Save Hackney's Albion Kids Show

For the past 33 years The Albion Kids Show has been providing play structures and activities for Hackney's families, erecting its famous pirate ship, teaching circus skills, face painting and providing soft play for the borough’s poorest residents. Albion Kids Show works through the year on estates where there may be no safe and supervised play for children.

The Albion Kids Show provides children and teenagers with opportunities to socialise and integrate in a safe environment in what can often be a borough segregated by social class.

Instead of supporting this charity, Hackney council has turned down funding applications and increased the charity's rent of its Hackney Wick depot from £3,000 to almost £20,000 a year. Despite still being booked regularly for events, the charity is therefore in severe danger of being forced to sell off its famous pirate ship and other equipment and close down.

The charity is well respected and appreciated by Hackney’s families, with many children who benefited from it now supporting the charity as adults - as play volunteers. Many of those, myself included, who played on the Albion Kids Show as children in Hackney now have children using the equipment. There is no real alternative for safe and free outdoor play provided by Hackney Town Council at the present time.

Albion Kids show is working hard to find alternative funding resources, and works on a skeletal staffing of just one paid full time employee but this extortionate hike in rent payments is making the future of the charity extremely unstable.

Past users of The Albion Kids Show and parents of children currently using this fantastic play service are asking Hackney Council to save the Kids Show.