My initiative is designed for and delivered in London
Yes
I am 18 years of age or above, by the application deadline.
Yes
My organisation is a registered UK entity and has a London-based address.
Yes
My organisation is a non-profit (e.g. school, university, or local authority) — not a for-profit, which can only join as a partner.
Yes
If there is a for-profit organisation as a partner in my initiative, they work on a cost-recovery basis only.
Yes
My solution is implemented at scale, or if not, I have a clear business plan, a minimum viable solution (prototype, pilot, or proof of concept), and evidence of work or impact in London within your coalition.
Yes
I am aware that, if I am submitting more than one application to a Challenge run by Ashoka and Go! London, only one of them is able to progress through the stages.
Yes
Are you an employee (and their children and grandchildren) of Ashoka or any of its respective affiliates and participating advertising and promotion agencies?
No
I have read and accepted the Challenge Terms & Conditions
1
First Name
Last Name
Pronouns
I would like to receive notifications and updates about Go London!, Ashoka, Ashoka Changemakers, and other Ashoka opportunities.
Are you an Ashoka Fellow?
Are you applying from an organization founded by an Ashoka Fellow?
If you are applying from an organization founded by an Ashoka Fellow, please specify the name and organisation of the fellow below.
Initiative Title
Power Play
Lead Organization Name
Energy Garden
My initiative is designed for and delivered in London
1
Year that you started/ registered your organisation
2016
Website URL(s) or Social Media Handles
https://www.energygarden.org.uk/
Initiative Stage
Scaling (You’re expanding impact to many new places or in many new ways)
Sectors/Themes: What topic does your project most directly relate to?
Environment & Sustainability
Initiative Summary: Describe your initiative in one sentence
PowerPlay London co-designs playful, climate-resilient neighbourhoods with children and young people, transforming underused urban spaces into active hubs for movement, nature, renewable energy and community stewardship.
Challenge Focus: What topic does your initiative most directly relate to?
Climate action through awareness and engagement
The Problem: What problem are you helping to solve and who will benefit the most from your solution? How close are you to the problem and/or community impacted?
London's young people, particularly those in lower-income, rail-adjacent & estate-based neighbourhoods are on the frontline of climate change. They experience higher urban heat, poorer air quality, limited tree canopy, biodiversity loss and fewer safe, affordable places to play, exercise and connect with nature. At the same time, schools face growing pressures on budgets, making outdoor learning and climate engagement increasingly difficult. Over the past month, Energy Garden has worked directly with children, teachers, parents and borough partners through workshops and surveys to co-design PowerPlay. Young people consistently told us they want more time outdoors, more trees and wildlife, more opportunities for active play, and greater ownership of the spaces around them. They want to explore, create and care for nature, not simply learn about climate change in the classroom. PowerPlay responds by combining play, movement, biodiversity and community-owned renewable energy to create joyful, climate-resilient neighbourhoods shaped with young people, not simply for them. Energy Garden has spent more than 12 years working alongside schools, councils and local communities across London, creating gardens, delivering education programmes and developing community energy projects, ensuring that those most affected by climate inequality are actively involved in designing the solutions
Your approach: How are you addressing the problem outlined above? How are you using the power of sport and physical activity to build awareness, shift behavior, and enable sustainable participation for all in response to the climate crisis? We'd love to know about the origin of your idea, and what was your "aha" moment" that led you to take action?
PowerPlay turns play and physical activity into a gateway for climate action. Building on Energy Garden's 12 years of creating community gardens, youth programmes and community-owned renewable energy projects, it transforms underused urban and rail-adjacent spaces into climate-resilient places where young people can play, learn and lead. Sport is the hook. Climate becomes the context. PowerPlay is rooted in the real places Energy Garden has already created across London. Our gardens, depaved spaces, rain gardens and community solar projects become living classrooms where children play, investigate, design and care for their local environment alongside schools and teachers. Children don't just participate, they help shape the programme. Inspired by Hart's Ladder of Participation and strengthened through Go! London co-design workshops and surveys, young people consistently told us they want more time outdoors, more trees and wildlife, more active play and greater ownership of local spaces. Activities include nature trails, biodiversity surveys, climate obstacle courses, solar experiments, growing food and playground design challenges, making climate change something children can experience and improve rather than simply study. Our "aha" moment came during periods of extreme heat, when children instinctively gravitated towards greener, shaded spaces and spoke about worrying about the environment but feeling powerless to change it. Our long-term ambition is to connect these learning spaces to community-owned renewable energy, creating a virtuous circle where local climate infrastructure helps fund children's play, education and environmental stewardship. Children become long-term stewards of places they help create, not just participants in one-off activities.
