Playscheme Information.
News on the next playscheme will be here and updated in our Forum
Registration is needed to join in offsite activities during playschemes. This is a simple form with contact details and a signature of parent or guardian.
Please come to the playground to register children.
Each playscheme varies depending on length and time of year, here is an overview of our summer playscheme in 2005 to give you an idea.
It was a long hot summer and the weather was dry for most of the time, fortunately there were only a few very hectic and crowded days inside when the rain stopped play outside.
These days, however, did make us acutely aware of the need to get our new building in place.
Thanks to the NDC for their generous funding of our play scheme, it allowed us to offer a fantastic summer for all the local kids in New Cross gate
What happened on Somerville ?
The playground was open from 10 o'clock in the morning until 7 o'clock in the evening. Monday to Friday for the whole six weeks.
Inside
In spite of the damage to our building from the fire we managed to deliver once again, a very successful play scheme
Hopefully we will be able to offer even more activities
When we have our new building there will the space and facilities to run more workshops.
Main Room
Pool, table tennis and games in constant use from 10 o'clock in the morning until 7 o'clock in the evening. Pool and Table tennis competitions for under twelve's and over twelve's.
Art room
Every day Monday to Friday the art room was open for the whole six weeks.
Ian and Kimmykool from Other World Arts were back in full swing, lots and lots of creative work going on.
Other World Arts will be at the London Mayors festival on September 17 th . and we hope to be joining up in the procession with some of the costumes we made, during the summer.
Children of all ages, both girls and boys took active part and enjoyed all the art room sessions.
The workshops were creative, educational socially interactive and helped to raise our kids confidence. There was a very stimulating and exciting feeling around all the projects, and the feedback from kids, parents and other visitors were very positive.
Chill out room
Our former woodwork room had now become a chill out room
Open when staffing levels would allow.
We used the room for our Music workshops, and any extra activities that need private space.
Dr Bike only had to use it once when the weather was bad.
Kitchen
We had a lot of healthy, and just fun cooking sessions, kids are always fascinated with food.
Mumpaz from the Healthy eating project helped us out with some fresh fruit every week.
We cooked lunches and a wide range of ethnic delicacies, such as Jerk chicken. Italian pizza, and good old fashioned English bacon and eggs.
We provided the kids with a never ending supply of squash and fresh water all summer to make sure they were not dehydrated.
Lots of ice poles and choc ices as well.
OUTSIDE
Free adventure play.
Kids playing on the structures from early morning until 7 o'clock in the evening every day of the holidays. When it was home time they did not want to go.
Swinging, running, sliding, bordering, building camps, playing he, basketball, football, rounders, cricket and helping with cleaning and sweeping.
The kids helped to top up our woodchips, with wheel barrows and shovels all around the playground.
This surface has improved the safety of the playground, there has been a dramatic drop in the amount of grazed knees and small cuts.
The new wheelchair access walkway leading into the playground, brightened the look of the playground, and instigated some very interesting discussions about disabled access.
Hyde housing came to the rescue and gave us the funding for this, when our community chest grant application was turned down.
It helps to raise the awareness of the need for an inclusive place to play for all kids.
We are very keen to ensure special needs access will be incorporated in our new building.
When St. Joseph brought down a group of autistic children, they felt very welcome and really appreciated our efforts, some very encouraging feedback all round from parents. kids and user groups.
The hockey box was in constant use and we had to renew the wooden frame quite a lot of time due to heavy and constant use.
Every Friday was Bar-b-Q. day and we had lots of sausages and burgers and an alternative supply for our veggies.
The Somerville pancake cooked on the outside fire was off course a regular event.
The best pancake you have ever tasted was the one you had at the adventure!
We refurbished and rebuilt the big slide, before the start of the summer holidays and renewed all the lino twice due to the very heavy use and the popular game of: "Kings and Queens ".
We updated and renewed a lot of the play structures before the summer, but the heavy use of the play area, made the upkeep and regular safety checks of all the structures, an every day ongoing part of our workload.
The kids build their own camps, with hammers, nails and lots of pieces material and old curtains, and engaged in a lot of territorial disputes.
DR BIKE
Provided in partnership with neighbourhood wardens.
Every Thursday and Friday from 2 until 5 o'clock and very often even longer, we had Charlie and his assistants helping our kids to get their bikes road worthy.
This was popular with all ages and with mums and dads as well.
We hope that we Charlie will return soon, the kids miss him already and are asking when Dr.Bike will be back.
MILLWALL FOOTBALL COACHES
On the football pitch every Wednesday and Friday.
Very popular well attended by all age groups.
MILLWALL ATHLETIC TRAINING
Tom ran several athletic and basketball training sessions all through the six weeks holidays.
Other World Arts
As well as inside, other world arts organised creative workshops outside.
We made large paper mache objects and lots of face painting.
And decorated the playground for our party day.
ARTEFACTS VIDEO WORKSHOP
An opportunity for our kids to be involved and learn about video production. Several sessions in the first half of the summer holidays. The most successful was the last day when our kids where getting their hands on the equipment.
A video produced will be shown at All Saints on September 27 th .
AHOY
Sailing and canoeing and power boating
These sessions were very popular with the kids that attended,
The hardest part was to actually get the kids down to the Ahoy Centre to give them a taste,
Once they were there they all became very keen, our kids successfully finished their induction courses and received their certificates,
A lot of them went on to volunteer with the Ahoy Centre.
KINSHIP PROJECT
Thanks for their support time and help during the six weeks.
Some very difficult and stressful incidents, were alleviated as they were there to help us.
Drug awareness sessions.
Due to the high numbers of younger children using the playground, we felt it was inappropriate to continue with these in their usual format.
