LET US PLAY – OUTDOOR EXHIBITION

Balsall Heath City Farm

Friday 25th June – Sunday 25th July, 2021

For the last two years General Public have been delving into the secret history of Birmingham’s adventure playground movement. Let Us Play has involved the collection and collation of an exciting new archive of material to capture the Birmingham play movement from the 1960s to the present day.

Funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the project explores three lost or ‘ghost’ adventure playground sites that emerged in the post-war period (Balsall Heath, Sparkbrook & Handsworth), the 1980s play movement within the city and one contemporary adventure playground site (Meriden, Chelmsley Wood).

This outdoor exhibition at the site of the old Balsall Heath adventure playground presents newly discovered archive material charting the playground movement from the 1960s to the present day. In addition, QR codes in the exhibition take your smart phone to audio clips of the interviews.

Following its run in Balsall Heath, the Let Us Play exhibition will then go on display at Meriden Adventure Playground for the summer holidays. 

The exhibition is part of Flatpack Festival 2021: All Summer Long – www.flatpackfestival.org.uk

For more information see https://flatpackfestival.org.uk/event/let-us-play-outdoor-exhibition https://generalpublic.org.uk/project/let-us-play/outdoor-exhibitions-book/

Let Us Play Book 

A book is being produced capturing the entirety of the project. If you would like a free copy, please email us at generalpublicprojects@gmail.com with your name and address (the book is being printed as a run of 300 and will be available on a first come, first served basis).

The General Public website features all the oral history interviews (more coming soon), material from the personal archives of Geoff Gaisford & Dave Swingle & films from the Media Archive of Central England.