Find out all about our Picnic & Plays with the Bridgeton, Castlemilk and Cranhill Hubs!
These Blog posts show what we got up to and all the Storyplay-ing we did!

Porridge & Play Hubs is running throughout 2022 with this block being the 2nd of our exciting New Scots Integration Project!
Thank you to everyone who has partnered with us to provide such amazing experiences for our children & families, and to all our Storyplay Champions!

The Glasgow Science Centre is a fun attraction for all the family!! Filled with lots to discover and explore we thought it was a perfect place for Storyplay to happen. The Science Centre is made of three floors filled with hands on activities and discovery. From the Whacky Salon to Flight Simulations there is so much to explore and learn. You can also bring a picnic to enjoy! Sally and Sheena work at the Science Centre and help families gain access. There are lots of ways you can go to the Science Centre one being you can pay with tickets costs £12.50 for an adult or £10.50 for a child. You can also get a Passport to Science by speaking with the Science Centre which gets you access lots of times!

Families participating in Licketyspit projects can also speak to Rhianne on rhianne@licketyspit.com about arranging a free group trip for ALL of you to go together! How exciting is that?! Like our Picnic & Plays, a group gathering would be free entrance again thanks to Sally and Sheena!

Porridge & Play Cranhill learn all about Spaghettification!

Thursday 2nd June

‘I loved that we had a day out, usually I wouldn’t be able to do things like this on a bank holiday, it’s so much money but now my children can be like other children and get a whole experience.’ – Mum, Picnic & Play Cranhill

Can you see it? You can! The Cranhill Porridge & Play pals looked down through a window in space at the Glasgow Science Centre and met a Lost Space Traveller!

The Lost Space Traveller came from the darkest depths of space, ready to join us on our adventure with Sally and Sheena! But who was this wanderer of planets? We’ll take you back to the beginning.

Our adventure started with the discovery of a lift! But this wasn’t just any old lift, of course not! With Licketyspit and the power of our imaginations, even an ordinary lift can become a grand adventure.

‘Magic Lift, Magic Lift, take us where we want to go! Magic Lift, Magic Lift take us where we want to goooooooooooooooooo!’

The doors of the lift opened into the vastness of space, we could see planets and stars and lots of odd things. We had to space walk, with the Lost Space Traveller leading the way helping us make big steps in our moon boots. We looked down from a window in a spaceship onto Scotland, and marvelled at our height. Then the Lost Space Traveller held up a hand and said,

 ‘Look! Look at all the wonders of the universe! But do you know what I find the most fascinating?! Why this black hole. Let me explain!’

The Lost Space Traveller had us all gather around, taking a white ping pong ball and showing us how it goes around and around, spinning faster and faster into the black hole. As the ping pong ball reached the centre, the Lost Space Traveller showed us how it got super duper fast. Sooooo fast it became long and thin like a piece of spaghetti. This is called SPAGHETTIFICATION!!

Can you do it too? We spun around with our arms above our head and were sucked into another dimension!!

We came across and strange room that made us feel all dizzy. The Whacky Salon messed with your inner ear, making you feel all wobbly!!

 ‘It was my favourite part, the sliding room!’ – Shiva

 ‘I loved sliding around and exploring, I’ve never laughed so hard!’ – Genesis

 ‘I went in and then I just tilted and before I knew it I was on the floor laughing and laughing and laughing!’ – Ryan

Funky Chicken Fact:

When you spin around and stop, the reason you feel dizzy is because the fluid in your inner ear continues to slosh around for awhile, giving your brain the idea that you’re still spinning even when you aren’t. When the fluid stops moving, the dizziness goes away.

‘Another dimension’ is a phrase we use in stories to describe a universe that is “next” to our own, which requires magic or powerful technology to travel to and from!

We managed to all help one another and get to safety outside the Whacky Salon, we met our Lost Space Traveller again who helped us back to our Magic Lift. It was time to take it back to the Bothy to have a lovely picnic and do some Reflective Drawing.

What a day of exploration!!!!

Blog by Rhianne, Ruby, Taz, Andre, Sally, Sheena and Porridge & Play Cranhill

Porridge & Play Bridgeton learn all about Kinetic Energy!

Friday 17th June

‘It was really lovely the way they all sat together, just the families, it was nice to see they were all relaxing, eating and talking.’ – Sheena, Science Centre

What an exciting second trip to the Science Centre with our Bridgeton pals! After singing some of our favourite songs on the bus over, we arrived into the mirror land outside the spaceship-like building and headed straight for the Magic Lift.

‘Magic Lift, Magic Lift, take us where we want to go! Magic Lift, Magic Lift take us where we want to goooooooooooooooooo!’

