PHOTO: Elly Osmera and Cady Allione… and friends… posing in the atrium at Pagosa Peak Open School.
A group of local activists have secured a second grant from the Colorado Health Foundation, in the amount of $688,000, to create a ‘Playground for the People’ on the property owned by the Pagosa Peak Open School, the community’s district-authorized charter school in the Aspen Village subdivision, near Walmart.
As currently planned, the playground will serve the school during the school day, and then be open to the whole community, after school and on weekends.
The uptown area of Pagosa Springs has a couple of small playgrounds — one maintained by the Pagosa Lakes Property Owners Association and one owned by Wyndham Resorts. This will be, I believe, the first community-owned playground in the uptown area.
The first grant from the Foundation funded a two-year planning process involving representatives from various segments of the community, to help ensure the proposed playground met the Foundation’s goals of inclusiveness and diversity. This second grant will now pay for playground equipment, fencing, walking paths, and the necessary work by architects and building professionals.
Adding the remainder of the first grant to the second grant, the group will start with $700,000 in construction funding.
I sat down last week with the two local activists who spearheaded the project: Cady Allione and Elly Osmera.
Ms. Allione:
“Our group met every month , for a year, during which we engaged in what was called ‘Equity-centered Community Design’. The premise was to give value and voice to voices that are not always heard in big projects like this. And the Foundation told us, ‘We don’t actually care what project you build, because if you do this process, whatever you make will be exactly what your community needs.
“We were given the directive to make sure there was child care at every meeting, and to make sure there was food. And that was how we spent a portion of our planning budget. And one of the things that was, I think, the most beautiful, was eating together, because everybody came from different places, and some had kids, and it was just a moment where we were all sharing stories of our day and connecting and having that experience of ‘human-ness’ all together.
“We were able to consult with each other and find really creative solutions, and be very collective and collaborative in the process.
“We had to seek consensus when we decided anything… and then we got to the place of putting together a playground…”
I interrupted Ms. Allione, to suggest that Americans are typically used to ‘consensus’ decision-making. We’re more accustomed to either taking direction from the ‘top down’… or else to ‘majority rule’. Did the group do training in ‘consensus decision-making’?
Ms. Allione:
“They gave us a toolkit, and we started by sharing what the guidelines we would be working with were, so everybody understood that. Since that was a shared knowledge and a shared agreement, it was fairly easy because we had this moment where we sort of broke bread together, and it didn’t feel like anyone had a place other than at the table together.”
Ms. Osmera:
“We tried to remain really aware of that concept, that everyone had a voice, and trying to get input from the quietest person in the room, and what they were thinking.”
Does the playground design reflect a consensus of the group?
Ms. Allione:
“There’s kind of the ‘dream playground’ and then there’s the ‘reality playground’ based on budgets and what things cost. So I think this iteration was a really nice collaboration, working within what we could really do within the grant, and safety, and accessibility. Making sure the playground is accessible to people of all ages.
“The project was called ‘Playground for the People’, and we asked, ‘What makes you feel welcome?’ And making sure that young children, or people with ability issues or age issues… we heard a lot from grandparents — ‘I just want a comfortable place to sit when I take the kids to the playground.’ Yeah, rocks probably aren’t it. And so that spirit of ‘what makes you feel welcome’ was really imbued in it.
“And you can’t see the fine details in the plan of, say, a ‘play structure’ when it’s really kind of a glorious play structure. We were also tasked with reflecting on our specific communities’ heritage and legacy and culture, and incorporating that into our playscape.
Ms. Osmera:
“So we had quite a few people on our ‘diversity dream team’ who have spent generations — or at least, the majority of their lives — in our community or in a neighboring community, which really helped us get that information. I think we got some great stories about the culture and heritage of Pagosa Springs.”
Ms Allione:
“What we settled on as a central theme was ‘Nature’. We’re next to a wetlands, and next to a bike path… and there was a lot of support to get this playground in this area…”
Ms. Osmera noted that during a recent school visit to the adjacent wetlands — located between the school and Walmart — students were able to identify 31 different species of birds.
“So that inspired us to make ‘birds’ part of the theme for the playground. So we’re incorporating that, in educational ways…”
The group now has two years to spend a total of $700,000 from their two grants, to complete the playground. They may be seeking additional donations from the community to fulfill this ambitious project.