October 7th, 2009:

The Friends of Hilly Fields have been very busy with their grant application and some of you may have noticed that we haven’t held our autumn meeting.  The date will be set shortly, we’ll keep you all informed.

The Friends of Hilly Fields are delighted to announce that their “wild about play” application to the Big Lottery’s Changing Places Grant has been successful. The grant is towards the refurbishment of the playground and as the name suggests, is focused on diversifying the play experience by introducing some of the park’s  natural elements into the playground.

Following the successful stage 1 application, the group were awarded a development grant by the lottery. This enabled a measured survey to be undertaken, which in turn enabled the group to work up a more detailed design and costings. Before submitting the second stage of the application, the group also needed to become a constituted group and hold a community engagement event, not to mention all the land ownerships forms to sign, the letters of support and a councillor’s signature.  Our community engagement event was held in the playground on a windy Saturday morning on 6th June, coinciding with the Brockley Max event. We had lots of positive feedback and support, so thank you to everyone.  All the hard work has paid off, the stage 2 application was submitted in mid August  and the Friends were notified of their success at the end of September. We were awarded the full £49,999.