July 2010 - Parks & Recreation - 16

Who, What, Where & how Around the Parks

Partners Behind
Marvin Gaye Park
Playground
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Playworld Systems

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Surface America

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Washington Parks & People

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decision-making that affects their lives
and the lives of others in their community. Our Eyes East, the Marvin Gaye
Park project, has 13 youth participants
and five adults preparing to exhibit their
work at the beginning of the summer.
Park users are also being surveyed
on the impacts of the playground installation. In the Adult Playground Surveys, the majority of parents indicated
approval of the playground, with many
saying that the plush " foam ground "
and that the playground " gives the

14 Parks & Recreation

J U LY 2 0 1 0

children their ow n space " as a response to the question of what they
like most about the park. The swings
and spinners were noted as the parent's children's favorite piece of equipment. When asked have you noticed
any changes within the park in the past
year, two-thirds responded " yes, " with
most responding the change was positive, saying the park and playground
are beautiful and that they see more
community togetherness.
More than 90 percent of the children who visit the playground come
with someone else, mostly other children. Two-thirds of the children surveyed like the swings the most. Almost
two-thirds say " always " or " most of the
time " that they feel safe while visiting
the playground. When asked what they
would change about the playground,
they says they want " more swings, "
" add a sliding board, " or " monkey
bars. " More than 90 percent either walk
or bike to the playground, where it takes
" less than 10 minutes " for the majority
of the children to reach the playground.
Now the playg rou nd is helpi ng to

w w w . N R P A . ORG

Washington Metropolitan
Transit Authority
District of Columbia
Department of Parks and
Recreation
National Recreation &
Park Association

inspire more creative uses of the park,
including camping, gardening, and a
new bike patrol program.
A final component of NRPA's partnership with Parks & People is the development of a toolkit to help other
communities replicate the success at
Marvin Gaye Park. The tool kit, to be
available to NRPA members later this
year, is intended to help both community and agency leaders galvanize the
kind of broad partnerships and resources needed to transform forgotten parks
and playgrounds, and to use these sites
to transform the health and economic vitality of the surrounding communities.
The potential for such replication appears to be strong. The former Prime
Minister of Haiti recently toured Marvin Gaye Park to adapt its lessons to a
park in the troubled center of the earthquake-devastated capital of Port-auPrince. NRPA's partnership at Marvin
Gaye Park was recently showcased in a
plenary presentation at the international Healthy Parks Healthy People Congress in Melbourne, Australia. More
than 1,000 delegates from 37 countries
joined in celebrating the power of one
park to help transform the health of its
entire community.
All this in the first year.
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July 2010 - Parks & Recreation

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of July 2010 - Parks & Recreation