Sure Start and early Art in the Park work

What is Sure Start?

Launched in 1998, the government funded scheme aimed to ensure those living in disadvantaged areas the opportunity to tackle the causes of poor health in babies, breakdowns in family life, social exclusion and inadequate child care and pre-school provision.

The areas around Burgess Park were targeted at as nearly 1,000 families with babies and pre-school children live in the Aylesbury north of the park and around 800 families reside in the Brunswick area to the south.

Art in the Park's role

We offered an highly original programme of play and learning activities based at our studio in Chumleigh Gardens.

Our emphasis is on discovery learning from the environment and from the rich resource of artists' studios where we have a collection of raw materials and natural history objects.

History of early Art in the Park involvement

Activities began and ended at the studio with books, songs, dance and art work to make and take home. Art works were made to last, such as the carved oak bench for the garden, which was made with the help of two volunteers with tiny babies.

Our Small Worlds research looked into the creation of outdoor places suitable for the very young and developed plans for a discovery-landscape in Burgess Park.

In 2000, we built and planted a safe dog free garden for children to visit beside the World Gardens. We also used the gardens for growing flowers and food, drawing, hide and seek, picnics, photo-shoots, rubbings and as an endless source of interesting phenomena to sample.

In 2001 we took over the tarmac outside our studio and designed a water play place among the mini-gardens grown in planters. We extended the short lengths of existing walking trails through the park with paving, landmarks and "magic trees". The Circle of Life in the pavement at Chumleigh Gate was completed by Sue Pritchard in Summer 2000 and has attracted many visitors who can be seen treading and dancing on the bronze footprints.

We were also involved in cross-professional ventures. We had an ongoing reationship with the Speech and Language Therapy team which aimed to stimulate communication in children who have delayed language development. In February 2001, a book of photographs about the senses, taken during play sessions with Di Harewood titled Yes! was published.

Also in 2001-2002, musicians out-reached from Art in the Park to other projects including New Pin Ante-Natal (where unborn babies and their parents made music) led a music awareness programme Where do we begin? This resulted in the publication of a CD and word book of songs chosen by families and representative of the broad spectrum of local population.

In early 2002 we collaborated with Corali, a dance group who usually work with disabled adults, on the Shed Project. The outcome of our workshops together was a performance piece that Corali presented at a variety of venues including the Tate Modern.