Cardiff Play Resource Centre: A History

The beginning

The earliest meeting we have minutes from was held on Wednesday January 29th 1986 at 11.15 a.m. The venue was a C.S.A.W.S. (Community Support Anti Waste Scheme) building in Hope Street Splott. The aim of the group that met that day was to set up a Children's Play Resource Centre.

That group became the management committee of a registered charity called South Glamorgan Play Services Association on 14th October 1987. During the early years Play Services committee worked closely with South Glamorgan Play Bus Association management committee and staff to develop the Resource Centre. Which eventually opened on 1st May 1988.

The Centre's aim then was to provide a range of support services for people working with children. Services such as:

A Scrapstore: a wide variety of re-usable waste and surplus material collected from firms all around South Wales for re-use in Children's play
Information Services: an information area with publications on play, play equipment, legislation and other subjects which affect play providers and also a regular newsletter.
Loan Equipment: large and expensive items of play equipment such as badge machines to be available.
Art and craft shop: to stock a wide range of cut price art and craft materials.

To provide these services the charity set up a company limited by guarantee called Cardiff Play Resource Centre to be its trading arm. The first Resource Centre was in a building in Butetown known as the Old Flock Warehouse behind the Sea Lock Inn. The tenancy was shared with the Play Bus. For the first year it ran as a Community Programme with funding from the Manpower Services Commission. There were approximately twenty people on the project and about the same number involved in a Community Programme with Play Bus. As well as the Community Programme, Play Bus had three workers from an Urban Programme grant.

At the end of that year the Community Programme initiative was ended and both projects lost all the people they had from it. The end of Community Programme was a disaster for many projects. In Swansea the Scrapstore closed completely. In Cardiff the Play Bus development team funded by the Urban Programme grant were left with responsibility for their own project as well as the development of the Resource Centre. For a couple of years the Centre survived with the support of the Play Bus development team and because of the dedication of the committee members. We were forced to move out of the building in Butetown because of rising prices due to the activities of Cardiff Bay Development Corporation. It was then that we moved to our present building on Ely Bridge Industrial Estate. It is a 5000 Square foot warehouse built in the forties. We have been here since St David's day 1989.

The middle bit

We eventually managed to secure funding from Cardiff City and South Glamorgan County Councils as well as Environment Wales, The Welsh Office and then the new Cardiff County Council. Just as things seemed to be going so well our funding was pulled at short notice. This should have signalled the end but don't forget that scrapstores are resourceful places in terms of staff and not just materials, so we put an emergency plan in place that has paved the way to long term sustainability

Where we are now

At the moment we have four full time workers and three part time, as well as several volunteers. Since reducing our membership fees to only £1 per visit, we have attracted over 2000 members of all kinds, including playgroups, playschemes, playgrounds, schools, scouts, community education teams, community centres, family centres, leisure centres, arts groups, environmental groups, special needs groups and community groups of all kinds. We also have family and student memberships. People come to us from all over the South Wales area and we collect materials from over fifty firms all around that area. We appointed a Play Development worker to support play providers from the voluntary sector in Cardiff.

We have managed to buy our building and are fund-raising to expand into a bigger building. For the past few years the project has grown both in terms of numbers of members and volumes of services used by members. This growth has averaged over 20% annually. At the moment over 150,000 children are benefiting from the Centre through our network of member groups.

Recently we have merged our charity and company into one organisation. The charitable company is now called Re-Create - Cardiff & Vale Play Services Association (registered number 1100526).

We have received a grant from the BIG Lottery Child's Play programme for £250,000 over 4 years to enable us to take a strategic role in developing play across Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan

If you want to know more about us, give us a ring on 029 2057 8100.