Blackrock School

Blackrock Playground Report June 2010

The project to design, fund and build a playground started in January 2008.A committee of ten people in the village; Karen Coan, Maeve Reilly, Shirley Cassidy, Sinead McDonnell, Anita Smith, Breffenie Carroll, Louise Wayenberg, Fr Oliver Brennan, Rosa Murnaghan Lysaght and Jim D'Arcy met regularly over that period to get a playground installed in Blackrock.

The design came from the children at Blackrock school. In April 2008 there was a competition in Blackrock school where all the children from first class up, were asked to draw a playground that they would really like to play in, we got nearly 400 fantastic images and gave them to a playground design company who used them when they were drawing up some plans.

The funding process took up most of the next year or so of the project with over 1000 people from the Blackrock area getting involved by donating money to the prize draw the committee held in July 2008, volunteering to collect that money, sponsoring a race or a dog at our 'night at the races' in September 2008 and writing letters of support for our application to the Louth Leader Partnership in 2009.The Louth Leader Partnership awarded us €112,000 in December 2009 which meant we could proceed with plans to install a playground in Blackrock Park.

Early in 2010 the committee came back to the children of Blackrock school again, asking them to judge the four short-listed playground plans to help the committee decide which playground we would go for.With that input the committee were able to choose a playground and start the building process.

The playground opened at Easter this year and Louth County Council put in two entrances from the parish centre and from Sandy Lane which has completed the project.

The playground is a state of the art facility, which can accomodate up to 70 children at one time.Its brilliant to have it and we're looking forward to plenty of sunshine this summer to enjoy long days playing with friends in it.