Fun Places
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Commercial Outdoor

COMMERCIAL OUTDOOR

Transforming spaces can be taken to outside walls, buildings and fences too! A bit of imagination, a douse of paint & even the blandest areas can be turned into purposeful, joyful color that spreads a message and adds to creating a space with purpose!
These outdoor spaces below have been created in Virginia, West Virginia, California, and URUGUAY!

 

Michelle Black Memorial Playground

“Come & Play”
Michelle Black Memorial Playground, Charlestown, WV

This amazing passion project came together by a miracle of many sorts. We had seen a post on social media about Michelle Black, a beautiful-hearted woman was always helping others, who had ran a day care in West Virginia for over 16 years. She had the dream of a Back2Nature playground for children for a long time, sharing her ideas with friends, but never had seen it come to reality. When she was diagnosed with an aggressive Stage 4 Small Cell Cancer, she had told friends, “I’m not afraid to die. I’m just afraid I’ll never create my dream playground.” Her legacy to the children she loved so much. Although we didn’t know Michelle personally, we were touched by her story and joined the core team of three that would design, organize volunteers, seek donations and create this amazing playground that would outlast her life. You can see her story HERE.

As you’ll see from the pictures, creativity overflowed from grassroots efforts and donations of time, money, structures, materials and love from the community to create an amazing Back to Nature playground complete with play spaces, imagination areas of planes, boats and buses, experiment places, checkerboards and games, chalkboard flowers, giant murals, mud kitchens, sandboxes, butterfly gardens, vegetables in clear root boxes, a wall of herbs, a toddler area, a teacher's deck, beautiful wood playground structures, climbing walls, teeter-totters, and color everywhere - all the fun we could think of created for these kids who often didn’t get the best in life. It was our own version of Extreme Makeover: Playground Edition! Michelle hung on to be surprised by her dream coming true. You can watch the video at the end of the photos below. The hard work and faith in hundreds of people who aided in making this possible for her was a “life-truly living” something incredible to be a part of… and we hope all have the chance to be a part of something for someone else on this scale. It will give you a smile for a lifetime.

Check out the creation of this incredible surprise and amazing reveal below - a complete creative playground for children in Charlestown on behalf of Michelle Black.

Andrew Ferrin