Year 1 of Playful People, Playful Places
From January 2024 – January 2025, the award from the National Lottery’s Reaching Communities Fund enabled us to deliver and scale our Playful People, Playful Places programme and its impacts successfully and consistently across 48 weeks of the year. There were 219 sessions for children under 7 and their caregivers in Wolverhampton to play in, totalling over 328 hours of accessible play offers in 3 areas of disadvantage across the city. 2478 young children played, developed, sang, laughed and enjoyed meeting peers from across the city, with 1932 of their caregivers joining to share important stories with their peers and invest in simple and special playtimes in their local areas with their little ones.
Organisational Development
Not only did Year 1 bring many more opportunities for children to explore indoors and outdoors through high-quality early-years activities whilst their caregivers played, connected and shared stories, but the funding has also enabled us to secure match-funding to further develop our long-term organisational resilience.
Collaborative working helped secure over £12,000 of matchfunding with Gatis Community Space through the West Midlands Combined Authority to deliver joint summer programming, further enhancing the play offer in this peak period where activities for early years children often stop when they are needed most.
We secured £8,700 from the Reach Investment Fund after conversations with social investor Resonance to become ‘investment-ready’ to explore options to open a Play Café venue that will support income generation, with the long-term aim of subsidising Pay As You Feel offers around the city.
We have been able to invest in a new website to make booking sessions and finding out about the organisation even easier.
We have consistently held Project Board and Board meetings to ensure the project maintains a strong trajectory and so successes, challenges and risks are monitored regularly. It has also allowed us to reflect on our Board spread of skills and we plan to expand this in 2025 to further strengthen governance.
“The staff are so friendly and it’s lovely to see my son get so excited when we pull up outside in the car, he can’t wait to get through the gates and see his favourite Wolves Play team members! Thank you ladies for always putting on a smile come rain or shine, your amazing and we love you!”
Google survey, Aug-Oct 2024
Where did we play?
Play sessions were delivered across the city of Wolverhampton weekly at 3 main play locations, Gatis Community Space in Whitmore Reans, Boundary Way Community Garden in Warstones, All Saints Community Centre in All Saints. In addition to this a Play in the Park’ summer holiday programme across all 3 areas in our city parks. We also celebrated 5 years of Wolves Play Cafe with 2 special celebration events in February 2024. You can read about those here.
“Thank you for a wonderful morning. All staff took extra effort to make us feel welcome which was greatly appreciated. I noticed they made everyone feel included and made sure they spoke to all caregivers making sure they’re okay. This means so much and is making a huge difference. The lovely lady in the kitchen was working so hard and had many things to do at once but still took the time to talk to me. Coffee was perfect! Thank you for remembering my sons name and interacting with him on all the activities. All your efforts have given me a much needed mental health boost and Ibrahim was so happy.
We are so lucky to have Wolves Play Cafe. I attended one of the first sessions 5 years ago and it’s so lovely to see how much its grown and how much you’ve done for the community.”
Hannah, November 2024,
Bookeo review
Expanding the team and developing together
We are so lucky to be joined in our mission and aims at Wolves Play Cafe by a dedicated, experienced team of passionate play people! The funding from Reaching Communities secures paid roles for local caregivers for 3 years, and we were able to expand the team in year 1 so we now have 8 playful people helping deliver weekly sessions and develop and innovate the future of Wolves Play Cafe. We have bi-weekly team meetings and seasonal reflection sessions, including team training tasks, both formal such as First Aid, health and safety to more reflective activities to ensure we are continually evaluating and improving our ideas and practice.
How would you describe Wolves Play Cafe in 3 words?
Examples from Google survey Aug-Oct 2024
● Innovative, educational, community-spirited
● Interactive, supportive, friendly
● Amazing, inclusive, fun!
● Imaginative, welcoming, knowledgeable
● Inclusive, inspiring, fun
● Fun, Engaging and Friendly
Collaborating with Play Partners
Another key aim of the project is to inspire play partners across the city to embed playful and exploratory approaches in their roles and organisations. In addition to our playful weekly programming across the city, we were also invited to speak at the Early Education Conference at the University of Wolverhampton, hosted a local school visit by Springdale Primary School, developed a joint project with Gatis Community Space. We were part of the City of Wolverhampton Council’s Family Hubs network and Department for Education’s Digital Hubs pilot programme and also commissioned for the Council’s Fostering Spring events. Most recently we delivered ‘Nurturing Quality Interactions with Young Children’ Early Years training for Black Country Living Museum in January 2025 to help support their new early years programmes.
We are excited to develop an ‘Early Years Friends’ Network in 2025 to continue this work. If you are interested in collaboration, email us at info@wolvesplaycafe.org .
How can you get involved for year 2?
You can be involved in creating Playful Places across our city by:
- Coming along to play!
- Purchasing food or drink through our Orchard Cafe offer during play sessions
- Buying play resources and play packs through our online store or on-site shop
- Donating any amount at play sessions or through our website.
- By expressing interest in the Play For All team, to support the feedback of play sessions, be a part of the Playful People, Playful Places Board
- Help spread the word about Wolves Play Cafe! Bring your friends and families along for fun and friendly faces and share information in local groups and networks