A Special Playground For a Very Special School – Warren School
Project Overview
Warren School is located in Lowestoft, Suffolk, and educates children from a wide geographical area, with all pupils within the setting having an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP).
Warren Schools pupils are aged 4-19 and have profound and multiple learning difficulties (PMLD) or severe learning difficulties (SLD) and require and facilities to support those needs.
The school and its dedicated team are committed to ensuring that their pupils have a range of different opportunities in school. Prior to the project, many of their playground and sensory garden equipment were no longer able to be used and was considered unsafe, so were out of bounds to learners. The school’s previous play equipment was also not inclusive for all.
A dedicated group of parents and staff worked together on a project entitled ‘A special playground for a special school’. The pandemic halted some progress, but the exciting project was restarted, after Covid, in 2021, they have worked tirelessly to raise thousands of pounds towards improving the outdoor facilities at the Lowestoft-area Warren School.
The Outcome
Warren School and Timotay Playscapes worked in partnership to transform the outdoor space to create a specialised outdoor learning environment.
The space was designed using different zones, creating a unique, inclusive, sensory-rich, and challenging outdoor provision accessible for all learners regardless of individual need and disability. The new space provides an all-weather solution, accessible for all learners.
The original objectives of the project was to create a unique, inclusive, sensory-rich, and challenging outdoor provision, accessible for all learners, to be used as an extension to the school’s curriculum, which has been successfully delivered!
Client Feedback
With the newly built, all-inclusive multi-sensory play are project complete, the space now boasts:
- Trampolines that take wheelchairs
- Two wheelchair swings
- T roundabout
- Basket swings and other swings
- An activity frame
- A musical area with sensory mirrors
- Hanging bars
- Log cabins with a camp corner
- Shade sails
- A staging area
- A sensory area with sensory plants
- An outside classroom
- An area with different texture paving
The playground transformation has been designed and installed with different learning zones – with distinct areas such as Physical (swings, climbing frames, spinners, trampoline, roundabout and hanging bars); Creative (imaginative areas, creative camp corner, musical panels and rainbow light panels); Science (sensory garden, landscaping, textured surfaces and walkways); Social and Emotional (calm area, ‘break-out’ spaces, dens); as well as outdoor furniture, fencing and storage.
Testimonial
“It is really wonderful,” Mrs Cockrill
