The First Zadar Sensory Park for Children With Disabilities

It is a part of the Inclusive Play project implemented by the City of Zadar together with partners Latica Kindergarten (Zadar), the City of Mostar and the Centre for Children and Youth with Special Needs “Los Rosales” (Mostar). The project is co-financed within the Interreg IPA Cross-border Cooperation Programme Croatia - Bosnia and Herzegovina - Montenegro for the period from 2014 to 2020.

And What Kind Of Project Is It?

“On the surface of Vruljica Park of approximately 4,000 m2, a multisensory park will emerge as a new concept of a playground, where children and young people in a rounded environment achieve experiential, wholesome and social learning. It is a carefully considered space that, with its elements and content, enables learning through the senses. It encourages children and young people to move, develop attention and provides targeted and controlled stimulation of sensory systems using play as a basic learning medium. It is designed and enriched with horticultural content, plants that interact with the human senses. The conceptually inclusive area of the park needs to be further enriched with species of aromatic plants, shrubs and trees that target the senses. We can witness that the parks and playgrounds in the city are not adequately equipped or are characterized by architectural barriers that make them inaccessible, for example, for people with disabilities. The implementation of this project will address this problem, given that it will be without spatial barriers and will contain all the necessary elements and equipment adapted to all groups of children and youth, regardless of whether they have developmental disabilities. This creates an inclusive space that brings the community together and provides it with a place of gathering, development and education. Every piece of equipment, plant and texture has been deliberately brought into the space”, as explained by the City's Administrative Department for EU Funds.

They explained that such inclusive spaces would connect people with and without disabilities from an early age and they would have the opportunity to learn all about diversity and acceptance.

“This is one of the goals of this project, creating safe, inclusive, accessible, green public spaces for vulnerable groups of our society, which are built to ensure and create a peaceful, inclusive and participatory society and promote coexistence and social inclusion. The primary purpose of the future park is to improve the quality of life of children and young people with disabilities in the city and beyond, and to improve the standards of social services. The sensory park aims to create a landscape that can stimulate a diverse range of sensory stimuli and be used for the purpose of rehabilitation and recreation”, they emphasized.

The preparation of complete traffic documentation and all cost estimates has just been completed, both in terms of procurement of the execution of works, and procurement of the equipment delivery.

“By the end of this week or the beginning of next week, we will announce the procurement procedure for the works, and after that, in the interval of five to seven days, we will announce the procurement procedure for the delivery of equipment for the children's playground. If everything goes well, we hope that in the next two and a half months we will have concluded contracts and that we will start with the realization of the Vruljica Park. Upon completion of the works, for which we envisage a period of four months, after that phase, the delivery of equipment is expected. Depending on this dynamic, we expect to have a functional park in the next eight months, ready to be used by our fellow citizens”, informed us Mr Ante Ćurković, the Acting Head of the Administrative Department for EU Funds of the City of Zadar.

The value of the works is HRK 1,440,000 and the value of the equipment is defined near HRK 1.2 million.

“The Vruljica Park is very quickly becoming a very interesting and attractive location in the city of Zadar”, announced Ćurković. As part of the project, educational video material with a programme of sports and recreational exercises and exercises for the development of psychomotor skills suitable for children with disabilities will be produced, and it will be shown on interactive totems that will be placed in the multisensory Vruljica Park and Višnjik sports and recreation centre in Zadar.

But these are not all the interventions that will take place in this park. Namely, in Vruljica, work will soon begin on arranging rainwater through the Project of rain gardens - absorption tanks that will retain excess rainwater and release it in dry periods, thus enabling new horticultural design.

“Very soon, the works will start on two projects that we’ve named Rain Gardens, in Vruljica and the Kruno Krstić Elementary School. This is a project that the City of Zadar started a year ago, together with the Zadra Nova agency, which conducted a tender and selected a contractor. Tim d.o.o. will work in Vruljica for HRK 966,723 plus VAT. The works will start very soon”, announced the Head of the Administrative Department for Physical Planning and Construction of the City of Zadar, Mr Darko Kasap.

As for communal works in the park, it is planned to install public lighting as well as the construction of a dog park and a bocce ball court in the upper part of the park, and last year Nasadi performed sanitary remediation of the forest through the programme of the communal department”, informed us another City Head of Department for Utilities and Environmental Protection, Mr Robertino Dujela. Let us also remind you that last year an abandoned bocce ball court was restored with four basic groups of exercise equipment.