WEST SIDE PLAY SPACE

About West Side Play Space

West Side Play Space is a co-op located at 70 Union Ave, Providence, RI, where families and children come together to play, learn and build community during the colder months of November-April. WSPS offers children ages 0-5 opportunities for movement, quiet reading, art, imaginative play, and infant-safe exploration, as well as special programming and events throughout the year.

Background & history

A Need for Wellness and Connection

West Side Play Space was founded in 2012 by a group of parents who recognized the need for a safe, dry and warm space for our neighborhood’s children to play and grow together in the colder months of November to April. Most children in our community – living in small apartments – have few options for healthy, active indoor play during the winter.

Deepening conversations about the need for an indoor play space also revealed gaps in opportunities for meaningful community building among young families. Families with young children comprise a demographic that historically lacked structural and organizational supports on the west side. As neighbors met to create a vision for WSPS, they explored how this initiative could address the neighborhood’s long-standing issues of attrition among these families, as well as the need to strengthen community bonds among the diverse families of our neighborhood.

While forming WSPS, parents envisioned that an indoor play space could encourage not only physical wellness but community wellness. Today its mission is to support active and creative play for preschool-aged children, strengthen connections between families, and build community through play on the west side of Providence.

West Broadway Neighborhood Association has been a foundational partner to West Side Play Space from its beginning. While it maintains its own governing board, WSPS is a program of the WBNA, which provides organizational support and fiscal sponsorship to WSPS.

Community Made