New sustainable outdoor play area at YSP – Little Wild Wood

By Kirsty Fountain, executive assistant at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

One minute I might be organising a Land Rover tour for an artist, or putting together an event guest list, the next sketching out designs for the YSP Visitor Centre’s Christmas decorations, it is always varied and wonderfully challenging.

The project I’m working on at the moment is certainly one of my favourites. It’s been kept under wraps for months but we are literally days away from the grand reveal!

A large YSP team including myself has been working behind the scenes on a sustainable outdoor play area and it’s set to open over the Easter holidays.

Our new family-friendly Little Wild Wood covers two of Yorkshire Sculpture Park’s 500 acres and has been created using natural materials that we’ve predominantly foraged or repurposed from other parts of YSP’s landscape. Our incredibly talented Technical Team have been using windfall trees, stumps, and willow to create a magical woodland play area.

We’re very lucky to have celebrated local sculptor Brian Fell and his son George, also an accomplished metalworker, based here at the Park and Brian has kindly donated three large artworks specially for children to discover, touch and sit on – including a two-metre high Desert Rat, a towering Pineapple and a 360-degree Onion seat. There is also a much smaller piece made by George for children to seek out as they play.

We have tunnels made from natural willow leading into the Little Wild Wood, opening up to reveal teepees for families to adapt and create their own dens; tree stump stepping stones and raised wooden platforms. It’s all about using your imagination and so there’s also an area where children can make their own sculptures using natural, found materials to develop their own creativity in nature.

We’re really excited by our Little Wild Wood, and we know it’s something that both our regular and new young visitors will love. It adds another element to an already rich offer at YSP, sitting alongside our award-winning galleries, shops restaurants, outdoor sculpture and beautiful sprawling landscape.

Our Little Wild Wood also complements YSP’s nearby Hidden Forest, another outdoor activity area that’s specifically designed for under-fives. Both of these areas encourage creativity, which is central to YSP’s mission and offers freedom for children to connect with the natural world through play, which is incredibly important for cognitive development. We want children to use their imaginations, explore, make, build, get muddy, create their own games and natural sculptures, think through challenges and bond with others – but most of all, we want them to have fun in nature.

We decided to give Wakefield Express readers the very first glimpse of the Little Wild Wood, here being kindly tried and tested by pupils from Spofforth Primary School, whilst on a school visit.

We hope everyone will get to enjoy the new Little Wild Wood, so please head down to YSP and see what all the fuss is about! www.ysp.org.uk