AIJU Research Centre is a private, non-profit association aiming to boost research, development and technological innovation in children’s products and leisure such as playgrounds, toys and childcare articles, and related industry and services, thus constantly increasing competitiveness and improving the quality of products and environments for children leisure.

Located in the region known as Toy Valley in Alicante, AIJU is a centre of reference on children product safety for Spanish companies and public administrations. Founded in 1985, the number of associated companies currently achieves 450, most of them SMEs.

AIJU, only European centre entirely specialised in children’s products and leisure and with more than 30 years of experience, has a team of around 80 technicians who cover different specialism such as child and product safety, knowledge of children as consumer, materials and processes, advanced manufacturing, environment, pedagogy/product, design and product development, innovation, management and training. The main area of AIJU’s work is the safety of children’s products. As part of this work playgrounds as spaces and structures which allow the free play are one of our expert team’s activities.

Play England is the national organisation for children’s play in the UK. This organisation is a registered charity. Its work is funded by trust and foundation grants, central government funding and corporate and public sector.

Play England works in five main areas:

• Campaigns: Play England campaigns for all children and young people to have freedom and space to play throughout childhood. Play England works with national partners, corporate and other organisations with shared aims to raise awareness about the importance of play. This organisation lobbies government to make fundamental policy changes to protect and promote play, and encourage everyone who has an impact on the lives of children and young people to recognise and plan for children’s play.
• Projects: Play England develops projects which support and deliver its vision of a society where all children have the freedom and space to play throughout childhood. Play England works with national organisations, the government and the play sector to pioneer ways of improving access, increasing capacity and ensuring quality play opportunities for all children and young people in England.
• Training: Play England provides training packages and seminars designed to educate and empower all those whose work affects the lives of children and young people to consider, promote and plan for play. Currently training services are focusing on themes like Quality in play, Play in Schools and Children’s Services, Active Play in Early Years and Engaging communities in play.
• Services: Play England also provides technical support to help develop play spaces, child-friendly environments, play policies and strategies and play in schools and early years.
  – Policy and networks: Play England works to raise the profile and importance of children’s play with policy makers at national and local level.

H.Menezes Risk Vision is a private company with an extensive network at both national and international level. Risk Vision delivers consultancy and training services for designers, architects, landscapers, managers of public space and other professionals in municipalities and schools and industry in the field of risk assessment concerning the impact of choices or decisions in collective life.

It acknowledges the importance of built environments in social dynamics, a holistic approach to health and notes the evidence that measures at first adopted for the wellbeing of children are beneficial for physical and psychological safety of all generations and, in particular, for the most vulnerable people.

Risk Vision’s mission is to promote the creation of healthier, safer and more inclusive environments for children, families and the most vulnerable people in all generations through:

• A better understanding of the Human life cycle and its interaction with the environment.
• Anticipation of the possible impact of choices in community health and social life dynamics (positive or negative influence).
• Systematic and deliberate use of risk assessment as a support tool for decision taking and greater responsibility in personal choices.
• Critical and integrated view on regulations and standards concerning building, accessibility, health, safety and environment.
• Adoption of good practice based on knowledge, experience and risk assessment (during planning, design, building and post-occupation).

DA VSC HRAST is a non-profit organisation with a limited liability. Vukovar-Srijem County is the only founder and owner of the Agency. The Agency was founded and it operates with a purpose of economic development of the County. The Agency is approved and officially accredited Regional coordinator in charge of the Regional Development of the Republic of Croatia Act implementation in Vukovar-Srijem County. The Agency’s mission is the implementation of the County’s development strategy, improvement and coordination of existing development activities, and planning of development according to the Strategy of Development of the Republic of Croatia and EU demands.

The Agency’s vision is “to be a dynamic and respectable institution which fosters development of Vukovar-Srijem County and provides users and regional environment variety of useful services, contents and programs”. The Agency has a team of specialised people who support developing processes and contribute to Vukovar-Srijem County improvement. Specialised and quality human resources are the backbone of a long term region progress, and for continuous encouragement to enhance knowledge and skills through specialized education.

The University of Alicante (UA) was created in 1979. Today it educates and trains more than 36.000 students -2.500 of them are international students – and offers more than 80 undergraduate and 96 postgraduate programmes: consequently it is proportionally one of the fastest growing universities in Spain. The UA houses 227 research groups in Social and Legal Sciences, Experimental Sciences, Technological Sciences, Human Sciences, Education and Health Sciences and 15 Research Institutes. Thus, the UA employs over 2.400 researchers professors and has a complex management administration structure of 1.300 people.

The software and computing systems department (DLSI) is one of the biggest departments at the UA, employing more than 60 full-time teachers, more than 30 support teachers and 6 staff members. The DLSI belongs to the Polytechnic school and is devoted to research and training on the following topics: software engineering, software development and multimedia systems including e-learning managements systems. The Department of Software and Computing Systems has carried out several research activities in the fields of software development, usability and accessibility of web sites and web applications, and e-learning over the last 15 years.

The Faculty of Architecture provides education in the accredited bachelor, master and doctoral degree programme in Architecture and Urbanism and in Design. The Landscape & Architecture Studio is within the Department of Spatial Planning. Studio is a team of researchers and instructors with planning, architecture and landscape architecture from a variety of backgrounds. Common to all is the search for high quality of life, sustainable urban environments that harmonise human needs and ecological systems.

Interdisciplinary studio at the Faculty of architecture, CTU in Prague is the main partner of Child Friendly City initiative (Město přátelské k dětem). In their mutual projects they link the City, University and local children with a goal of “building a child friendly environments”. After a successful partnership with Prague 3 city district they are now continuing in cooperation with other districts of the capital city. Child Friendly City project has the aim to link Prague with the international Child Friendly City network.

Their projects are concentrating on mapping, evaluating as well as planning and designing urban public space with regards to children. We deal with city public space in general as well as with specific play areas, formal and informal. They work in close cooperation with children and they use varieties of methods to understand and implement their point of view. Individual professional experience of our team is in the field of architecture, urban planning and landscape architecture.

Is a starbust from a non-profit association, which was necessary due to legislation in Germany. ILLL concentrates different competences in international project work within a network of cooperation partners. ILLL is either project partner or coordinator for the projects. Moreover ILLL organises together with several conveyance centres regional informative meetings to distribute the possibilities of diverse support programs. Within K1-Projects ILLL serves as a receiving and delegating institution.

Study visits for qualified employees from early childhood education and vocational education are a focus in our current work. There is an enormous demand by qualified employees for those visits. ILLL concentrates demands, develops correlating projects with transnational partners and performs these projects. Currently we develop qualification offers for general education and adult education. Additionally to own employees, ILLL works together with a wide network of external experts who are integrated in special fields of activities. The international working network comprises partners in Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Turkey, Austria, Italy, Greek and Sweden.

One of the main activities of ILLL is to provide VET to students, immigrating employees, people working in kindergartens or municipalities, safety experts for playgrounds, etc. Also they give an overview about important rules concerning playground safety in Germany and provide the legal background of German Law, the German framework regarding play areas is a referent for other European countries.