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Speaker 1: But tell me, wow, the children blea no need for

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Speaker 1: this guy to get better work stories. Ryan Archer is

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Speaker 1: with a company called play Co, the oldest builders of

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Speaker 1: playgrounds in New Zealand. For over forty years, they've been

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Speaker 1: putting in swings and slides and over four thousand sites

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Speaker 1: up and down the country. They lay claim to a

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Speaker 1: feu here in mid Canterbury, armed with the motto everyone

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Speaker 1: Can Play, it was neat to sit down with Ryan

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Speaker 1: and ask what makes a playground great? You can listen

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Speaker 1: back to the full chat on our podcast a little

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Speaker 1: later this morning. We've heard from some of the kids

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Speaker 1: about essential ingredients, but from Ryan, is there one piece

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Speaker 1: of playground kit in particular that stands out over the

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Speaker 1: years for.

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Speaker 2: You listening unique pieces all across the country. Down in Wanaka,

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Speaker 2: there's quite a large feros immense style dinosaur staircase with

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Speaker 2: the slide going down the neck of this deck of saurus.

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Speaker 2: Super straightforward, super big piece of play If you strip

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Speaker 2: away all of the cladding which is the dinosaur, but

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Speaker 2: the theme of the dinosaur is the draw card for

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Speaker 2: the park, and.

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Speaker 1: Then will it would be Yeah.

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Speaker 2: So it's got to be thirty to forty years old

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Speaker 2: but timeless in a sense, and I imagine counsel will have

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Speaker 2: a hard job ever replacing it.

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Speaker 1: Have you ever let kids design their own playground?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, we do this almost on a weekly basis when

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Speaker 2: we sit down with school to design briefs with schools.

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Speaker 2: Schools will sit down and picture a senior leadership team,

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Speaker 2: typically year six students, but we have worked with as

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Speaker 2: young as yet three, and we'll get them and at

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Speaker 2: work here and we're sitting around the boardroom table and

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Speaker 2: we've got a really fun and playful environment, all our

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Speaker 2: walls and whiteboards. So the kids eyes light up when

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Speaker 2: we'll give them white wall markers, and so they go

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Speaker 2: draw all over our walls and we let them loose

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Speaker 2: and they'll immediately design slides and swings, and then they

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Speaker 2: dive really deep into thematic design and they'll start designing

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Speaker 2: berg hours with slides coming down as the saw saw

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Speaker 2: large cats that have swings hanging off their tails, and

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Speaker 2: kids dive really deep into thematic play.

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Speaker 1: I've got that image from The Simpsons. I think it

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Speaker 1: was a Christmas episode where they asked Lisa's class to

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Speaker 1: design the new Furbie toy, and they're all still behind

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Speaker 1: that that's that one way screen, you know, watching all

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Speaker 1: the all the kids reactions and whatnot. Is that like

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Speaker 1: how it plays out for you on a.

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Speaker 2: Weekly basis, It's refreshing. And then you know, probably once

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Speaker 2: a month we'll sit down and consolidate all the feedback

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Speaker 2: we've got the birds and apply it to R and

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Speaker 2: D And there's a process that follows. But eventually, when

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Speaker 2: the market starts to see new equipment which is derived

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Speaker 2: from the child's brainstorm twelve months earlier, that would.

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Speaker 1: Be the greatest claim to fame as a cat if

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Speaker 1: you were able to say I was the one who

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Speaker 1: came up with that. Do you even give them the

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Speaker 1: opportunity to name it? To be the namesake?

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Speaker 2: Look, we asked them to put names under all of

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Speaker 2: their sketches because, as you can imagine, you've got young children,

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Speaker 2: and you know what it's like when they do you're

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Speaker 2: a sketch. You need a thorough description of what you're

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Speaker 2: looking at. The child two or three years ago designed

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Speaker 2: a pizza climber, which is a pizza shaped climbing wall

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Speaker 2: with the pizza pieces being the steps. We tweet that

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Speaker 2: twist to that and developed it further into its own

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Speaker 2: climbing wall and it's now part of our modular range.

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Speaker 2: And thence, unfortunately that child had moved on from the

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Speaker 2: school by the time that the school purchased that piece

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Speaker 2: of play your own equipment. But I imagine they have siblings

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Speaker 2: at the school and as you say, they've got a claim.

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Speaker 1: To fame ultimate breaking rights. Cheers Ryan. Let us know

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Speaker 1: where you find the best playground in mid Canbury, all

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Speaker 1: thanks to eat A Networks. How can it we Ashburton

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Speaker 1: on Facebook