Talacre Community Sports Centre has served the Gospel Oak community in London since 1975 and as the entire leisure industry and landscape has changed, so has the demand for family-focused amenities within it’s space.
When the centre’s operator, GLL, needed a soft play installation that could genuinely serve every child walking through the door, from toddlers to teenagers, The Play Company was appointed to design, manufacture, and install the solution from the ground up.
GLL (operating as Better Leisure) is one of the UK’s largest charitable social enterprises and leisure operators, managing over 400 leisure facilities across the country on behalf of local authorities and public sector partners. Their estate includes leisure centres, swimming pools, gyms, and community sports facilities, with family play forming an important part of their community offer.
Talacre Community Sports Centre is a flagship community facility in the London Borough of Camden, offering a wide range of sporting and recreational activities. As part of GLL’s ongoing commitment to accessible, high-quality family leisure, the centre required a soft play installation that could meet the needs of a diverse, high-footfall community audience, including young children, primary-age children, and everything in between.
Leisure centres serve broad communities. The families visiting Talacre range from parents with babies in arms to older children who need genuinely challenging, high-energy physical play. So, housing both groups in the same soft play environment without careful thinking creates a real operational and safety headache, and often leads to one group dominating the space at the expense of the other.
GLL also had a clear brand direction for the space. Their junior soft play areas follow a bugs-and-nature theme, which needed to be reflected authentically throughout, not bolted on as an afterthought, but woven into the structure’s identity.
At the same time, the installation needed to make full use of the room. A standard-footprint structure would have left usable overhead space untouched. This brief called for a structure that genuinely filled the height of the room.
We did, what we do best, at The Play Company we bespoke a multi-level soft play frame that rises to fill the full height of the available space at Talacre. This approach does two things at once: it creates a genuinely impressive, destination-worthy play structure that draws families in, and it maximises the commercial value of the floor space by layering multiple play experiences vertically rather than spreading them across a larger footprint.
For leisure centres working with fixed room dimensions ( as most do ), this approach to height maximisation is often the most efficient way to increase play capacity and dwell time without requiring additional square footage on the ground.
The structure follows GLL’s established junior soft play aesthetic: a bugs and nature theme that creates an immersive, visually cohesive environment. Illustrated characters, themed panels, and nature-inspired colour palettes run throughout the frame, giving the installation a clear identity that fits seamlessly within GLL’s wider brand approach to junior leisure.
This kind of operator-specific theming is something The Play Company specialises in. Whether working to an existing brand standard or helping leisure operators develop a new theme from scratch, our design team integrates visual identity directly into the structural design, not as decoration applied afterwards, but as a core part of what makes the space feel intentional and engaging.
Positioned on the uppermost level of the structure, a mini football pitch gives older children a destination to aim for and a genuinely active space to enjoy once they get there. Reaching the top requires navigating the climbing and traversal elements below, which means the football pitch functions as both an incentive and a reward for the physical effort of the climb.
This kind of activity integration is particularly well-suited to leisure centres, where sport and physical activity sit at the heart of the offer. Connecting soft play to the language of sport ( even at its scaled-down, playful format ) reinforces the leisure centre’s identity of community-focused play, and keeps older children engaged in a way that purely passive play structures cannot.
Multiple slides serve the structure from different exit points across the levels, ensuring strong throughput and giving children repeated incentives to climb back up. Slide variety ( in their height, length, and type ) means repeat visits feel different, and the structure sustains interest over time. For leisure centre operators, that translates directly into longer dwell times and a stronger case for membership and return visits.
One of the most operationally significant features of the Talacre installation is the dedicated toddler and baby zone, this fully enclosed area accessed via its own entry point, entirely separate from the main structure.
Rather than attempting to cordon off a corner of a shared space, the toddler area at Talacre is genuinely self-contained. Parents and carers enter from a different point, the physical environment is scaled and designed for under-3s, and the older age group ( 5–13 ) using the main structure never intersects with the youngest visitors.
This separation is not just a safety consideration, although it is that. It is also a significant improvement to the experience for both groups. Parents of toddlers can supervise in a calm, appropriately paced environment. Older children can play freely and energetically without adults needing to moderate their activity in the same space. Both groups get the experience they came for.
For leisure centre operators managing high-volume family sessions, this design approach significantly reduces the operational complexity of running mixed-age soft play.
The completed installation at Talacre Community Sports Centre delivers a multi-use, age-appropriate indoor play environment that works for the full breadth of GLL’s family visitors. The structure:
If you’re looking for a trusted partner that can maximise profit for your indoor play space, get in touch and let us show you how you can thrive.
Download our latest brochure, project case studies and compliance guide before you go.