Collaboration with young people and the community: In what ways does your initiative engage young people and community members closest to the problem? What role do they play in building the solution you deliver?
PowerPlay is built with young people, not for them. Energy Garden already works across 20 sites in London and delivers around 100 school workshops each year, building trusted relationships with schools, communities and local authorities that form the foundation of the programme. Following feedback from Go! London, we strengthened our co-design approach through workshops and surveys with children, teachers, parents and borough partners, including live co-creation sessions in Brent, Barnet, Hounslow & Islington. Inspired by Hart's Ladder of Participation, young people are not consulted at the end of the process—they help shape it from the beginning. PowerPlay builds on places we already steward, including the Canonbury Station forecourt & adjacent play spaces in Islington, Feltham Forest and Blenheim Park in Hounslow, Cultivate Colindale in Grahame Park, Barnet, & Queen's Park adjacent to our Brondesbury Park Energy Garden. These connected landscapes combine active play with nurturing gardens & climate infrastructure, allowing football, running and games to sit alongside biodiversity, food growing & outdoor learning. One of the strongest insights from our co-design work was that teachers need support. Alongside youth workshops, we facilitate teacher sessions to understand barriers to outdoor learning and co-design practical ways of integrating movement, play and climate learning into school life. Children consistently told us they want more time outdoors, more trees & wildlife, more active play & more ownership of local spaces. Every site will establish Youth Climate Leaders who shape activities, monitor biodiversity, support planting days and inspire peers. Children become co-designers, researchers, ambassadors & long-term stewards of places they help create.
Potential for/Evidence of Impact: How do you imagine your initiative will make a difference in raising climate awareness, shifting behaviors, or reducing environmental impact or harm? If you have already implemented it, what difference have you made so far? What is the impact your initiative has had¡, and/or what impact do you envision having in the future?
PowerPlay builds on Energy Garden's proven education, youth training and community engagement model, already delivering measurable climate awareness and behaviour change across London. In 2025 we delivered 72 school workshops across 9 schools, engaging 1,888 children, all in boroughs with higher levels of deprivation. We also delivered 35 horticulture workshops and four accredited Youth Training Programmes, with 51 young people completing 40–50 hours of sustainability training and a 90% completion rate. Many participants installed solar, built green infrastructure and engaged with policymakers, shifting from climate anxiety to climate action. The Go! London refinement process has further strengthened the programme through co-design workshops and surveys with children, teachers, parents and borough partners. Young people consistently asked for more active play, more time outdoors, more trees and wildlife, and greater ownership of local spaces. These findings have directly shaped PowerPlay's design. PowerPlay scales this proven model by combining football, running, movement and play with biodiversity, climate adaptation and renewable energy in neighbourhood spaces children already use. Each site becomes both a sport hub and a living climate classroom where young people monitor biodiversity, explore solar energy, grow food and help care for their environment. We anticipate engaging more than 300 young people annually at each hub while tracking participation, biodiversity gains and environmental improvements. Our longer-term ambition is to create a virtuous circle where community-owned renewable energy helps fund free local play, climate education and youth leadership, creating lasting behavioural change and healthier, more resilient neighbourhoods.
Innovation: What is different about your initiative compared to other solutions that are already out there? How is your approach original and innovative?
PowerPlay is innovative because it does not treat sport, climate, education and community energy as separate agendas. Rather than adding climate messaging to existing activities, it transforms the places where children already play into living demonstrations of climate resilience and local action. Unlike conventional sports programmes or classroom-based climate education, PowerPlay builds on Energy Garden's network of community gardens and rail-adjacent spaces to create connected landscapes where football, running and active play sit alongside biodiversity, food growing, renewable energy and outdoor learning. The Go! London co-design process has further shaped the model. Inspired by Hart's Ladder of Participation, children are not passive participants but co-designers, helping shape games, spaces and activities through workshops and ongoing stewardship. Their ideas have already inspired outdoor learning materials and playful climate interventions embedded within the landscape. Teachers are also partners, co-designing practical ways to embed outdoor learning and movement into school life. Our innovation is also financial and structural. Rather than relying indefinitely on grant funding, our ambition is to connect PowerPlay sites with community-owned renewable energy, creating a virtuous circle where local climate infrastructure helps fund free play, education and youth leadership. The result is more than a programme or playground. It is a replicable neighbourhood model where climate adaptation, physical activity & community ownership reinforce one another, creating healthier places & long-term behavioural change rooted in lived experience.
