To kick off our 2017 funding, we are very grateful for the support ioby.org is lending us in matching the donations that come in online for this initiative, dollar-for-dollar up to $750.00* through a Partnerships for Parks matching grant, from now until January 15th, 2017. Help us win these matching grant dollars by making your gift before the end of the day on January 15th.   Thank you. 

Friends of Vesuvio Playground works to supplement the services NYC Parks is able to provide the park's visitors on a regular basis.  Our three programs directed by the local non profit for parks and playgrounds below 14th Street in Manhattan Green Below 14 that we are a founding member of are Greener and Cleaner, Playground STEM and Artside.

If for some reason, the cleaning level isn't at a level that makes our visitors comfortable, we find teams to provide more cleaning in coordination with NYC Parks.   In 2016, we paid the Association of Community Employment Programs for the Homeless (ACE) $8,205.24 to provide supplementary cleaning services to Vesuvio from May 9 - September 30th.  Right now, we have a great NYC Parks attendant at the park cleaning, but Vesuvio is not always staffed at this level so we need to have funds on hand to make sure that the trash is removed in a timely manner and the bathrooms are clean.

If there is not any programming scheduled for our park, we offer free programs.  As part of the Playground STEM programming, we have hosted a mobile STEM curated reading, drawing and puzzle space with the UniProject, a mobile museum with the SoHo Memory Project that included the sights and smells of SoHo of the 1970s and 1980s, City Growers with a Urban Farmer Workshop Series at Vesuvio including a visit with live honeybees and a honey tasting, Science Sarah with her engaging liquid nitrogen ice cream creations, magma and volcano demonstrations, released ladybugs, enjoyed bubble labs and the making of terrariums both large and take home sized, built robots led by the Brooklyn Robot Foundry, sent off parachutes into the sky with a homemade wind tunnel and played with the David Rockwell designed Imagination Playground Blocks we purchased for our playground.  We also hosted a weekly music series entitled Music and Books during the summer and host music at almost all our events. All of these programs have been funded by the contributions made to Friends of Vesuvio Playground.  The more funds we have to work with, the more programming we can provide.

This past October, Friends of Vesuvio Playground held its first temporary art exhibition on the ballcourts with the installation of renowned artist Isca Greenfield-Sanders four mural work entitled Playground Parachutes.  

A collaboration between Isca Greenfield-Sanders and over 200 children who contributed to the final work by making colored pencil marks on the 72 tiles of each mural under the support of teaching artists at the Children's Museum of the Arts, Playground Parachutes was a work of beauty to be enjoyed by not only visitors to our local park, but also by anyone walking by it.  One of the murals continues to delight anyone who sees it at the Hospital for Special Surgery where it went after its time at Vesuvio Playground.  This public art project was conceived of by the two local non profits Green Below 14 and smartspaces, collaborated upon by the team at the Children's Museum of the Arts and their many visitors to their public programs and funded by Friends of Vesuvio Playground.  We would love to provide more opportunity for public art installations at Vesuvio.

And public art isn't the only way we try to beautify our playground.  We planted climbing vines (honeysuckle and clematis) this year and a few survived long enough for us to enjoy their blooms. We also take on the responsibility of organizing the Spring and Fall It's My Park Days in partnership with Partnership for Parks and NYC Parks and plant the flowers they provide us on those days.  This year, we also organized painting the fences black.  This was the first time the fences had been painted in over 10 years.  

If infrastructure isn't working or needs to be replaced, we bring it to the attention of NYC Parks and our local council member and other city wide electeds as well as the community board.  Right now, we are working with NYC Parks and Council Member Corey Johnson's office to find a solution to the left over cement in the flagpole area and to consider what overall improvements can be made in the next few years at Vesuvio.

Our year end project partnering with Ioby.org this year is to raise overall funds to provide services and programming at Vesuvio Playground.  Please invest in your local park.  Going to the park brings us all together for fun learning and experiences. 

(Photos -Left, tulips provided by Partnerships for Parks and planted by Friend of V Playground. Right, Bubbleology)

(Photos - Left: NYC Parks Repairs. Right: SoHo Memory Project)