Parsons Cross Park in Sheffield is the place to be next Saturday! There will be fun activities to launch the start of Sheffield NOW’s Recycled Playground project, where we’ll be collaging and building with recycled materials to find out what makes you play, why play is important , and how we can design stuff to make people playful!

The event is free and fun for children and grown-ups!

There will be a hands on workshop from 10.30 -12 next tuesday for anybody interested in getting involved in The Recycled Playground Project (described a couple of posts back!)  The workshop will be held at our Sheffield NOW! Studio at Bank Street (find directions at http://www.bankstreetarts.com/)

If you are interested call or email me, or lisa on lisaprocter@sheffield-now.com and we’ll send you some more information!

If you are interested in volunteering or you know of some good places to get recycled stuff (bottles, bags, fabric, wood etc)  get in touch with either lisa (lisaprocter@sheffield-now.com) or me – my Sheffield NOW! email is nickyward@sheffield-now.com.

So far, we have aquired loads and loads of old bicycle tyres, and on Saturday will be building with them to make a giant caterpillar structure.  We will also be imagining what it would be like to be a caterpillar for the day, and printing, collaging and writing our stories on strips of fabric (old bedsheets!) that will be sewn together to form part of the caterpillars body.

The event is free and everyone is welcome! Wear scruffy clothes though – you might get paint on them!

Here’s a photo of me practicing building with tyres…

A few people said they had been inspired them to get collaging  – If you have made any collages, please send me a picture – I’ll add it to the gallery if you would like!

I’ll probably carry on adding bits and pieces to this over the next few months, but think that it looks lively and captures the feel of the festival – Thanks to all my helpers over the weekend, I’m very happy with the (almost!) finished result.   Let me know what you think (you can leave a comment below)…

I’ll be exhibiting this along with some of my other work at the Wirksworth Festival on the 12th and 13th September.  If you haven’t been to the festival before, its a fantastic event – Loads of artists display their work in peoples homes and buisnesses throughout Wirksworth – I’ll be just off the Market Place, in Crown Yard.  There’s loads of performances and stuff going on, so there’s plenty to keep the whole family entertained.  The website is www.wirksworthfestival.co.uk if you want to find out more.

The result is fantastic – a set of drawers that look quite ordinary from the outside, but when each drawer opens, the space is transformed to help you learn in different and exciting ways.

For example, the bottom drawer pulls out to form a stage on which you must wear the special hat to give you good luck…

There’s a friendship funfair that pulls out of another drawer, with loads of games and activities designed by children to help you make friends…

Conversation trees grow out the top of the drawers and can be taken around the school – the colours, textures and pictures inspire different conversations…

There’s also a chill out den that folds out one drawer, and an inspiration wave that rolls out of another! As one child exclaimed on seeing the finished result ‘It’s like each drawer is a tardis!’