Education

Sutcliffe Play has helped Trinity School in Barking and Dagenham, which serves over 220 pupils aged 3-19 with diverse learning difficulties, to update its sensory garden area into a fully inclusive and natural play and teaching setting.

The school wanted to create a natural sensory garden incorporating sand and water play with different surfaces and levels to meet the varying levels of disability at the school. It was also important to the school to develop an outside teaching area.

After the school had seen several designs, the school’s local council, Barking and Dagenham, recommended Sutcliffe Play.

The school had been raising funds for almost four years and felt that Sutcliffe Play’s design matched their ‘once in a lifetime’ vision.

Sutcliffe Play has created an area that provides a variety of sand and water play options, introducing different gradients and textures to the pupils. Convex and concave mirrors allow the children to explore different reflections and the introduction of talk tubes introduces pupils to the element of wind. Talk tubes harness the wind to link up different play spaces.

The ‘amphitheatre’ provides a tiered seating area with flexible parasols for the summer months and a small stage area.

Headteacher, Peter McPartland, commented: “We are very proud of our school, the successes and achievements of the pupils and our reputation within the community, as a place which strives to provide the best service possible to the children and their families.

“The addition of our sensory garden has allowed us to enrich the lives of our pupils even further and we’ve seen it have a very positive impact on their development.”

www.sutcliffeplay.co.uk