Ming and Elliott’s Fredericks Adventure Playground engagement event occupied the church on a sunny winter Sunday afternoon. With 17 children sat around the alter, the pair gathered perspectives on play and hanging out in a bid to inspire the new playground and create a sense of authorship amongst the young participants. The main event saw the young people in groups collage their own playground and present their ideas at the end over pizza. A very successful engagement event!

The best practice for an engagement event like this, with limited time and packed full of activity, is to stay present and responsive, understand the key goals of the event whilst remaining flexible to the desires of the group. The goal is to inspire the young people to think about design whilst listening to what they want. Ultimately to make a space which truly serves the young users.

The engagement took place in St Paul’s Lorrimore Square Church, a Grade 2 listed modernist church designed by Woodroffe Buchanan & Coulter and completed in 1960. The church has a community centre on the ground floor, with the main church space and church rooms on the upper level. The form is characterized by reinforced concrete buttresses, honeycomb external walls with infill stain glass windows, and a folded timber roof clad in turquoise oxidized copper panels. The triangulated expressed forms symbolise the holy trinity. The original Gothic Revival church, which previously occupied the site, was completely destroyed in the blitz.