| PLAYABLE SPACE
With playable space, the vision is to design places that invite children, families, and friends to stretch their bodies, exercise their imaginations, and experience our co-creative part within the living world.
Play commissioners include Creative Partnerships, Oxford City Council, Playlink and Arts Council England.
Quarry Hollow, Oxford
Quarry Hollow is a small former quarry in Oxford that had long served as an informal play space. Drawing inspiration from the site’s geological past, Working as a design associate for Playlink, I commissioned sculptor Alec Peever to select a 10-tonne boulder from the Isle of Portland, which we transported back and set within a broad, five-metre sand pit at the heart of the space.
Alec then led a workshop with local children, inviting them to carve their own marks into the stone — impressions of dash, fur, feather, claw, and other imaginative forms — transforming the boulder into a collective artwork rooted in play.
Around it, we planted fruit and hazel trees, added benches for parents to rest and watch, and integrated natural play features such as fallen trunks and a slide that follows the quarry’s steep contours. The result is a landscape that celebrates memory, material, and community creativity, giving new life to a place shaped by both geology and imagination.
