Berkshire Museum Awarded Grant For Playground Equipment System
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PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Dr Pepper Snapple and national nonprofit KaBOOM! have awarded the Berkshire Museum a $13,200 Let’s Play Improvement Grant to use toward the purchase of an Imagination Playground in a Cart, an innovative playground equipment system.
The grant, which will allow the Berkshire Museum to install the system at the museum, is part of Let’s Play, a community partnership led by Dr Pepper Snapple to get kids and families active nationwide. Imagination Playground in a Cart is an innovative design in play equipment that encourages creativity, communication, and collaboration in play. With a collection of custom-designed, oversized blue foam parts, Imagination Playground provides a changing array of elements that allow children to turn their playground into a space constantly built and re-built by their imagination.
“We believe creative play offers us the best opportunity to carry out our mission to spark creativity and innovative thinking for our youngest participants,” Berkshire Museum Executive Director Van Shields said.
Families with children coupled with student groups make up the majority of the Berkshire Museum’s existing audience and in recent years it has developed a strong focus on early childhood education. Recognizing the museum’s commitment to the importance of play to its audiences, the Berkshire Museum was deemed a perfect partner to share the Imagination Playground in a Cart experience.
“The ability for children to create and re-create their own environment will help us meet our child development goals through creative play year-round," Shields said. "The real beneficiaries of this grant are the children we serve.”
Unstructured, child-directed play has proven to help kids develop physically, emotionally, socially and intellectually, yet today’s kids have less time and fewer opportunities to play than any previous generation. As a result of expanded Let’s Play grants and projects, more than 1 million kids will benefit from new or improved playgrounds around the nation between 2014 and 2016.
Created in 2011, Let’s Play provides the tools, places and inspiration to make play a daily priority. The initiative began with a three-year commitment to KaBOOM!, the national non-profit dedicated to giving all kids the childhood they deserve, filled with balanced and active play, so they can thrive. Through the first three years, they built 41 playgrounds, with more than 2,300 DPS employees contributing nearly 19,000 volunteer hours in the construction, and provided grants ranging from $500 to $30,000 for the improvement of another 2,004 playgrounds by the end of 2013.
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