Get Outside has received recognition for a number of children’s play environment designs. We’re also actively engaged in writing publications that advocate for play spaces that maximise learning through engagement with the natural environment of Aotearoa New Zealand.
AWARDS
NZILA Pride of Place Awards 2015: Finalist in the category of Sustainable Design for The Experience Trail at Waitakere Transfer Station Learning Centre - By Jill Rice, Get Outside Ltd in association with Auckland Council This clever project integrates education and a vast range of sustainable initiatives to create a holistic and detailed approach to a great community space.
Ministry for the Environment Green Ribbon Awards 2015: Finalist in the two categories of Educational and community leadership and Public Sector leadership for The Experience Trail at Waitakere Transfer Station Learning Centre. By Jill Rice, Get Outside Ltd in association with Auckland Council.
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NZRA Outstanding Park Award 2010, Potter Children's Garden, Auckland Botanic Gardens, Manurewa, Auckland. By Jill Rice, Get Outside Ltd in association with Auckland Botanic Gardens staff.
Gold Award 2004, Mythological Maze of Maui children’s garden - The garden will have a permanent home at the Auckland Regional Botanic Gardens from next year. The Auckland Regional Council entry was one of only three outdoor exhibition gardens to win Gold at this year's Ellerslie Flower Show at the Botanic Gardens. Designed by Jill Rice, it is an interactive children's adventure garden inspired by the Maori legend of Maui meeting his parents. The maze takes visitors through lush native plants and high ponga walls, where the shady interior gives parents some cool, quiet time while their children explore the tunnels of the underworld.
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- Ellerslie Flower Show - Bronze Award 2001, A Kindy-Garden!
NZILA Pride of Place Awards, Institutional Landscape Design
- Distinction Award 2013, Tranquil Garden, Rangitoto College, East Coast Rd, Mairangi Bay, Auckland
- Bronze Award 2008, Redeveloped play space, Mt Eden Kindergarten, Auckland
ARTICLES
From Playgrounds to Play Gardens - Landscape Architecture New Zealand Autumn Issue. Designing for children – a New Zealand specialist in educational and play space design talks about the changes in philosophy towards this type of design throughout her career.
Click here for article.
Landscapes for Learning / Principals Today Magazine, Term 4 - 2015 - The successful collaboration between landscape architect Jill Rice of Get Outside Ltd and the staff of the BLENNZ Homai Campus has resulted in a new outdoor environment that delivers a wide variety of learning experiences for the blind and low vision students of the early childhood centre and school.
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Revisioning ‘waste’ as ‘resource’ Jill Rice of Get Outside specialises in the design of educational facilities for children. She worked with the Learning Centre staff at the Waitakere Transfer Station to design an experience trail that would excite children about the possibilities of recycling and repurposing discarded materials, and ultimately inspire them to re-vision ‘waste’ as ‘resource’.
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Jill Rice has been a landscape architect, garden designer, playground consultant and teacher for 20+ years, based in the Auckland region but delivering advice in her specialist area of design for children’s environments all over NZ. She is director and principal landscape architect of Get Outside Ltd, a small company of landscape designers in operation since 2004. Her passion is to design attractive and stimulating spaces for children so that they will want to get outside, enjoying their world, being extended in their experiences and learning to care for their environment.
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Fostering Creativity through the Outdoor Environment of your Centre - So how can we make environments that will help to foster a child’s innate creative ability? Researcher Edith Cobb in “The Ecology of Imagination in Childhood”, found that the inventiveness and imagination in all of the creative people she studied was rooted in their early experiences in nature. Click here for article.
PRESENTATIONS
A Designer’s perspective on Pedagogy
March 2015
Click here for presentation.
IPA World; International Play Association Conference, September 13-16, 2017 Calgary, Alberta, Canada; “Unleashing the Power of Play”; Presentation: New Zealand Early
Childhood Centre Outdoor Design: creative spaces that maximise learning through engagement with the natural environment
Click here for presentation.
