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‘Give us more adventure playgrounds’
KAREN Buck MP called for adventure playgrounds to be a feature of every school in Westminster at the annual summer barbecue at St John’s Wood adventure playground.
The Labour MP for Regent’s Park and Kensington North, speaking yesterday (Thursday), paid tribute to the children’s play space in St John’s Wood Road which is made up of 45 children from refugee or asylum-seeker backgrounds.
She said: “This an oasis for this inner-city community. And it is incredibly thoughtful in its approach to integration. When you do not mix with each other, we focus on the differences rather than the similarities and when children play together you just watch all those differences disappear. We need more because it’s getting hard to get children to integrate in schools. You can’t change this environment tomorrow, whereas these schemes do work today and tomorrow.”
She added: “We had to fight to save this from closing. They cut the grants and (playground organiser) Steve Derby has worked hard to find funding to keep this place open.”
Mr Derby has organised pioneering “interfaith” visits to churches in Westminster throughout the summer showing the children the similarities between their many religions. |
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