City playgrounds in spotlight with Playground of the Month promo

By Lethbridge Herald on May 28, 2025.

Alejandra Pulido-Guzman
Lethbridge Herald

The City of Lethbridge parks department has partnered with Lethbridge Plays to highlight various playgrounds across the city through an initiative called “Playground of the Month.” 

From May to October, each month a playground and its features will be on the spotlight to highlight its accessibility, design and inclusivity for members of the community to have an opportunity to learn about the different options available to them and their families. 

Ashley Walker, parks community co-ordinator, says the partnership with Lethbridge Plays works great with the initiative because their mandate prioritizes play with youth and children and therefore, they are a great fit for their playground of the month initiative. 

“Lethbridge has over 130 playgrounds, so there are many that people have never heard of or visited, so we are excited to highlight at least some of them,” says Walker. 

She explains that the way the initiative works is by having a selected family go to a specific playground and report back to them on their experience. 

“They will play, spend some time there and then report back with photos, testimonials, letting us know what they enjoyed the most, some perks of the park, general things to know, maybe some interesting facts, and then we will share that with the public,” says Walker. 

She says that even though the families are already selected, if other community members would like to provide feedback about a specific park or playground, they are more than welcome to do so by emailing parksvolunteer@lethbridge.ca and that will also be shared with the public through the city’s social media and lethbridgeplays.ca 

“This is in hopes that we can inspire more spontaneous, unstructured play highlighting the different parks and playgrounds we have in Lethbridge, while promoting community engagement and getting outside and playing,” says Walker. 

The parks selected to be highlighted are all accessible, inclusive, and suitable for all ages and abilities. 

“They all have rubber surfacing, a variety of amenities and play structures that are great for everyone to enjoy,” says Walker. 

And even though those are some of the criteria used to select the playgrounds involved in the initiative, Walker says they will need to continue it next year, because there are too many playgrounds to highlight within such a short period of time. 

“It was tough to choose from, but we selected some of our new playgrounds. We do have some playgrounds that we replace every year, so we started with some of those that have pretty cool features,” says Walker. 

May’s Playground of the Month is Chinook Lake Park, located at 265 Bluefox Blvd. North and it has been highlighted for being “perfect for climbing, swinging, exploring and relaxing.” This playground is easily accessible for wheelchair users and various sensory needs. 

With over 130 playgrounds around the city, Walker says most neighbourhoods have at least one playground. 

“We have larger regional larger parks within the city, and within neighbourhood we have what we call pocket parks, or neighbourhood playgrounds, so a lot of neighbourhoods have multiple playgrounds,” says Walker. 

She adds that not all playgrounds may be accessible with rubber surfacing, but there are some near by as they try to have them in as many areas of the city as possible, so families do not have to commute too far to be able to have access to a rubber surfaced playground.