Coreboard mission milestone

Emma Peddey’s mission to transform the playground from a place of frustration into a place of connection for people with communication barriers has reached another milestone.

Installed by the Narrogin Lions Club, Peddey’s coreboards can now be found at four more locations throughout the town, including the Lions park, BMX park, Garfield St, Sydney Hall Way and soon the skate park.

Peddey’sCoreboards for Community Inclusion involves the installation of bright, bold pictorial boards which allow people with communication difficulties to construct sentences and communicate through pointing at the pictures representing various nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verbs.

The program took off after Narrogin’s first Pitch and Plate event, where it received $988 in cash donations as well as further funding from private donors including the De Gruchys, Nottles, Kristie Pancini and Accessibility WA.

“We were aiming for one board when we went to the pitch and plate, but we ended up with enough funding to get five which was great,” Ms Peddey said.

The Narrogin woman said it had been a joy to see the project gain traction, promote inclusion and receive a positive response from the wider community.

“People are starting to see that it’s not just children with verbal communication barriers who benefit from the signs,” she said.

“My son has a severe speech delay so the boards obviously mean his mates can communicate with him on the playground, but we have also seen people who have had strokes or other neurological conditions that affect their speech now able to take their grandkids to the park and communicate with them where they before couldn’t. Even tourists who have English as a second language can use the signage to communicate. There are plenty of other places around town which could benefit from having clear visual signage.”

At last night’s Narrogin’s Pitch and Plate crowd funding event, Ms Peddey was set to reveal that the initiative had received community chest funding, meaning even more boards would be installed across town in the coming months.