Just two months after the Massie family moved to Los Angeles in 1998 their son Cole was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. Stunned by the turn of events, Michelle Massie and her husband turned their attention from their newly acquired fixer-upper to their son. They soon became aware that every right enjoyed by typically able children is not guaranteed to children with disabilities. In 2000, Michelle Massie began taking Cole to Griffith Park, which was located on the eastern flanks of the Santa Monica Mountains in the City of Los Angeles. What she found there surprised her: an enormous playground that enthralled all children, including those with disabilities. A park, she says, that was not only close to home--but “that enabled Cole to play just like any other kid.”
What Massie had discovered was Shane’s Inspiration—the first universally accessible playground in the western U.S.—named in honor of Shane Williams, a boy who died of Spinal Muscular Atrophy in 1998. That playground, launched and donated to the city with the goal of giving children with disabilities a place to play, sparked a movement in the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks. It is a movement that has influenced playground design ever since. And one that Catherine Curry Williams and Tiffany Harris, the founders of Shane’s Inspiration, never expected.
Realizing What Cities Are Up Against
"When the [Shane’s Inspiration] playground was still in development," says Harris, "we began getting calls from community leaders and parents saying, ‘We really need an accessible playground in our district, too. Could you help us out?’ As we became more educated about the process, we realized what the cities are up against with dwindling budgets."
Williams and Harris thought that Shane’s Inspiration could be a good partner for the city–one that could bring the design expertise, funding and community support necessary to make big projects like Shane’s Inspiration a reality. Moreover, the two founders had developed a strong relationship with Landscape Structures, a Minnesota-based commercial playground equipment manufacturer with a strong interest in inclusive play.
“Shortly after we opened our first playground, there was a family on the west side that read an article about Shane’s Inspiration,” says Harris. “They had a child with multiple disabilities and wanted to build an accessible playground closer to their home on the west side. We partnered with them on our second project, and from there it just snowballed. The Recreation and Parks Department, the L.A. Unified School District and the Los Angeles City Council were so supportive that they propelled our work from one project to the next.”
Dissolving Bias through Inclusive Play Programming
Following the successful construction of the playgrounds, Shane’s Inspiration went on to tackle other hurdles such as overcoming the isolation that many families of children with disabilities experience and increasing those families’ access to the playgrounds. And so the group went to work forming citywide play clubs, addressing transportation barriers, and creating connections between families of disabled children. Still, the growing, dedicated team at Shane’s Inspiration faced a daunting obstacle: ignorance and bias against children with disabilities. At community playground-planning meetings, for example, they heard such comments as, “Children with disabilities carry contagious diseases.” or “Those children are violent.” Harris realized that if adults had that level of bias, it could only be because they never had a chance as a child to play alongside a child with a disability.
“Our director of programming, Marnie Norris, decided to address these biases head on,” says Harris. “She created a simple school-based program called Together We Are Able that combines classroom discussion with playground visits pairing a typically able child with a child with disabilities. As of 2011, more than 140 schools and 20,000 students have participated in this programming, all of which has been paid for by private, corporate and City donations. The Together We Are Able program has been developed to full curriculum, allowing a teacher to address inclusion throughout the year.
The Ongoing Pursuit of Inclusivity in Los Angeles
For the City of Los Angeles, the success of Shane’s Inspiration and the Shane’s Club play dates was a revelation. According to Mike Shull, superintendent of planning, construction and maintenance for the Department of Recreation and Parks, the work of Shane’s Inspiration took them down a path that they did not know existed.
“Today, the City of Los Angeles is a world leader in inclusive playgrounds, but we would never have arrived at this place were it not for the people at Shane’s Inspiration,” Shull says. “Shane’s opened our eyes to the world of children with disabilities and their families, and showed us how to create play environments that serve all children. Jon Kirk Mukri, our general manager, recognized the power of these playgrounds a decade ago when Shane’s Inspiration and Landscape Structures installed those first few playgrounds. Ever since, he has made the pursuit of inclusivity the norm in recreation and parks.”
There are now 40 Shane’s Inspiration playgrounds opened to the public, nationwide, 27 of which are in the City/County of Los Angeles, and an additional five Shane's inclusive playgrounds are scheduled to open in 2012. In addition, Shane’s Inspiration has begun to expand their geographic footprint with recent playground installations in Colorado, Mexico and British Columbia. They also have projects in development across the United States, as well as in India, Japan and Sweden.
This broad appeal, according to Tiffany Harris, is the ultimate sign of success.
The beauty of these playgrounds is that they’re seamless,” says Harris. “You don’t walk onto one of our playgrounds and think, ‘Oh, this is that special playground for special children.’ If you’re building playgrounds for children with disabilities, you’re missing the entire point. You must design the playground for children of all abilities to have success.”
Taking the L.A. Model Nationwide
It is clear that public/private partnerships like this are a big part of the future of parks and recreation. As cities face budget shortfalls, these departments are often the first to lose funding for capital improvements and programming. “You can’t underestimate the value that private partnerships can bring to public entities,” Shull says. “We have restructured our entire department to accommodate this activity, and we created a branch to concentrate only on partnerships. We just did an addition to an inclusive playground with Shane’s Inspiration and it was funded largely by a family in celebration of the life of their son who passed away at the age of 5. It was all funded by private money—Shane’s raised the money, designed it and built it. We simply gave them a Right of Entry to actually bring in their own contractor and get it done. We’re now doing projects like this in a couple months that used to take three or four years.
“Most agencies are afraid to do that,” Shull explains. “It is built into you as a government employee to question everything and nine times out of 10 the answer’s going to be ‘no.’ Well, we’ve changed that to say nine times out of 10 it’s going to be ‘yes.’ And we have completed more than $18 million dollars of improvements in the park system over the last three years with private money.
“My advice to any community that knows it needs to move in the direction of inclusive playgrounds is to take the time to listen to Shane’s Inspiration,” Shull says. “All it takes is one person who shares the passion of Shane’s Inspiration. We all have choices–do our jobs and leave at five o’clock, or come into work and try to make a difference. We’ve taken the latter approach and it has energized us all.”
Jack Klobacar is a Minneapolis-baseed freelance writer.