Child Friendly Cardiff Pop Up Park

Children across Cardiff are claiming their right to play! Additional play opportunities are being provided across the capital as part of the Child Friendly City programme (CFC). 

Members of the Children and Young People’s Advisory Board worked with Council Officers to apply for a grant from Welsh Government to purchase equipment for a Pop Up Park.

The park consists of a variety of games and play equipment as well as deck chairs, beanbags and 100 square metres of artificial grass.

The Child Friendly City programme brings Unicef UK together with Cardiff Council and partners to help make the city a place where all children, including the most vulnerable, feel safe, heard and nurtured.

Cardiff is one of six cities in the UK to be active in the global Unicef programme.

The Pop Up Park has been used throughout the summer including at community events, the Homeless Football World Cup and to celebrate Playday. During the winter months there are plans to use the equipment indoors in community centres and school halls.

In addition to the Pop Up Park, the Child Friendly City programme has brought partners together to enable local residents to apply to close their streets for two hours a month to enable children to play out. Five streets took part in a pilot and this is now being rolled out to more streets across the capital.

Advisory Board Chair, Rose Melhuish (17) said:

‘We understand how important play is and we wanted to encourage more children to play and spend time with their family and friends. Not everyone has green spaces in their community and some families cannot afford to go to an indoor play centre so the Pop Up Park was our solution.’

Cardiff Child Friendly City Programme Coordinator, Lee Patterson said:

‘During our consultation phase children told us that they wanted more opportunity to play and also to spend time with their families. The park is really popular when used across the city. Services and organisations are able to hire the park to provide extra play opportunities, engage with residents and promote children’s rights more broadly’.