Prisoners at HMP Birmingham have been building wooden toys and play equipment for local schools, and the results have delighted the children who use them.
So far the prison has supplied 15 schools in the city. The items include dens, tunnels, benches and a bus made from wooden pallets.
The men make the equipment in the prison’s upcycling woodwork workshops. The donations form part of a development scheme run by OPAL, an independent, not-for-profit community interest company. The name stands for Outdoor Play And Learning.
One Year Six pupil had never ridden a go-kart before trying one built at the prison. He called the ride the “highlight of my day, it is a 10 out of 10”.
Ruth Blayney, an OPAL mentor, approached HMP Birmingham to ask whether it would take part. “They were really keen to do it,” she said.
She described the work as worthwhile for the men involved. “It is very purposeful for the inmates, it is a great use of their time and their skill, and they are doing something which is useful for the local community,” she said.
Ms Blayney listed mud kitchens, tunnels, benches and dens among the items made so far. The workshops have also produced a whole bus and a helicopter, both built from pallets.
She said many schools wanted to offer pupils good play facilities but had little time, capacity or money to do so. For those schools, she said, the scheme was “a really good opportunity”.
Parkfield Community School is one of the schools to benefit. Daniel Dowson, its assistant head teacher, said: “The children love it, they absolutely love it.” He added that the school hoped to bring in much more equipment from the prison and to improve its play provision further.
HMP Birmingham is a category B reception prison for men in the West Midlands. Its last full inspection before this story took place in May 2023. Inspectors rated safety and respect as reasonably good, purposeful activity as poor, and rehabilitation and release planning as not sufficiently good.