Roles and Responsibilities: Describe how responsibilities are shared among your team or partners.
PowerPlay is delivered through a place-based partnership model built on Energy Garden's long-standing relationships with schools, communities and local authorities. Energy Garden (Lead Partner): Leads programme management, safeguarding, monitoring and evaluation, youth engagement, co-design, biodiversity, greening and community energy integration. Our Education, Trees and Engagement teams facilitate workshops and steward the wider network of gardens and climate infrastructure. Schools & Teachers: Schools are co-creators, not just beneficiaries. They host sessions, shape activities with pupils, identify barriers to outdoor learning and work with Energy Garden to embed movement, climate learning and stewardship into everyday school life. Young People: Through workshops, surveys and Youth Climate Leader roles, children and young people co-design spaces, test games, gather biodiversity and climate data, support planting and become peer ambassadors and long-term stewards. Local Authorities & Community Partners: Borough partners help identify opportunities, connect schools and communities, align with local priorities and support the long-term development of climate-resilient neighbourhoods. PowerPlay already builds on Energy Garden's network of 20 sites and established relationships across Barnet, Brent, Hounslow, Islington and beyond, ensuring delivery is locally rooted, youth-led and designed for long-term sustainability rather than one-off intervention. As the programme grows, community-owned renewable energy partners will help create a sustainable funding model that keeps value and long-term stewardship within local neighbourhoods.
Viability and Scalability: How are you setting your organization up for success, and what is your plan to ensure operational sustainability of your solution and its impact? What are your ideas for scaling your initiative to the next level?
PowerPlay is built on Energy Garden's long-term place-based infrastructure model rather than short-term programming. Its sustainability rests on three pillars: trusted partnerships, diversified funding and community-owned infrastructure. Energy Garden already stewards more than 20 sites across London and has established relationships with schools, boroughs, rail partners and local communities. This allows PowerPlay to grow through existing places and partnerships rather than creating new structures. Energy Garden has already raised over £1.1m for community-owned solar projects and invested around £240k in feasibility and development. Our long-term ambition is to connect PowerPlay with local renewable energy so climate infrastructure helps fund free play, outdoor learning and youth leadership while reducing energy costs. The Go! London process has already strengthened partnerships with schools and boroughs and opened discussions around future community energy opportunities linked to PowerPlay. To scale, we will develop a replicable toolkit, grow borough and school partnerships, blend climate, education and sport funding, and leverage corporate and philanthropic investment. Our ambition is a London-wide network of climate-resilient play spaces where local energy, nature and young people power one another.
Upcoming Milestones: Please provide an overview of the milestones that are required for your initiative to come to fruition/ to grow.
### Upcoming Milestones (12–18 Months) Phase 1: Pilot Delivery & Co-Design (Months 1–3) * Confirm pilot schools and sites across existing Energy Garden locations * Complete youth and teacher co-design workshops * Finalise PowerPlay toolkit and learning resources * Establish baseline data on participation, biodiversity and site use Phase 2: Activation & Place Making (Months 4–8) * Deliver regular PowerPlay sessions combining movement, play and climate learning * Implement greening, depaving and biodiversity improvements where appropriate * Launch Youth Climate Leader groups * Embed outdoor learning materials and climate play interventions within sites Phase 3: Evaluation & Replication (Months 9–12) * Monitor participation, environmental outcomes and behaviour change * Publish evaluation and co-design findings * Refine the PowerPlay model and replication toolkit * Expand partnerships with schools and boroughs Parallel Milestone (12–18 Months): Community Energy * Progress community-owned solar and school energy opportunities * Develop long-term funding linked to renewable energy income * Reinvest surplus into free schools programming and neighbourhood stewardship The Go! London process has already accelerated partnerships with schools and boroughs, strengthened our co-design methodology and created a credible pathway to scaling PowerPlay into a London-wide network of climate-resilient play and learning spaces.
