Background, behind the bushes and beyond the railings
Back in 1882, Lord Reginald Brabazon set up the ‘Metropolitan Public Garden, Boulevard and Playground Association’. Its role was to look after outdoor space in London for the city’s citizens to enjoy, providing playgrounds and parks to help improve the fitness, pleasure and health of London’s urban population. The very first meeting of the Association set forward its primary objective: ‘giving to the people gardens, and to the children playgrounds’.
When the ‘Metropolitan Public Garden, Boulevard and Playground Association’ changed its name in 1885 to the ‘Metropolitan Public Gardens Association’ (http://www.mpga.org.uk) part of its focus was nominally lost. London councils and London Play (http://www.londonplay.org.uk/) have dutifully taken on the mantle of providing children with outdoor spaces to play, but there is a gap over which to skip and in which to get down, dirty, and play. For all those who once were children, and still grin as mad as two red balloons when the daily grind ends and the bell goes for fun-time, here is a cyberspace playground in which to swing.
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