautiful location for everyone to enjoy.
Each Gazebo can cater comfortably to up to 6 families including a family dog, allowing families to take a break, sit down on one of the internal benches, and take in the wonderful green space around them!
Bright Park in Knotty Ash
Pentagon Play were made aware of the fantastic work the Bright Park charity was doing for the people of Knotty Ash. The charity owns a park which they hold a wide variety of events for families to take part in, but it didn't have any exisiting play equipment present.
After speaking for months, Pentagon Play decided to donate our state-of-the-art Latrigg Climber. Being one of the best active challenges on any playground, we knew that the Latrigg Climber would be the perfect addition for an outstanding playground, all for a great cause.
Our products team decided to use this opportunity to build the very product that they designed by travelling over to the park.
Once built, Bright Park organised a beautiful reveal ceremony; which had councillors, parents, members of Bright Park and, of course, the children! The day was absolutely perfect and we're glad we could add some more excitement to the park.
Wychwood Park in Cheshire
Pentagon Play carried out a huge park renovation job for Wychwood Park to make it a wonderful outdoor play space for children. Our team of experts removed the previous playground equipment and created a new playground by supplying innovative playground equipment to the play area to enhance active play in the playground.
Park equipment introduced:
Watch out all adults as the children will have hours of fun pretending to be Tarzan, budding explorers, and superheroes!
Create An Exciting And Engaging Park For Your Visitors Today!
You can trust Pentagon Play to help improve local parks and green spaces as we already work with thousands of local authorities across the UK.
Our team of experts is here to help work alongside local authorities and organisations, to improve an outdoor play space, and create an environment that would be perfect for Love Parks 2024.
So, if you're looking to revamp your park, holiday park, or green space with innovative playground equipment, contact our team of experts who can help you today!
