Planning for Play: Building partnerships to improve children’s outdoor play

5  September 2026, Edinburgh

Deputy Director of the Outdoor Play Research Centre Dr Paul McCrorie joined Centre Associate Dr Lily FitzGibbon, to be present at a Planning for Play event hosted by IPA Scotland, Play Scotland, Inspiring Scotland and Planning Aid Scotland. 

Bringing together those working across planning, play, research and policy to consider how public spaces can better support children’s opportunities to play outdoors, the event provided an opportunity to set out how we plan to operate as a nationally facing Centre, working through strong partnerships and collaborations.

A key strand of the Centre’s work will be to identify, evaluate and support the implementation and scaling of promising programmes.

Paul and Lily outlined plans for a future ‘sandpit’ event which is being developed in collaboration with Inspiring Scotland.  The ‘sandpit’ will embed a more co-designed process into some of our future research, making sure our research is relevant, actionable and capable of making a meaningful difference to children’s everyday experiences of outdoor play. 

For more information about the sandpit and how you can get involved, please contact