Inside Unlimited Play’s Mission to Make sure ‘No Child is left on the sidelines’ at the playground
Take a gander at the homepage of Unlimited Play’s website and you’ll see the nonprofit organization makes an unequivocal proclamation: “At our playgrounds, no child is left on the sidelines.” Dig deeper and you’ll notice Unlimited Play’s philosophy that “no matter their physical or cognitive abilities, [children deserve] to feel welcome and experience the joy of play without barriers.” Make no mistake, adaptive playgrounds are shining examples of assistive technologies existing, quite literally, in the real world.
Unlimited Play’s origin story begins with a 3-year-old boy named Zachary Blakemore. He lived with a rare genetic condition known as Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease, or PMD, which required him to use a wheelchair. Blakemore, like any other kid, relished visiting the playground—the problem, however, was it was unbuilt for his needs. It was inaccessible. These experiences pushed Blakemore’s mom, Natalie Mackey, to start Unlimited Play in 2003. Four years and $750,000 later, the first inclusive space, aptly named Zachary’s Playground, opened in Lake Saint Louis, Missouri on April 21, 2007.
As Mackey told me recently, she never imagined Unlimited Play becoming a thing.
“We had reporters there that day [of Zachary Playground’s opening] and they asked me if I would continue the work into the future. I said, ‘Not a chance.’ It was four years of fundraising and I was excited to let other people follow what we had done,” she said. “But we’re talking today because families like mine and cities more and more have been calling to ask we help and continue the journey of providing inclusive play for everyone. We have over 100 projects from east coast to west coast, even into Canada. Every day, we’re contacted by families looking for ways to have their children play.”
It’s been over two decades now Mackey has served as the nonprofit’s founder and chief executive officer. She explained she’s worked with "so many families” while noting she and her team are “continually learning” along the way. Mackey shared an anecdote on a current project involving a boy named Teddy, who has dwarfism. Typical playgrounds, she told me, are inaccessible to him, adding Unlimited Play’s experience of working on his project has proven enlightening. “[It’s] taught us things about that population and how to better design playgrounds for individuals with dwarfism,” Mackey said.
When asked what exactly constitutes an adaptive and inclusive playground, Mackey said there are several elements. A lot of the design work is topographical, what with using soft turf on the ground, as well as ensuring wheelchair access by way of ramps and sidewalks. Similarly, communication boards are crucial for interaction, and the use of large type and bold colors can be beneficial for those with low vision. It’s quite the challenge, Mackey went on to tell me, to incorporate all these things while also bearing in mind typically developing children likely want to play along too. Everybody, she added, has their own needs and tolerances regardless of one’s ability level(s).
Of course, Unlimited Play constructing playgrounds isn’t like Apple constructing Apple Park. Unlike Apple, Mackey and Unlimited Play has not unlimited funds with which to procure everything needed to build these playgrounds. They need help, which Mackey and team found in the folks at Little Tikes Commercial. The subsidiary, a scaled-up offshoot of the children’s products company, manufacturers playground equipment—including inclusive ones like Zachary’s Playground. According to Mackey, Unlimited Play’s partnership with Little Tikes Commercial means her organization gains the ability to train “about 120 representatives” on the importance of inclusive play and, more pointedly, the ABCs of building accessible play-based environments. After said training, Mackey told me the trainees go out and effectively act as ambassadors to Unlimited Play; this enables the nonprofit to have “many more feet on the ground” doing this evangelism. Mackey’s role involves reporting to the Little Tikes team on the feedback she’s heard from communities “then work together to create new products,” she said.
To work with a well-known entity as Little Tikes is game-changing for Unlimited Play.
“I never imagined that any big company would care,” Mackey said. “Especially when my son was little, life felt very isolating… like nobody understood what I was going through and what I was desperately wanting to provide for my child. For Little Tikes Commercial to say, ‘We see you, we understand, and we want to be part of this’ was really exciting and meaningful for me. For a small nonprofit, it helps give credibility to our mission to say we have such a successful corporation believe in us and backing Unlimited Play.”
Looking towards the future, Mackey was succinct in sharing she hopes to continue pushing forward in fulfilling her organization’s mission. Ideally, she hopes playground standards are raised on a national level so as to reflect the needs of disabled children and their families. Mackey hopes this work raises enough awareness that it doesn’t always take a small-time nonprofit like Unlimited Play to do all the heavy lifting. More parks and recreation staffers should know kids like Zachary deserve open, welcoming, and accommodating spaces in which to play—the problem is most don’t recognize the barriers present in the majority of neighborhood playgrounds across America today.
Zachary died in September 2021, but his legacy lives on in his mom and her mission.
“I would say it’s important to tell people we must be creating environments where everyone can thrive at their very best,” Mackey said when asked to distill Unlimited Play’s raison d’être. “We grow as communities and grow as a nation. My son had a hard time doing typical things, but what he brought was so much. He brought creating environments where we all feel like we belong [and] we can all be our best… we only, as communities and nations, get better by doing that. Play, I truly believe, is the one language we all speak. It’s the international language we all spoke to begin with and how we learn from each other. We should care about creating environments that make that language possible for us to understand, grow, and develop even better.”
