A brand new, fully accessible playground is now open at Barrie Wilson Elementary School in Red Deer. An official grand opening will take place Aug. 28.

By Sheldon Spackman

Inclusive Environment

Fully-accessible playground now open at Barrie Wilson Elementary School

Jul 29, 2019 | 9:20 AM

After nearly three years of planning, hard work and fundraising, a brand new, fully accessible playground is now open at Barrie Wilson Elementary School in Red Deer.

Principal Chris Good says teachers, staff, students and their parents are sharing in the excitement along with members of the community.

“Since the school opened, we’ve kind of had this dream of creating a play-space,” says Good. “We’re really lucky in Red Deer with the Parks department, they build these awesome playgrounds and we did have a playground when the school opened but our school has outgrown the playground. We’ll have over 500 students next year, but more importantly, our dream was really to create an accessible playground, one that was accessible to all students.”

Good describes the new playground as a place where any kid can play, regardless of their ability or their needs.

“We want to build a real inclusive environment at the school, we want to build a kind of place where all kids can go and all kids can be together,” he explains. “We didn’t want a part of our school where only certain kids could go or maybe some kids were limited in their ability to be with their friends. Recess time is the time where you want to be with your friends and get outside and get active and so we wanted to create that play space to make that possible for all the kids in our school.”

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Good notes the playground will have some special features such as a pour-and-play surface made from recycled tire parts, something Good says allows students in wheelchairs to access the playground.

“There’s even a musical note section that might appeal to students who are visually impaired,” says Good. “There’s also elements of it that will appeal to students with autism, things like that, so that’s one of the things that’s changed, is that it’s not just accessible but also there’s different elements that will serve different student’s needs.”

The musical section of the new fully accessible playground at Barrie Wilson Elementary School in Timberlands.

Good says he feels really proud and fortunate to be the principal at Barrie Wilson.

“You think of all the people that have contributed to this project,” he exclaims. “There’s been a lot of fundraising, our parents committed a lot of volunteer hours that the school community put into it, whether that be parents or staff or students. So I think fortunate we have the kind of community that really wanted to pull together and see this vision through to the end and also just thankful that we’re able to have it.”

Good says the new playground has a price tag of about $250,000, with about half of that coming from a provincial government grant, while the rest has been garnered through community fundraising and numerous corporate sponsorships and gifts-in-kind, including from the City of Red Deer.

An official Grand Opening of the new playground at Barrie Wilson Elementary School will take place August 28, 2019.