We adopted a much more informal and less intensive approach.
STREET VIBES
MC workshops.
As our building was not able to accommodate these sessions intensively, we did not have as many as we would have liked.
They were very popular with our kids, and we would like to continue working with Street vibes in the future.
Using the computers at 170
We tried to get over to 170 as often as possible for our kids to use the computers, but did not always find the time and space.
This once again shows the need for our new building.
Somerville Web site
We have asked Kimmykool to help us set up our own Somerville Web site , this will have a kids page in it and will have space for info around the exciting new project of our new building. It will have a forum a place where people can add things (on line) through the whole building development.
This initiative was started during the Summer playscheme, and is ongoing.
Off-site activities
We took the kids in our mini bus to Ice Skating, swimming, Bowling, Theatre, Cinema, Climbing Wall Mile End, Steel band workshop, Country side, Black berry Picking, and museums.
We also took our kids to the Ahoy sailing and power boating sessions, and helped out the Triangle school kids when the warden's mini bus broke down.
CAMPING
Two groups of 12 kids went away on a camping trip to the scout campsite.
They had wonderful camping weather, and the kids loved every minute.
When it was finally time to go home again there was thunder and the sky opened ,we all got soaked.
We had to dry out all the equipment before putting it away until our next camping expedition.
Coach Trips
One coach trip to Thorpe Park and one to Chessington
Our kids behaved and the weather was very good.
A family coach trip to Clacton on Sea
Two coaches filled with the local community.
Atmosphere was brilliant, everybody enjoyed it in spite of the foul weather conditions, (it must have been the worst day of the summer), and the fact that one coach driver got lost on the way there.
A double coach outing to Margate .
Once again the atmosphere was brilliant.
This time it must have been the hottest day of the summer.
One coach broke down on the way home, so we did get back very late.
Also some of our teenagers let of a smoke bomb on the coach and their antisocial behavior resulted in a ban from the playground and future trips.
The coach trips play an important role in actively engaging people in the playground and encouraging parental involvement.
The Somerville Party Fun day
We had a lot of fun preparing for this special day and fortunately this year the weather was kind to us,
We decorated the whole playground with all the artwork made in the "Other World Arts workshops".
We hired a Bouncy Castle , Sue made lots of bar b q Chicken, Terrie provided the Music, Gary was in charge of the steel drum Bar-b-q,
We had face Painting, wet sponge throwing, lots of different dancing and singing, prices, Dr. Bike with cycle hockey on the football pitch, and we made our group picture on the big swing.
There was help from parents and all the kids.
Everybody worked together to make sure it was a good day.
The end of the summer was very emotional, we all had a good time and it was sad it came to the end.
We would like to thank everyone that helped to make this summer special.
Staff
Senior play worker Hanneke Nicholson
Trevor Waldron
Gary Brown
Tony Knight
Rachel Martin
Sue Khan
Andrew Hunte
Other World Arts
Ian Simons
Kim Robson
Volunteers
Nicky Cann
Rachel McCulloch
Robyn Moorhouse
Isabelle Robson
Jade Husnu
Terrie Pope
Shakira
Brady Cann
Somerville is managed by a voluntary management committee made up of local parents.
We charge nominal fees for off-site activities, but make sure that these will not stop children from taking part in any of the activities.
Access to the Adventure Playground and its on-site activities of course are free
Somerville has been grant funded by the London Borough of Lewisham for over thirty years,
It is monitored by the youth service and our staff are CRB checked through them.
We have our own registration forms and our own consent forms for off-site activities. We keep a register of all our regular users.
There are over 300 children on our register and the vast majority of these live within SE14/15 postal codes of the New Deal area.
The best way to measure the success of the play scheme has to be the amount of children that keep coming back for more to the playground
An estimated figure of around 200 children would come to the playground every day. Overall this adds up to over 6000 different visits from local kids to the adventure!
We also had visits from other local play schemes, most of them more than once. They like to come and spend some time with us, playing on the structures in the free environment of the playground.
Some of the groups that came to visit us this year were; Edmund Waller after school club, St Michael, St Thomas the apostle, African Community Partnership. Saint Joseph , John Donne.
As we are such a strong community based organisation, our users reflect all sections of the local community.
We encourage children with disabilities to take part in the activities on offer whenever possible.
We have a number of disabled kids using the playground, which is beneficial for all our kids (abled as well as disabled).
Looking back
Having the extra funding available to run the play scheme has made a lot of difference in the activities we are able to offer the local community.
Thanks to the NDC - we hope for an even better summer next year.
As the number of activities we offer and the amount of kids using the playground increases every year; our workload specially around organisation, registration, and management has dramatically increased. We will need to look at extra staff and office space to help us cope with this.
Building on last years success our reputation goes before us, and the numbers of children and parents returning to the playground continues to go up.
As the other adventure playgrounds in the borough were closed for the first half of the holidays, we had an even more kids coming to the playground.
The success of our playschemes over the past years has also created an expectation by the local community of Somerville to be able to deliver well run, exciting and properly funded activities especially during the holiday periods.
More co-ordination in linking up with other service providers in the area and opportunities to share and work together in planning ahead would be welcome.
We are working in a relatively small area and a lot of our kids will be the same as the ones the NDC and other local groups, aim to involve.
We are looking forward to the imminent improvement of our playground building. To cope with the demands of our users especially when the weather is bad, is very challenging.
Investing in the playground is essential! Once again it has proved the need for its survival and support of the local community.
Funding
New Deal for Communities New Cross
L.B. Lewisham Youth Service
(N.B. No Play scheme grant awarded this year for the first time in our 33 year history)
Fundraising
