Loose parts on the school playground: a playful approach to promoting health and wellbeing for children of all abilities

In this chapter, we focus on a loose-parts, school-based intervention to promote playfulness. The intervention is known as the Sydney Playground Project (SPP). The SPP was developed by a multidisciplinary team, including the authors of this chapter. Key principles in the creation of the SPP were to find ways to enable children to engage in more-frequent, better-quality play, and make the intervention accessible to all children, families and educators (Bundy et al., 2011). There is also now a particular focus on children with disabilities (Bundy et al., 2015; Stillianesis et al., 2022). Goals for children with disabilities include development in areas promoted through play, yet a range of barriers often prevents this group from full participation.