Capacity-Building Participation and Support Funding: If you were to make it as a finalist, you will be required to participate in an 8-week capacity building programme. If funding/ cost is a barrier to your participation, we may be able to offer up to 10,000 GBP of grant money available to support you. Please break down below, if it is the case, what costs you would incur and you would need covered. (Please note that there are restrictions on how the grant money may be used; please refer to the T&Cs for further details (LINK).
Energy Garden is currently operating within tight programme budgets, particularly due to the reduction in schools funding. Participation in the 8-week capacity building programme would require dedicated staff time that is not presently resourced. To participate meaningfully and ensure senior decision-making and delivery alignment, the following roles would need to attend core sessions and development workshops: Senior Sponsor / Director (strategic oversight & governance alignment) Education Lead (curriculum integration & schools partnership) Education Officer (delivery coordination) Energy Officer (solar integration & technical alignment) Engagement Officer (youth participation & safeguarding) Green Infrastructure Lead (site design & climate adaptation) Depending on participation estimated support required ( up to 10,000): • Staff time backfill / contribution to salaries for programme participation (approx. ~£8,000) • Travel and subsistence across London for in-person sessions (~£1,000) • Administrative and reporting support linked to programme outputs (~£1,000) This support would ensure we can engage fully in prototyping, evaluation and partnership development without compromising frontline youth and schools delivery. The capacity-building programme would directly strengthen our governance, measurement framework and scalability—accelerating PowerPlay's readiness for borough-wide and rail-linked expansion. The programme has already had a significant impact on PowerPlay. Through co-design with children, teachers and borough partners, we have substantially strengthened the initiative's methodology, partnerships and long-term sustainability model. Continued support would enable us to embed these learnings across the wider organisation while maintaining frontline delivery in schools and communities.
Now that you've explored what it truly means to put young people at the centre, how are you designing your initiative so that young people are genuine co-leaders and co-creators of the initiative?
This question has genuinely changed how we think about PowerPlay. When we entered the Go! London process, our instinct was to design a strong programme for young people. Through the capacity-building sessions and Hart's Ladder of Participation, we realised we needed to go further and design it with them. Over the past few weeks we have fundamentally changed our approach, running co-design workshops and surveys with children, teachers, parents and borough partners across Brent, Barnet, Hounslow and Islington. We deliberately asked questions with no predetermined answers: What makes a terrible playground? What makes a great one? If you could invent a climate game, what would it be? If your school generated solar income, how should it be spent? The responses have already changed the programme. Children consistently asked for more trees and wildlife, more active play, more imaginative spaces and more ownership. Teachers highlighted the need for practical support to confidently use outdoor spaces and integrate movement into everyday learning. Our ambition now is that children are not simply participants but co-designers, researchers, Youth Climate Leaders and long-term stewards of places they help create. Their ideas will shape activities, physical spaces, learning materials and future investment priorities, with ongoing feedback built into every site rather than treated as a one-off consultation. For our team, this represents a genuine shift from designing for communities to designing alongside them.
What partnerships and collaborations are most critical to delivering and sustaining your initiative and how are you building/ plan to build them?
PowerPlay succeeds because no single organisation can deliver climate resilience, youth engagement and healthier neighbourhoods alone. Its strength lies in building long-term partnerships around shared places and shared outcomes. Schools and teachers, are our closest delivery partners. They co-design activities with pupils, integrate outdoor learning into everyday practice and help create long-term relationships between young people and local green spaces. Local authorities, provide strategic alignment, connect schools and communities and help identify opportunities for greening, depaving and climate adaptation. Through the Go! London process, we have strengthened partnerships with Brent, Barnet, Hounslow and Islington and are already exploring future delivery opportunities together. Communities and young people, are active partners rather than beneficiaries. Through workshops, surveys and Youth Climate Leader roles they shape activities, spaces and stewardship, ensuring every site reflects local needs and aspirations. Energy and infrastructure partners, provide the long-term systems opportunity. Energy Garden has already raised more than £1.1m for community-owned solar and is working with schools and boroughs to explore how local renewable energy can support climate education, play and neighbourhood resilience. We see PowerPlay as a platform that connects schools, councils, communities and community energy around a common goal: creating healthier, climate-resilient neighbourhoods where young people are trusted as co-designers and long-term stewards of the places they help shape.
What are you measuring, how are you measuring it, and what does the data tell you so far (quantitative and qualitative)?
