On Thursday 11 June, the United Nations ‘International Day of Play’, Crawley will launch the UK’s first National Festival of Play – set to take place in the town in 2027, the 80th anniversary of Crawley becoming a New Town.
More than one third of children don’t play outdoors after school and one in five don’t play outside at weekends at all*. It’s stats like these that have fired up those behind the Festival – the first of its kind in the UK – to show why play matters now more than ever – not only for children but for adults and everyone in the community.
To mark one year until the Festival takes place, HemingwayDesign (co-founded by Wayne Hemingway MBE) – in collaboration with Creative Crawley, will have fun with local people’s usual lunch breaks to create an expanded, shared ‘play time’ across the town. Local residents, school children, people at work and involved in group activities will take part in everything from playing cards and board games, to rounds of rounders and making large-scale creative play installations. One local primary school will even build a giant cardboard playground as part of the day.
This is also a much bigger national story.
At a time when children’s freedom to play outdoors is shrinking, public space is under pressure, loneliness and burnout are rising and adults are increasingly disconnected from one another and from their communities, the Festival organisers are asking a timely question: what would happen if a town genuinely put play at the heart of everyday life? We know what happens when places don’t.
Crawley is uniquely placed to lead that conversation.
As one of Britain’s original post-war New Towns, Crawley was designed around parks, neighbourhoods and playable landscapes. In the 1950s, Lady Allen of Hurtwood and others brought the adventure playgrounds movement to Britain, and Crawley became a testing ground where modern ideas about adventure playgrounds and child-centred urban planning were embedded into civic life. The town has a remarkable but little-known history as a pioneer of play-led planning, a legacy that feels relevant with a new generation of New Towns recently announced with the opportunity to rebuild social connection and wellbeing. Like many Council’s around the country facing funding cuts, a number of Crawley’s Council-run adventure playgrounds were closed in 2021. The Festival will help Crawley put play back at the heart of everyday life in town.
With its diverse population, international connections through Gatwick, and growing creative sector, Crawley offers an unrivalled backdrop for a national festival exploring how play can shape healthier, more imaginative and more connected places for everyone.
To find out more go to https://creativecrawley.com/event/national-festival-of-play-crawley-launch-event/
* *University of Exeter research published in Wellbeing, Space & Society and widely reported in 2025.
