Southwark borough is an area with one of the highest levels of childhood obesity in the country. Those living in socially deprived areas and belonging to certain ethnic groups are at a higher risk of becoming overweight. The borough has a large and diverse population of children and young people, with over 60% from black and minority ethnic groups.

Trees for Cities is a UK charity working at a national and international scale to improve lives by planting trees in cities. Through their work with inner-city urban schools, they aim to revolutionise playgrounds. By planting trees and other vegetation and creating woodland shelters and wildlife areas they help create greener, healthier playgrounds for outdoor learning and play.

As part of their Childhood Obesity Programme, Impact on Urban Health has funded Trees for Cities to design and implement a playground re-design in Grange Primary School.

Trees for Cities commissioned TSIP to be their evaluation partner on this project. Although our central focus was on physical activity levels, it’s important to note that the playground renovation can also have an influence on many aspects of children’s lives, including air pollution.

Our Approach

This evaluation was intended to cover not only the impact of the play area equipment on children’s activity levels (in line with Impact on Urban Health’s childhood obesity targets) but also to include a process evaluation of the partnership-working and co-design.

As was the case for many projects over the past two years, the impact of Covid-19 both paused parts of this project and prompted Trees for Cities to take alternative approaches to certain aspects of the playground renovation.

We used the following approaches to collect data for each part of the evaluation:

Impact Evaluation: We measured children’s activity levels, observed children’s play area preferences and conducted staff interviews.
Process Evaluation: We interviewed key stakeholders, such as the playground workers and Trees for Cities staff members, to collect insights and observed co-design sessions.

To deliver the evaluation, we conducted three rounds of data collection; pre-installation, immediate post-installation and 6 months post-installation. We also left space to adapt and reshape our research questions at each stage of data collection to ensure we were answering the questions most relevant for Tress for Cities. Below we share some examples of the research questions we followed on our journey:

· Have students’ activity levels changed since the playground renovation?

· To what extent have various stakeholders’ ambitions and goals for the playground renovation been achieved?

· Is the new playground a more inclusive and accessible space for all children?

Our Findings

Through our impact evaluation, we found that:

· Using activity monitors to measure the activity levels of the children we calculated to what extent their MVPA had increased pre and post playground renovation. MVPA is the Moderate to Vigorous Activity Levels of a student (how much they are running around during the school day).

· The playground allowed for an increase in activity levels. There was an increase compared to the baseline data in both sets of the post-installation data for MVPA and an increase in moderate activity during the lunchtimes for students.

· The design of the new playground is more inclusive for all students, and we saw an increase in activity for girls suggesting that they are using the playground more than before.

· The underused areas of the playground were transformed so that the playgrounds space is much more efficiently used. In the post-Covid future, this will have a larger impact with an increased number of students allowed into the playground.

· Increased visibility in the playground has also allowed playground workers to see students that aren’t engaged more easily and encourage them.

During the design process evaluation, we evaluated to what extent a range of stakeholders’ ambitions and goals for the playground had been met. We found that:

By and large, the schools' motivations and aspirations for the new playground had been achieved. Most importantly, the unused parts of the playground were now being used.
For staff, Trees for Cities provided resources and training sessions which will be useful to ensure the sustainability of the playground and to meet their motivations to introduce more outside learning opportunities.
Trees for Cities used adapted online workshops and in-person sessions to engage the students positively throughout the project.
The impact of Covid-19 combined with high staff leadership turnover at the school had a considerable impact on engagement. Furthermore, we explored other relationships, such as with the playground workers, which Trees for Cities are now looking to engage more thoroughly in upcoming projects.

“Working with TSIP was a fantastic experience; the team were knowledgeable, open to ideas and identified key insights into the impact of the project at Grange Primary. Working with such thorough and enthusiastic evaluators added real value to the project"
Testimonial from Carys, Schools Programme Senior Manager, at Trees for Cities