PowerPlay combines Energy Garden's established impact dashboard and monitoring systems with participatory evaluation, where children and communities help generate and interpret the data. Energy Garden already tracks workshop delivery, participant numbers, demographics, volunteering, biodiversity, education and youth progression across its London network through a live impact dashboard. In 2025 we delivered 72 school workshops reaching 1,888 pupils, 35 horticultural workshops and four Youth Training Programmes with 51 graduates and a 90% completion rate. Our biodiversity programme also uses community science and annual monitoring to measure environmental change. Through the Go! London refinement process we have added a co-design evidence base. Workshops and surveys with children, teachers, parents and borough partners have directly informed programme development. PowerPlay will measure: • Participation and repeat engagement • Hours of learning shifted from indoors to outdoors • Use of adjacent parks and green spaces • Youth leadership and volunteer progression • Teacher confidence in outdoor learning • Biodiversity and planting outcomes • Temperature differences and shade creation • Sense of place, sense of purpose and wellbeing • Age, gender and participation demographics • Climate awareness and behaviour change through surveys and reflection Children themselves will help collect biodiversity, temperature and site-use data as Youth Climate Leaders, making monitoring part of the learning experience rather than a separate exercise. Success will be measured not only by participation numbers but by whether schools spend more time learning outdoors, neighbourhoods become greener and healthier, and young people become long-term stewards of places they have helped shape. Existing organisational impact dashboard: https://energygardenmetric.org.uk/web2/
Long-term impact: what lasting systems change are you seeking to create and how will you know when it has happened?
Our long-term ambition is not simply to create better play spaces or deliver more climate education. It is to change the relationship between children, schools, communities and the places they share. In five to ten years, we want schools to see parks, gardens and community spaces as extensions of the classroom, with outdoor learning, movement and environmental stewardship embedded in everyday education rather than treated as occasional activities. We want children to grow up seeing themselves not only as users of public space but as its designers, caretakers and future leaders. We also want to demonstrate a new neighbourhood model where biodiversity, active play, climate adaptation and community-owned renewable energy reinforce one another. Rather than relying indefinitely on external grants, local climate infrastructure should generate long-term social value by supporting education, youth leadership and healthier communities. We will know systems change is happening when schools independently continue outdoor learning, when teachers confidently use local green spaces, when children return as volunteers and mentors, when communities actively care for shared places, and when local authorities increasingly design with young people rather than simply for them. If Energy Garden disappeared tomorrow, success would mean that the relationships, confidence, habits and stewardship remained. The gardens would still be cared for, the spaces would still be used, the solar would still generate community benefit, and young people would continue shaping the places they helped create. Energy Gardens vision for PowerPlay is that children become lifelong stewards of thriving neighbourhoods where people, place and power are connected.
Is there anything else you'd like to share with us that you were not able to share in previous questions?
The greatest value of this process has not been refining an application—it has been changing how we think. When we entered Go! London, we believed we had a strong concept. Over the past eight weeks we have been challenged to move beyond designing for young people and instead design alongside them. That shift has already changed our methodology, our partnerships and, ultimately, the programme itself. The co-design workshops and surveys have influenced everything from the activities we propose, to the physical design of spaces, to how we measure success and the role of teachers in enabling outdoor learning. They have also sparked new conversations with schools and boroughs about community-owned renewable energy, creating exciting opportunities to connect climate infrastructure directly with children's play and education. Perhaps the biggest lesson has been humility. We discovered that asking better questions often matters more than having the right answers. One afternoon, during a co-design workshop in a small SEN garden we had helped create, the rain began to fall. The adults instinctively huddled beneath the edge of a roof, protecting notebooks and clipboards. The children did the opposite. They ran out laughing, lifting their faces to the sky and catching raindrops on their tongues. When they returned, Yeliz, their teacher, quietly said, "They love being outside. They want to play here." The workshop resumed. The children spoke about bug-counting games, secret places, trees to climb, mud, shade, wildlife and spaces where they could play and learn at the same time. There was a brief moment when all of us facilitating simply looked at one another. The answers were already there. The interest was already there. Our role was not to invent it, but to make space for it to flourish. Whatever the outcome of this challenge, that lesson will remain embedded within Energy Garden and will influence how we design future programmes across our wider network. Thank you for creating a process that has genuinely improved both our project and our practice.