We arrived at the Energy Level! We got ourselves all warmed up and ready to go with our good old friend Joe, who said ‘hello!’ and invited us into his factory to see how many buttons we could press! There were buttons, levers and dials all ready to help us channel energy into cars, planes, lights and more!

Malek turned a dial as fast as she could and made a rocket ship take off! Nur and Amira were spinning a disk to make some race cars go faster and faster and faster, we moved some levers to line up some solar panels. Latifa compared the charge of two different voltages and we watched an amazing display of Chain Reaction activity which caused a ping pong ball to fly everywhere whilst dozens of mousetraps all snapped shut! It was really, really cool!

Then we heard someone else saying hello… we walked over to see and we met Matilda! Matilda lived inside a hot air balloon but she was struggling to make it fly. She’d seen that we’d spent lots of time exploring energy and how it’s used and how it can be transferred and asked if we’d help create some flying energy for her balloon from our own kinetic energy by DANCING!

Funky Chicken Fact: The word kinetic comes from the Greek word kinesis which means motion. It’s all to do with movement!

Everyone got involved dancing as much as we could to pass the energy into the balloon and then we were off! We flew all the way through the Science Centre from one end to the other, back into The Bothy for our picnic!

The picnic was delicious and everyone was so excited. And no wonder! There was so much energy buzzing around the room we just couldn’t sit still!

Blog by

Sarah, Effie, Ruby, Shona, Sally, Sheena and Porridge & Play Bridegton!!

Porridge & Play Castlemilk explore Tai Chi at the Glasgow Science Centre!

Wednesday 29th June

‘That’s us all inside the elevator and that’s the buttons on the side and that’s us all going in’- Sarim, Reflective Drawing

What an exciting and magical time we had at the Science Centre with the Castlemilk Hub. It was so much fun going up and up in the Magic Lift, which took us exactly where we wanted to go.

We had a very joyful Funky Chicken and one of the highlights was Kevin asking us ‘Do you know the Cheeky Monkey?’ Everybody sang Jelly On His Head at the top of their voices and Hadir knew the song so well, she was finishing the lines for Andre! We needed to borrow a Magic Ball from Ameerah, luckily she had it with her, and we ended up in a very exciting place that was full of power and energy!

We saw an amazing explosion little balls in the Chain Reaction exhibit! Then we started to lose some power so we needed to create as much energy as we could by doing star jumps and dancing and moving around to bring the energy back. We had so much energy we were able to grab our balloons and fly off up into the sky!

We ended up learning a bit about how marvellous the sun is too, and how it provides energy for us to use. Just before we went back in the Magic Lift, we were lucky to discover  a new game from Sally & Sheena called Energy Tai Chi – it had a great story of the food cycle and we all enjoyed learning the new moves.

Funky Chicken Fact: Tai chi is an internal Chinese martial art practiced for defence training, health benefits, and meditation.

We were so hungry after using up all of that wonderful energy that we needed to stock up on some tasty food! Luckily we had an extra treat of Chocolate muffins and unicorn and monster cakes for our final Picnic & Play. The art gallery was full of fabulous creativity and there were so many wonderful drawings !

Abu drew ‘a rainbow and it went round round round like an eye and a paper aeroplane and a connecting gold machine.’  

Freya drew Rhianne

Arwa drew ‘the magic ball and all the energy!’

Areeb showed us his drawing and told us, “So that’s the solar panel and that’s me in it and that’s the energy room”.

Ameerah & Abu drew a joint picture bursting with funny monster cakes, a coin that makes the word, a cookie world, cookies, a big striped egg and a jellyfish!

Celine’s picture showed us how busy it was with so many people at The Science Centre!

A fine collection of artworks indeed and after all that everyone still had time to explore some more! A great day of discovery and I think it’s fair to say we all used a good amount of energy!

Blog by

Sarah, Rhianne, Andre, Sally, Sheena and the Castlemilk Pals!

Thanks to our Hub partners, funders and Picnic & Play partners!

Porridge & Play Hubs Castlemilk, Cranhill & Bridgeton is a New Scots Integration Project by Licketyspit, in collaboration with the Indigo Group, Cranhill Development Trust & Church House.

For Picnic & Play we have partnered with Castlemilk Park, Tollcross Park, The Hunterian Museum, The Science Centre, Glasgow Green, Glasgow Women’s Library, Forth & Clyde Canal Boat Society, the Riverside Museum, the Tallship, Balloch Castle Country Park and Dream Machine! We’d like to say a big THANK YOU to all our partners for helping us provide such an amazing programme for all our families.