A pet project I was planning was a website for people to rate their local parks. Not exclusively for young people but also for parents - one of the things about moving to a new area is trying to find local places to take the kids so I thought it could be handy to map out play parks and allow people to add comments & photos etc.

I also considered the possibility of building something to allow people to add their own designs and suggestions for improvements - all of this is still at the ‘one day I’ll get round to it stage’ for now though!

I was interested then to see the Department for Schools, Children & Families new website ‘playspace’ and I’ve just had a bit of fun playing with it! (link here)

Its actually a consultation disguised as a game where you can design your own park, so not quite as exciting as I’d hoped, but as far as consultations go its pretty good.

There are a few flaws in terms of consultation - firstly that I’m probably not in the target age range (although I did play it with my 3 year old if that counts!), secondly the bit thats really interesting (building the park) can only be done after asking a series of questions for which you get ‘credits’ that you ca use to add items to your park. This is all ok - except that once all the questions have been answered a little character gets to ‘play’ on the park you designed - but once he’s been on all the stuff thats it! Of course Sam wanted him to keep playing and to build another park - but to do so you have to answer the same questions all over again so maybe there will be a few multiple entries in the consultation from enthusiastic play park builders!!

I think it would have been really good to have taken the concept just a bit further and allowed children to properly design their own parks and then to be able to submit their designs. The questions in the consultation seem a bit obvious to me and I’m not sure of the value they’ll provide but I’m sure it would have been very interesting to have seen what children & young people really want in their local play areas if the game could have been designed just a little differently.