Clontarf seafront needs to be more fun, a councillor and locals say

Clontarf promenade on Tuesday evening, the tide is moving in, the sea air is blowing fresh and steady.

Dave Griffin, a new father, strolls along the path, opposite the mouth of Vernon Avenue pushing his six-month old son, Finn.

They walk the route every day, Griffin says.

Looking around, he says, it would be good to have a few bits and pieces for kids to play with, when Finn is a little older.

“I know they have the gym equipment dotted along,” he says, “but it’d be nice to have little stuff to help the kids too.”

Griffin is responding to an idea from local Green Party Councillor Donna Cooney, who is calling on the council to install “playful interventions” along the promenade.

Not a traditional playground, Cooney said by phone on Tuesday, with normal swing sets, slides and climbing frames all centralised in one place.

They can be simple items built into the green space, like mounds for children to climb up and down, she says.

Or more elaborate things like playable sound installations on the promenade path that kids can make music out of by jumping and dancing on, she says.

As opposed to one playground where everyone congregates, where younger and older kids, or even teens hang out, all competing for space, the interventions would be spread out, she says.

Families can move from one to the other, and kids can expend a bit of energy moving along the trail, she says.

Cooney also wants to see items that encourage “intergenerational play”, like chess boards or table tennis tables – that people can bring their own equipment down to use.

And it’s time to stop waiting for the forever-promised new permanent flood defences to be installed along the promenade before putting in these new play places, Cooney said.

She has a motion due to be tabled at next week’s meeting of the North Central Area Committee, asking “That temporary play features are put in soon rather than waiting over another decade when children are adults by then."

Support

At last month’s meeting of Dublin City Council’s North Central Area Committee, Fergus O’Carroll, senior executive parks superintendent, gave a presentation including plans for play at St Anne’s Park.

His team conducted a consultation with children at last year’s Rose Festival, he said.

The parks team heard that they wanted more playful items dotted around the landscape of the park, and not all focused in the main playground by the Red Stables.

It’s something they intend to act upon, O’Carroll told the meeting.

This is what Cooney wants for the Clontarf seafront too, she says.

She tabled a motion to the North Central Area Committee in June 2022, proposing something similar. 

Play features with “a maritime/battle of Clontarf theme by the sea”, which “could also be multi-functional as flood barriers”, as well as “table tennis tables and games tables”.

O’Carroll’s response at the time was that Clontarf had been identified “as an area of deficit of play facilities and the prom would seem to be an ideal location to deliver same”.

These scattered “playful interventions” along the prom are exactly what the Clontarf Residents Association want too for the seafront, said chairperson Deirdre Nichol, by phone on Tuesday.

“We would prefer that to a playground, interactive stuff,” she said. “It's a good way to encourage children to engage with the environment.”

But the second half of O’Carroll’s response in 2022 to Cooney’s idea points to a problem.

“The Parks Service is more than supportive of the approach to integrate play facilities or playful landscapes within the proposed flood defences and will raise the issue in the context of the design of these flood defences,” he said back then.

Those permanent flood defences for Clontarf have been delayed further and further. The council has instead just been adding more and more interim measures.

Now, with permanent flood defences possibly delayed until 2033, says Cooney, the children who use the promenade shouldn’t have to wait any longer.

Playful cities

The kinds of “playful interventions” that Cooney’s asking for on the prom are already being installed in other parts of Dublin – she points to Rockfield Park in Artane.

There, Aaron Copeland and his team at A Playful City – which specialises in turning areas like parks, neglected laneways, and streets into playful, engaging spaces – recently worked with residents on ideas for features to add around the park.

They received close to 300 responses to a community consultation, Copeland said by phone on Tuesday.

“And what became really clear was that the community were saying that the space is a play space, like the whole space,” he said.

So, the team mapped out all the areas where children were already playing and adults were playing with their children. And also, teenagers were hanging out, he says.

“So, it was like little mud paths. There was swings that had been put up onto trees, there was little fairy doors at certain sections,” he says. “There was all sorts of little clues as to where it was being utilised as a play space.”

Rather than swimming against the tide, trying to channel all the play to one spot, they worked on ideas to emphasise areas already in use.

Some of the ideas have already been installed, some have yet to be, Copeland said.

One item now installed is a hexagonal “huddle swing” set, allowing the people using the swings to all face each other, without colliding.

Their research shows that these are popular with teenagers, especially girls, he says. “Those kinds of spaces really suit just hanging out."

It also helps avoid conflict where you've got teenagers messing about in the playground that a parent wants to use with their four-year-old, he says.

Elsewhere in Rockfield Park, another of their suggestions, more suited to younger kids, has already been implemented – a willow tunnel.

As the name suggests, it’s a winding tunnel constructed out of willow branches, that youngsters can play in and around.

These are just the first of a few little bits that are planned for the space, he says.

Ultimately, says Copeland, people need to move past seeing traditional play equipment as what children are really after.

And it doesn’t take much either, he says.

“You can introduce hills, long grass, hedgerows, boulders, really important play elements, but not play equipment per se,” he says.

Says Cooney, for Clontarf promenade, given the ever-looming flood concerns, it is important “to increase sustainable urban drainage with green infrastructure”.

So, ideally, whatever natural “playful interventions” are decided upon for the prom, she says, should also work in that regard.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.