RoSPA Virtual Play Safety Conference 2022

11:20 - Play Value Awards

12:00 – What Does Good Look Like? A Designer’s Point of View - Jennette Emery-Wallis, Land Use Consultants

Jennette Emery-Wallis, Director, is a chartered landscape architect with just under 30 years’ experience. She has produced award-winning work on numerous complex design projects, producing well considered and creative solutions. Jennette is a thoughtful designer with a strong design aesthetic and is able to work across many sectors including public realm, housing and mixed-use development.

Concerned about health and wellbeing, particularly in children, Jennette has led the way in designing active, playful spaces. Her work as the designer of the Diana, Princess of Wales memorial playground, Kensington Gardens (2000), is multi-award winning, and some 20 years later is recognised as being at the vanguard of the global natural play movement. Her work at Tumbling Bay, QEOP, for the LLDC has won numerous awards including Civic Trust; Selwyn Goldsmith universal access awards, and the NLAs Mayor’s Best Public Space (2013). She has recently completed a new destination playground at Gloucester Gate, within The Regent’s Park, for The Royal Parks which has been well received by park users and received a Landscape Institute design award (2021). She has worked with a number of UK Universities, sports scientists and pedagogues to assess the impact of active play spaces on sedentary children, through projects such as Camden Active Spaces, which culminated with a published article within British Medical Journal. In a recent review of UK playground’s a number of LUC schemes filled the top slots.

12:15 – What Does Good Look Like? A Purchaser’s Point of View - George Baptiste 

For all his working life, George Baptiste has worked for Reading Borough Council. Currently the Playground Officer and RPII Annual Outdoor Inspector, George’s main duties involve play inspections, maintenance, repairs, project management including procurement, consultations, play safety advisor for the Council’s Corporate Health & Safety Team, Insurance Department and Legal Services.

12:30 –The Cost of Poor Inspection: RoSPA’s Point of View - David Yearley, RoSPA Play Safety

David is Head of Play Safety for RoSPA.  In this role he manages a UK and Ireland wide team of playground safety inspectors, conducting tens of thousands of inspections each year.  He is a member of the British Standards Institution committee with responsibility for the development of British Standards for playground equipment, skate parks, multi-use games areas and other recreations facilities.  David is a Board member of the Register of Play Inspectors International, which is the professional membership organisation for playground inspectors.  For 14 years David was a Board member of the International Play Association: Promoting the Child’s Right to Play.  This UNESCO-recognised NGO has been fundamental in ensuring the child’s right to play is enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and for its continued protection, promotion and preservation.
 

13:00 – Presentation of Play Safety Awards

13:10 – Conference Close