City wraps ups Calgary mobile adventure playground pilot

Calgary kids have a few more daysto play outside withcardboard boxes, tires and old bathtubs.

The city's mobile adventure playgroundhas been visiting five city parks this summer:NorthGlenmorePark, Canyon Meadows,CanmorePark, Riley Park and Forest Lawn.

Unlike a traditional playground which provides a soft, safe landing from the monkey bars and slide an adventure playground promotes unstructured and risky play.

JulieGuimondwith Calgary Parksdescribes the pilot projectas a "backyard junkyard" where kids have the ability to explore, work together and lead their own play.

"So they can have tools and they can build their own environment. So they have boards and PVC pipes, there's fabric, there's ropes and they can start to build their own structures," she told theCalgaryEyeopeneron Tuesday.

"Playing in aplayspace that we've created forthem doesn't give them that extra level of imagination sometimes."

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She said the entire experience can be a bit challenging for parentswho sometimes have a hard time sitting back and letting their children run wild.

Not cheap play

Although most of the material for the mobile adventure playground was fairly inexpensive or donated there is a cost to move it around the city.And because the project has tools on site, it has to be supervised by city staff.

So it's not necessarily a cheaper alternative to traditional playgrounds,which Guimond said have a "huge front-end investment" for permanent structures.

The city will be packing up its adventure playground onOct. 1,but there's a good chance the project will pick up again in the near future.

"Our first weekend we had 48 kids in the first half hour. Which to us says, there's a need and the desire for this," said Guimond.

"We're trying to figure out how we do it more than just in the summer."

The city pilot was made possible by a $160,000 donation from the Lawson Foundation, which also funded a second outdoor play projectatVivo for Healthier Generations acharitable not-for-profit recreation facility in northeast Calgary.

The adventure playground makes its last stop for the season at North Glenmore Park on Sept. 23 and 24 and Canmore Park on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1.

The city is also asking families who have visited the projectto take a short survey.

With files from the Calgary Eyeopener