Playing for a Fairer Future
Thanks to National Lottery players, we at the Institute of Imagination have received almost £2.5 million of life-changing funding over five years from The National Lottery Community Fund. The funding will be used to empower 50,000 children across five UK regions to design their own futures through creative play within our new programme, Playing For a Fairer Future.
This programme acts as a major national scaling opportunity for the LEGO Group’s Power of Play Programme which is co-led by the Institute of Imagination, and ensures these transformative experiences are deeply embedded within the fabric of their local communities, while building the robust longitudinal evidence needed to influence national policy on educational equity. This comes from The UK Fund, one of The National Lottery Community Fund’s significant commitments as part of its 2023-2030 strategy, ‘It starts with community’, funding projects that help children and young people thrive – one of the funder’s four key missions.
Why it matters
Children's voices are too often left out of the decisions that shape their lives.
Rising child poverty, mental health challenges and school disengagement are not abstract statistics — they are the daily reality for millions of children across the UK. Yet those children are rarely given a genuine seat at the table.
Through imaginative play, children express what they really care about. They develop creativity, collaboration, communication and resilience — the skills that matter most for school, work and life. And they begin to understand that their ideas have weight.
50,000+
Children reached
BY 2031
28,000
Children parents & carers engaged
UK locations across the country
5
£2.46m
National Lottery funding
Learning Through Play
Play is central to how children make sense of the world. Our approach turns everyday play into powerful learning.
Children as co-creators
Children don't just participate. They help design the programme, set the agenda, and lead change in their communities.
Whole-community change
We work with children, parents, teachers and community leaders together
Evidence-based policy
We're building longitudinal evidence showing how play changes children's life prospects, and making the case for it to be embedded nationally.
We've already seen what play can do.
100% of children showed increased creative thinking
+47% increase in problem-solving skills
92% of caregivers felt confident using play to support learning
+53% growth in making and practical skills
92% increase in teachers' creative thinking
17,600+ children reached in Tower Hamlets alone
Before we went UK-wide, we co-led the Power of Play programme with the LEGO Group with a consortium of partners, Young V&A, Easy Peasy, Save the Children and Ambition Aspire Achieve. We worked in Tower Hamlets, one of the UK's most deprived boroughs, reaching over 17,600 children and 1,071 educators. The results were striking.
From London to Doncaster to Belfast and growing.
We're building in communities that need it most, working with trusted local partners who know their neighbourhoods.
Tower Hamlets
London
Where it all began. Home to our original Power of Play programme with the LEGO Group and consortium of partners, now a centre for learning and best-practice sharing.
Doncaster
South Yorkshire
Partnering with Harrison College, training FE students to become play mentors in local primary schools and local community.
West Belfast
Northern Ireland
Working with Blackie River Community Groups and Sure Start to reach 1,000 families with playful home learning tools.
Two more locations
From Year 3
We'll expand to two further communities across the UK. Could yours be next?
This programme belongs to communities. Join us.
For families
Find out if Playing for a Fairer Future is coming to your area, and how to get involved in a Day of Play.
For educators
Access our tools, workshops and Learning Network. Bring play-based learning into your school or setting.
For partners & policymakers
Bring the programme to your community, or join the policy conversation. We'd love to hear from you.