Community orchard unveiled at Playland in Portsmouth city centre

A charity has unveiled a community orchard in Portsmouth providing a green space for young people.

A selection of fruit trees and plants were installed at Playland Artswork in Commercial Road, the site of a former amusement arcade which has been repurposed into a vibrant creative hub.

The Lord Mayor of Portsmouth, Cllr Gerald Vernon-Jackson, was on hand to cut the ribbon alongside young people involved in the project and members of Artswork, a national charity that helps to run the creative space.

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Anastasia Alexandru, creative producer at Playland Artswork, was delighted to have the new green space installed. She said: “This has been a massive inter-generational effort to open.

“This venue is fully-youth led so all decision are made by 16-30-year-olds and one of the big ambitions when we first inherited this old gambling arcade was that we wanted it to have a green space. We weren't sure how we were going to do that and then we all came together as a community group to make it happen.”

The space took a couple of weekends to put together with lots of watering required as temperatures soared in April.

Anastasia said: “It took a couple of Sunday’s to get it up and going but we are really excited to finally invite people to see it because a good tree is a good tree but a good tree shared is even better.”

The Playland Creative Hub opened near the end of last year as a collaboration between Artswork and Portsmouth Creates with the aim of making arts and culture more accessible across the city.

Anastasia said: “Playland is a brand new centre in Commercial Road. At Artswork we are working to empower young people to create change in their local community. It is a big effort to create an eco-system of creatives for the city.”

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The ground floor of the building is where young people supported by the charity take control. It provides a safe environment for them where they can influence the development of the space, experiment with creative ideas and shape its future.

Upstairs, Portsmouth Creates provides workspaces for micro and small creative businesses who in turn help support the youth programmes that are run downstairs.

More information on Playland Creative Hub and how to get involved can be found at https://artswork.org.uk/youth-led-projects/playland-portsmouth.