Guest post by Tom Goodhand.
It’s hard being a parent sometimes. And I’m not talking about the sleepless nights and early mornings. What I’m referring to is finding stuff to do and places to go to with your child.
I’m the father of a 14 month -old boy. When the weather’s fine, looking after him is a real joy. We go to our nearest park – Meanwood Park, surely the most underrated park in Leeds – and we play on swings, slides and roundabouts, we point at ducks, look astonished at the beck and all its little waterfalls, point at chickens, and then watch in awe at the magnificence of trees as they tower over us.
If we’re really lucky we’ll see a double-decker bus on our way home too. What a trip out.
Things get a little trickier when the weather turns, though. For those without children, little ‘uns do not like to be cooped up at home all day. They need stimulation, they need new things to see, smell, touch and hear. They need variety. Sure, stacking some colourful plastic cups on top of each other may entertain my boy for, I don’t know, 45 minutes, but it won’t last all day.
When it comes to a change of scene, it gets tricky. Leeds is not lacking in baby/child-friendly options, but there is a distinct lack of choice when it comes to stuff to do for free. Here are some of the things you can do.
1) Visit one of Leeds’ many museums on the outskirts of town. Most of the museums in Leeds have areas for kids to play in. By and large though, they’re quite small and can be pretty over-crowded. Also, if there are two of you and a baby, costs mount up. Say, for example, you go to Armley Mills Industrial Museum with your baby. He’ll be free, because you never have to pay for really small ones, but adults pay £3.30 each. A very reasonable price if you’re doing the full two to three hour tour of the museum, but a huge amount if you’re going to have to speed through certain bits because your little one gets upset that he can’t bash stuff about and you only have a short window of time before you have to stop for a snack/lunch.
2) There are, of course, free museums in Leeds city centre. Both Leeds City Museum and Leeds Art Gallery have child-friendly spaces, and Toddler Town at Leeds City Museum is pretty great, if small. The problem is getting into town. You could drive in and pay £5 at least to park, or, thanks to the wonderful First Buses, shell out almost four quid each to get a bus into town and back.
3) Go to a library. Before I had a baby I used to love going to the libraries in Leeds, and they’re actually pretty great for kids. They have shelf upon shelf of kids’ books – all at a level where they can pick their own reading material. They have those toys with big colourful beads on long windy wires. They have these awesome chairs that are like an upright ellipse. They’re brill. But, I can’t quite bring myself to be noisy with my boy in a library. It feels wrong. Especially when I know I used to come to the library for a quiet place to sit down and relax. I wouldn’t have wanted to hear kids having fun then, so it feels a bit hypocritical to start making noise now.
4) Soft play. These places are expensive. So expensive that it puts me off setting foot in them.
5) Swimming. A great indoor activity for kids. But, it’s over £4 per adult, and a boy of 14 months will only really be up for 30 minutes or so before it starts to tire him out. It works out at around £16 per hour for two of you to going swimming.
So what do I want? Well, to be honest, I’m not really sure. Some really great kids’ spaces for pre-toddlers and young toddlers in museums would be a start. I wouldn’t mind handing over huge sums of money for a bus when I’m going to a place where I knew we could entertain our boy for hours.
Take Newcastle as an example. They have two brilliant city centre museums called The Hancock and the Laing Art Gallery. The Hancock is a great museum aimed at children. Not like Leeds Museum where there is kid-friendly stuff, but an entire children-focussed museum, with a great play area, huge stuffed animals that aren’t kept behind glass cases, displays using lights, noises and videos and dinosaur skeletons. It makes Leeds City Museum look horribly stuffy. The Laing is an art gallery. As a gallery I wasn’t particularly enamoured (there’s currently a giant painting of Newcastle commissioned by Sting which is just dire), but they have a huge space dedicated for children, with dressing up things, bean bags, toys, blocks, art materials, screens, noises and child-proof gates which mean you don’t have to worry what they’re up to the whole time.
Eureka in Halifax is another brilliant museum that isn’t just child-friendly, but is for children, two very different things. Somewhere where, yes, they can learn, but they can also play, where everything is at their eye-level, not kept behind glass classes, and exhibits are understandable and interactive. Leeds City Museum seems like an attempt to do that, but it has perhaps tried to do too much and appeal to too many different audiences and ages.
And while we’re discussing spaces for children, a space that would let you bring your own food and drink would be just splendid. There’s nowhere where you can take a pack-up and eat it indoors in Leeds – another necessity when you have little kids, unless you want to spend a fortune on brews and slices of cake.
Tom Goodhand is a Leeds-based freelance writer, former editor of Leeds Guide and writes dad-blog Father & Son.
I agree with this, mostly. Whenever discussions like this come up, much like the one about Leeds needing more parks, I feel I have to say that Leeds is a pretty small city, in city centre terms. I’d say the area frequented by most people on a weekend could be crossed on foot in 15 minutes (The Market to Millennium Square). But Leeds goes much further – take Roundhay Park and Canal Gardens?
Leeds has also messed up a few massive opportunities. Clarance Dock could have been amazing, but instead it’s a ghost town. Still, the docks are nice and kids can look at all the boats, although more could have been done with this to attract families, aside from the Royal Armouries.
Granary Wharf is a great example of what CD could have been. Sure it has the advantage of it’s location but it’s beautiful (I think so).
I really hope the Brewery Site isn’t cocked up but it’s looking that way. What could have been (at least temporarily) a mass of green space and a bit of parking has turned into a tiny bit of green space and more parking then we will ever need for that part of town (apparently it will serve the Trinity shopping centre, because Leeds needs more shopping, apparently).
I wonder what it would cost to put some swings and kids things in the Merrion Gardens by The Lounge pub? Plenty of space there, I bet it would be packed on a weekend.
What I’m trying to say is that Leeds does well for a small city and there’s plenty of stuff a little further afield. Unfortunately there have also been a host of missed opportunities.
Tom, sometimes you have to shell out with kids.
Do Eureka still do that deal where you pay once and then you get in free for the rest of the year? If so that’s good value, but I should warn other parents the cafe there is rubbish and way overpriced, but you can bring a packed lunch.
On another note I think the kids space in the City Art Gallery is utterly dreadful and a wasted opportunity.
I live outside Leeds and it never occurs to me to come into Leeds city Centre with my seven year old…for a city this size the kids provision is pish poor.