Edmund Waller is a large urban primary school in Lewisham. Their playground is relatively large, but lacks definition in terms of separating different types of play activities, and is limited mainly to ball games. The Friends of Edmund Waller PSA plays an active part in the school community, fundraising and supporting school developments. At the beginning of 2004, they contacted Learning through Landscapes to request a Site Visit.

The school embraced the need for change, and worked through the LTL Process of Change, to ensure that the entire community was involved and had their voices heard. Assemblies were used to share the concept of developing the grounds, The school council helped developed consultation materials, and disseminated decisions and discussions back to their classes. The first consultation event involved every pupil in the school. House groups were allocated different areas of the grounds to discuss and make suggestions, and were then asked questions about the playground as a whole. Using houses enabled children to work in mixed-age groups, and ensured that younger children in the school could be involved.

During the summer holidays of 2003, mural artists had been employed to create murals for the entranceway to the school. Interestingly, a child commented during the recent consultation: ‘The murals are beautiful, but they just popped up overnight. If we had been involved, we could have created beautiful murals too’. It was comments like these that fuelled the school’s desire to involve all of the pupils throughout the entire process.

The current reception area, was identified by the children as a key area needing development. The consultation highlighted the need to change many aspects of the playground but 2 areas were a priority - the creation of a Reception playground, and using the trees around the grounds (which the children all mentioned and loved) to build a tree walk. The school contacted several architects and play equipment specialists to get ideas for the areas, and finally Theories Landscapes were chosen for the design and build. 

The school council were taken to a nearby school who had recently completed the final stages of their playground developments with Theories Landscapes. This facilitated looking at the work that had taken place in the Nursery area at the school.

The children were able to look at the designs and the finished product, and ask the Headteacher questions about the process they had undertaken. The trip was thoroughly inspirational and enjoyed by all.

The children were then taken to a tree walk/adventure playground in East Dulwich, to get ideas about how the tree walk would look in their own playground.