Skip to content Skip to left sidebar Skip to right sidebar Skip to footer

Tag: Arnside Playground Working Group

Update on Plans for the Village Playground

The Arnside Village Playground Working Group have been working hard to raise money to fund playground equipment for local children on the site of the current playground on the Memorial Field, Silverdale Road.

The cost for new playground equipment that provides the most durable and exciting equipment and vastly improves the accessibility of the playground for children of all abilities is currently £87,500. So far approximately £66,000 worth of grants have been identified and are in the process of being applied for. There is no guarantee that every application will be successful, and the application has to be carefully timed to make sure the funds don’t expire before the installation can be started.

The remainder of the funds need to come from the Village as a community. Some of the grants are only available as ‘matched’ funding, which means they will only ‘match’ what is raised from local support i.e. nothing raised, nothing to match – which would be a real shame and a waste of time and effort as filling in these applications is no mean feat! The applications also require overwhelming community support to be shown, and currently the feedback from the Community Wellbeing Day held this time last year is being used.

Wouldn’t it be great to have some more recent feedback to show support? You can help do this by donating via the Crowdfunding page which gives a real demonstration of support that can be used as evidence for the grants. The target on the Crowdfunder is £25,000. Today donations are at £175 so, as you can see, a little way to go.

Fundraising events that have taken place include The Coronation Picnic back in the summer, which got things off to a great start, raising over £2,000. The Quiz Night held a couple of weeks ago raised £450. Many thanks to the Sailing Club who gave use of the venue for free.. The next fundraiser is the * Winter Ball * on the 9th December – a great opportunity for get dressed up and enjoy a 3-course meal with Champagne cocktails and canapes on arrival, music and dancing. There are still a few tickets available if you haven’t got your as yet! A full programme of events is planned for 2024 so watch out for details of those – either here on the website or on the Playground Facebook page.

There will be an ‘Auction of Gifts and Promises’ on the night of the Ball , so if anyone has anything to donate – anything at all, We already have a day of joinery labour and a homemade cake every week for a month. Anyone wishing to give, contact Rebecca at rebeccakennington@btinternet.com
The committee is also looking for someone skilled at social media to help spread the word, Could this be you? If so, contact Rebecca at rebeccakennington@btinternet.com

*The Committee have taken the difficult decision to cancel the Winter Ball due to low ticket sales. With just 4 weeks to go, it became clear that the event was not viable, so the decision was taken to cancel. Thank you to those who did buy tickets, full refunds are available from Charlotte at Arnside House..

Arnside Playground logo

🎉Arnside Playground Project🎉


Following the Community Wellbeing Day last October a working group has been formed to raise the funds and over see the project to install a new playground in Arnside. The playground stall was very busy on that day with both parents and children wanting to express their views on both the state of the current playground and their thoughts on what should be in its place. The children particularly were bursting with great ideas about what to do on the site of the current playground and we had lots of drawings to work with.
The Group – Arnside Playground Working Group, is made up of four members of Arnside Parish Council and three enthusiastic and interested residents with both experience of fundraising and organising village events. Most importantly they have children who use the current playground.
After talking to the local authority and other parks and playground groups in the area, three potential suppliers were contacted and given a brief based on the feedback from the Wellbeing Day.
During November and December they all visited Arnside and carried out detailed site surveys. They now have no illusions about what the Arnside weather conditions can throw at the equipment! In January, presentations and costings were received from all three suppliers.
They were all exciting schemes, and we could have chosen any one of them, but one stood out above all the others. It represents great value for money, with lots of new equipment for Arnside children of all ages. There are plenty of pieces of equipment for both group and solo play, sensory play and they have really thought about accessibility.

Now we just need to raise the funds to pay for it. As a community, we have done it once and on the Working Group we are all convinced we can do it again. The Parish Council have already secured a grant of £10,000 and the Working Group has since received a donation from Councillor McSweeney of £500, and two generous donations from the Arnside Community Fireworks Committee and The Albion Community Fund. Other local businesses have also promised to contribute, and we will be talking to them in the coming months. We have identified other potential sources of grant funding and will no doubt be spending the next few months filling in the paperwork. But we will also need help from you!


If anyone has any bright ideas as to how to raise funds or feels they would like to hold an event, the Working Group stand ready to support you. In the meantime, we are going to concentrate on a couple of major fund-raising events.
For our first fund raiser we plan to hold a Coronation Picnic on the Memorial Playing Field on Sunday 7th May. We have gone for the Sunday as we think a lot of people will want to watch the Coronation itself on television on Saturday the 6th. But after the success of the Platinum Jubilee Picnic last year, hopefully everyone can get involved and we can raise lots of money to help us on our way!
Keep your eyes peeled for further events later in the year & you feel you can help in any way please get in touch