Welcome to our Playful Green Adventures 🌿🍄

Come join us, Maxwell Centre & The Toadstool Trail, on our nature based, community driven, playful journey as the Playful Green Planet Stewards for Dundee.

We would love to welcome you to our playful green blog over on Substack. We hope you’ll find this playful wee nature based space inspiring. (You must be warned though… there may be side effects – you may well find you to want to spend lots more time outdoors playing and encouraging others to do so too – because it has made you feel fantastic!)

FIND THE PLAYFUL GREEN DUNDEE BLOG HERE!

This is where we will, the Maxwell Centre and Toadstool Trail, come together to share all of our nature based, playful adventures as we go on our Playful Green Dundee journey together as the Dundee Stewards helping the RSA develop their new Playful Green Planet Programme.

The Maxwell Community Centre & Garden is the green heart of the Hilltown in Coldside, Dundee since 2014. They support everyone in their neighbourhood to feel well and do well in life. They connect people of all ages and backgrounds with each other and with nature, restoring the urban environment.

The child led Toadstool Trail is about capturing and promoting the magic of nature. It’s about encouraging people to find the multitudes of benefits to being outdoors as well as inspiring outdoor curiosity and exploration. Whilst celebrating intergenerational togetherness it’s an accessible, educational art trail bringing joy and sparking imaginations.

🌿 Team Maxwell are Manuela de los Rios (Garden Coordinator) and Dannielle Don (Youth Development Worker).

🍄 The Toadstool Trail is the brainchild of nature inspired illustrator Suzanne Scott of WhimSicAL LusH. Partnered with Rodney Mountain a champion of bringing people together, passionate about bringing art and design into healthcare.

*Manuela, Dannielle, Rod and Suzanne in the WhimSicAL LusH Studio. Our first planning meeting.*

Playful Green Planet is a movement co-created with local communities, delivered in partnership with the RSA, Eden Project and Bath Spa University, and funded by the National Lottery Community Fund.

Here is more about the Playful Green Planet programme from the RSA…

RSA is delighted to announce the start of its landmark Playful Green Planet programme, thanks to generous support from The National Lottery Community Fund.

Playful Green Planet, which is being run in partnership with the Eden Project and Bath Spa University, will transform how children connect with nature and community through outdoor creative play. It responds to the current sizeable gap in children’s connection to nature, particularly in cities and urban areas.

The project is the first of its kind in the UK and will identify areas of land in urban and economically disadvantaged areas, drawing on the expertise and talents of local individuals, coalitions and communities to transform those spaces into ecologically thriving outdoor playrooms and classrooms that grow children’s capabilities and social activism.

As it stands, more than one in ten children do not visit a natural environment annually, four out of five lack a connection to nature at all, and three-quarters of children spend less time outdoors than what is recommended for prison inmates.

The programme’s first two sites will be in Coldside, one of Dundee’s most economically disadvantaged areas, and a set of sites across Hull.

This is where Playful Green Dundee comes in! We are the first Playful Green Planet Stewards, alongside Hull University. We are here to help shape the Playful Green Planet programme as on the ground practitioners already working with community and nature.

As the Dundee Stewards, the Maxwell team and The Toadstool Trail team will be developing their projects even further together, shining a light on how they learn, grow and practice as the first Stewards for the Playful Green Planet programme.

We will be paving the way for more stewards across the country and showcasing playful green ways to improve the lives of children and their communities.

Catch up soon, with more about Maxwell Centre and The Toadstool Trail (WhimSicaL LusH & Rod Mountain) and our playful green adventures together with RSA, Eden Project and Bath Spa University.

Stay Playful,

Playful Green Dundee x 🌿

P.s. We are on Instagram too… come find us here for more behind the scenes and news AND click on the picture below to follow our blog 💚