Carlton Cabinet meeting at CCJS

Last week we met with the Carlton Cabinet at Carlton Central Junior School to hold a focus group to find out what the juniors want to see and do at Onchan Park in the future. CCJS has a lovely big meeting room and we all sat round the circular table. The cabinet ministers had some brilliant ideas which will go towards our proposal to the council.

We met with 12 children; a boy and a girl from each class. Ten children said that they regularly use local parks and four of them used Onchan Park regularly. We showed the children the location maps and a plan of the park. We talked about our favourite parks in Nottingham. We looked at our map showing the locations of road traffic accidents and we talked about the problems that children would have if Onchan Park was taken away. Their nearest park would be much further away and they might not be allowed to cross busy roads to get to it. Their first response to this was that ‘they should build houses on plain fields, not on parks’, and ‘they shouldn’t build on parks’. The children also realised that having more houses on Oakdale Road will increase the amount of traffic on local roads and could make the roads more dangerous.
The children had loads of ideas and suggestions for the park.
They said that they wouldn’t use the Tarmac football pitch because they couldn’t do sliding tackles without hurting themselves. The football pitch could be changed into AstroTurf. Or turn it into a multi-use games pitch like the one on their school playground. They have two permanent basketball hoop/ football goal/ cricket stump sets which are used lots during play times and for active rewards. These would be a brilliant alternative use for the Tarmac football pitches at Onchan Park.

Multi-use-games-area MUGA with basketball hoop, football goal and cricket stumps

Cricket was popular with the children and there are fewer opportunities to play cricket in local parks compared to football.
Table tennis, or ping pong, was popular with most children. They have played on the outdoor ping pong tables in town and they play indoors during breakfast club.
Five children regularly play tennis and many would like to play on a casual basis.
The pavilion could be used to hire sports equipment e.g. balls, kwick cricket sets or to sell ice creams.
This age group (Y3-Y6, 7-11) are a bit bored with slides and swings, they’d like to play with large engaging structures such as a hedge maze or a large natural climbing frame made from tree trunks or an adventure playground. One or two children would like to use a skate park.
We were very impressed with the attitude of the children, how they listened to each other and the respect they showed to us, their teacher and each other.
Thank you Carlton Cabinet for helping us shape our ideas for the future of Onchan Park!

If your junior school children have any ideas, please let us know in the comments.