Playrise

Playrise is a UK-based charity designing play structures for children living in disaster-relief sites around the world.

Working with a group of award-winning architects, engineers and fabricators, Playrise is creating play structures that are easy to transport and safe to install.

Playrise is a UK-based charity designing play structures for children living in disaster-relief sites around the world.

Working with a group of award-winning architects, engineers and fabricators, Playrise is creating play structures that are easy to transport and safe to install.

About

The Playrise team designed a reconfigurable structure that enables children to acquire essential life skills - from making friends, resolving conflict and building confidence, to learning how to build, decorate and look after things together. It contributes to children’s health and long-term wellbeing with every skip, swing and slide.

About

The Playrise team designed a reconfigurable structure that enables children to acquire essential life skills - from making friends, resolving conflict and building confidence, to learning how to build, decorate and look after things together. It contributes to children’s health and long-term wellbeing with every skip, swing and slide.

It is an inhabitable toy, designed to be easily assembled, disassembled and re-assembled according to the changing needs of different communities, families and individuals across the world.

The simple modular kit comprises elements which allow for play for different ages, abilities, personalities and settings. Some configurations focus on dynamic movement and popular games, others on more intangible forms of sensory play.

With our system, children can create a playground, a theatre, a tunnel or simply a safe space to call their own.

Why Play?

Play is the means through which children come to understand themselves, the world around them, and their place within it.

It is crucial in the development of motor skills; it allows children to explore the possibilities and limits of their bodies, building strength, coordination and dexterity. Play invites them to indulge their imaginations and exercise their creativity. It creates opportunities for problem-solving, developing confidence and courage.

48 million children are displaced due to conflict and war

UNICEF

Zero playgrounds for 10,000 children in the Aysaita refugee camp, Ethiopia

ED

UNHCR

$Only 3% of humanitarian aid goes to education - a fraction benefitting play$

World Bank

Why Play?

UNICEF

ED

UNHCR

$Only 3% of humanitarian aid goes to education - a fraction benefitting play$

World Bank

Play is the means through which children come to understand themselves, the world around them, and their place within it.

It is crucial in the development of motor skills; it allows children to explore the possibilities and limits of their bodies, building strength, coordination and dexterity. Play invites them to indulge their imaginations and exercise their creativity. It creates opportunities for problem-solving, developing confidence and courage.

Research has shown that the loss of access to play in crisis contexts has a significant impact on the development and wellbeing of young children. In communities such as refugee camps, many children are displaced from home, living with trauma, cut off from education and essential healthcare, and suffering from high degrees of physical and psychological stress as a result. In such circumstances, play is a lifeline, helping children relieve stress, foster nurturing relationships, and re-establish conditions in which learning can occur.

Play is not a luxury, or a nice-to-have. It is a vital and necessary process in the physical, cognitive and emotional development of every child, and by extension, an essential building block of every global community. In recognition of this truth, the right to play is embedded in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and it is this principle that underpins Playrise’s mission.

In all human civilisations – throughout the entire animal kingdom, in fact – play has an essential social role. It is often in the playground that we forge the connections and peer relationships on which society is founded. The bonds that keep communities together are established on the swing and the slide.

Where we are born is arbitrary, but our right to play safely should be fundamental.

Access to Play

For tens of millions of displaced children, including refugees and asylum seekers, access to play is limited. Play is seldom seen as a priority and so camps and other temporary settlements rarely provide dedicated playspaces, which can be expensive to install and difficult to maintain.

Removed from their homes because of war, political unrest or natural disasters, displaced children are vulnerable to fear, stress and other threats to their emotional health and wellbeing. Limiting their access to play can only compound these difficulties.

Access to Play

For tens of millions of displaced children, including refugees and asylum seekers, access to play is limited. Play is seldom seen as a priority and so camps and other temporary settlements rarely provide dedicated playspaces, which can be expensive to install and difficult to maintain.

Removed from their homes because of war, political unrest or natural disasters, displaced children are vulnerable to fear, stress and other threats to their emotional health and wellbeing. Limiting their access to play can only compound these difficulties.

New Places to Play

Beginning in early 2025, the Playrise team came together to research, develop and design a system of play structures that could be simply transported to and installed in the spaces where play was missing in the lives of displaced children. The structures needed to be cost-effective but of the highest quality; safe to install but extremely fun to play on, with and around.

New Places to Play

Beginning in early 2025, the Playrise team came together to research, develop and design a system of play structures that could be simply transported to and installed in the spaces where play was missing in the lives of displaced children. The structures needed to be cost-effective but of the highest quality; safe to install but extremely fun to play on, with and around.

During the summer, the team set out on research trips to consult with partner NGOs and to learn about play from children with limited access to play facilities. They visited the Aysaita camp for Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia, a hub for the Palestinian community in Cairo and a community of Sudanese refugees in Karkar, southern Egypt, to carry out colourful and raucous workshops that would inform the prototype design.

The first prototypes are currently under construction. They will be displayed at a launch event in London in early 2026 before being installed in Aysaita, Cairo and Karkar later in the year.

Design

Informed by a series of workshops conducted with children in UN relief sites, Playrise came up with a design to meet the varied needs of displaced communities around the world, while also considering factors such as distribution, ease of assembly, reconfigurability, cost-efficiency, maintenance requirements, environmental impact, and resilience to diverse climate conditions.

Design

Informed by a series of workshops conducted with children in UN relief sites, Playrise came up with a design to meet the varied needs of displaced communities around the world, while also considering factors such as distribution, ease of assembly, reconfigurability, cost-efficiency, maintenance requirements, environmental impact, and resilience to diverse climate conditions.

Fabricated primarily from timber, the modular system is based on a set of simple structural elements: beams, planks and plate, which are fitted together with metal connectors, and combined with a selection of and play-specific attachments, including nets, ropes, monkey bars and basketball hoops.

These elements allow for multiple styles of play at all levels of physical ability, and can be easily configured on site, according to the needs of the playing community and the conditions and constraints of the intended playspace.

Team

At Playrise, we believe in the power of play to heal, connect, and restore hope. Working hand in hand with local communities and global partners, we listen first and build together — combining technical expertise with deep empathy to create child-centred spaces where children can feel safe, seen, and free to play, even in the world’s most challenging environments.

Directors

Advisors

Credits

Design: OMMX

Engineering: Webb Yates

Fabrication: Setworks

Branding & Web Design: Stinsensqueeze

Website Programming: An Endless Supply

Strategy: Beautiful Soup

Communications & PR: Zetteler

Film: Interzone Pictures