Save Park Palace Ponies Community Riding School

Aim: Park Palace Ponies Community Riding Centre can stay open over summer but, still needs saving longer term!

Park Palace Ponies: Our Emergency Appeal - £300,000 target

Registered charity number: 1210233

After eight incredible years bringing ponies into the heart of Liverpool, we’re sharing a message we never imagined we’d have to write:

Park Palace Ponies was due to be closing on 28th June 2025 — unless we secured urgent support.

Your amazing generosity the past few weeks means that Park Palace Ponies can now stay open over Summer. However we are not saved and still need support to raise funds to ensure our long term future.

We are a small, not-for-profit riding school based in Toxteth, offering something truly special: the chance for city children to ride and care for ponies, often for the first time in their lives. In an area where such opportunities are rare, Park Palace Ponies provides something magical, memorable, and meaningful.

Despite the dedication of our hardworking team, rising costs have pushed us into a funding crisis. In September 2024, we were granted charity status — a milestone that should have marked a hopeful new chapter. Instead, we now face the heartbreaking prospect of closure.

But we’re not giving up — and we need your help.

We’re launching an emergency appeal to save Park Palace Ponies. Your support can help us continue:

Every donation helps feed and care for our ponies. We can engage more with our local community offering pony therapy and riding lessons to our partners in the community and beyond.

Every share spreads the word to more potential supporters.

Every connection — to an individual, business, or organisation — could open the door to sponsorship or a life-saving partnership.

We’ve seen the difference this place makes: confidence growing, lives changing, children beaming with joy. Park Palace Ponies is more than just a riding school — it's a lifeline, a learning space, a little bit of magic in the city.

This is our last, heartfelt call to action. Please stand with us. Together, we can keep this dream alive.

This is our city! We are L8!

If you would like to speak with us about the campaign or help us in some way please contact the Trustees on: +44 (0)7946392487 

Who we are...

Park Palace Ponies is a community riding school in the heart of Liverpool and offers low cost (unless we have received funding to contribute towards the cost of the sessions) equine education and pony riding lessons in an inclusive environment, as well as volunteering opportunities for those keen to learn about and care for horses and ponies.

Park Palace Ponies serves around 5,200 children per year plus 500 in the pop up summer school held at Aintree Racecourse in 2024 which was kindly funded by the Trevor Hemmings Foundation. This offered children the opportunity to experience their first pony ride for free in the Parade Ring, an iconic Liverpool location.

Including their parents or guardians of children, volunteers and other people who use us we estimate a further 11,400 experience the benefits of our stables.

We were granted charitable status in September 2024 and are supported by a team of voluntary trustees. Our charitable objectives include “To provide or assist in the provision of horse and pony riding and associated skills (e.g. pony care and stable management) in the interests of social welfare for recreation or other leisure time occupation of individuals who have charitable needs of such facilities by reason of their youth, age, infirmity, disability, financial hardship or social circumstances with the object of improving their conditions of life in the city of Liverpool and its surrounding area.”

Currently riding tuition is available only to children between 5-10 years old due to the size of the ponies. In future we hope to expand this offering. Pony education and wellbeing sessions are open to all ages and abilities. Park Palace Ponies is open 5 days a week to all (due to funding) in a safe environment, with qualified staff, improving people's mental health and allowing all access to the equine world. We would like to open for 7 days a week in future.

Groups or individuals can learn equine management skills such as grooming, feeding and general stable management, tack maintenance, exercising the ponies and walking them to the grazing field at the local allotments which are a few minutes’ walk away from Park Palace Ponies. To see the ponies out in the community brings people joy, knowing they live amongst them is so special.

Given the significant reduction in funding of youth services locally and nationally, organisations such as Park Palace Ponies become all the more important in underserved areas.

We aim to remove barriers to what has traditionally been an activity for the more fortunate members of society, we are for everyone.

What we do...

Park Palace Ponies reaches communities who ordinarily would not interact with equines or any animals. Due to social circumstances, economic hardship or location, many have not seen a pony before and would not get the opportunity to do so and to learn about ponies and obtain the associated benefits to individual’s physical and mental health and wellbeing if it were not for Park Palace Ponies. It also provides a safe space for these communities to socialise and interact with each other, many of the children in some groups are home schooled so have limited interaction with others on a daily basis. 

A lot of these children have not had any contact with animals before and have no pets so they are completely new to animal experiences, and it is beneficial for them to understand how interaction with horse and ponies can improve both physical and mental health. Working with animals can be an emotional bridge for children who are having difficulties coping with people.

Park Palace Ponies has an education area on site which is used for small groups of all ages and abilities on their visits to educate on pony care and stable management. These groups include school children from local schools, SEND schools, Alder Hey Children’s Hospital Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), local community groups.

Supporting the work at Park Palace Ponies provides our volunteers, who include vulnerable adults, young people and disabled individuals, with a sense of responsibility and self-worth. The volunteers and staff also have a safe space to build their social skills through teamwork, all working towards the same goal of looking after the animals.

The activities we offer provide a sense of responsibility and self-worth for our volunteers, who include young people, vulnerable adults, disabled individuals, older adults and those not in permanent work.

Research...

Horse and pony interaction can be calming and provide a sense of purpose (spending time with animals is believed to raise levels of the mood enhancing hormone serotonin) which benefits an individual’s wellbeing. The physical nature of pony care and stable management is also beneficial to health.

Horse and pony riding improves physical and cardiovascular health and can lower blood pressure, as can spending time with animals and supporting with their care. It is proven that equine interaction improves mental health, confidence and can reduce anxiety, PTSD, anger and stress in individuals.

As the child progresses in their horse riding skills they develop self-confidence and self-assurance. It involves empathy, kindness and treating others with a gentle hand as well as patience and responsibility while dealing with a horse or pony.

Hear from our team...

“I’m Bella, I’m 17 years old and I started volunteering at Park Palace Ponies in 2022, at the age of 14. Working at PPP has given me plenty of opportunities that I will forever be grateful for such as, landing my first job, working at Aintree racecourse and building a close relationship with our ponies.
As a girl who grew up in the Toxteth area, I had always dreamt of being involved with ponies but it always felt so unrealistic, which is why Park Palace Ponies is such an incredible place to be involved with.

It is a privilege to watch the progression from SENCO children through interacting and growing a relationship with our ponies, which would be a shame to say goodbye to. I believe that Park Palace Ponies is a VITAL place in our L8 community and so I hope we receive enough funding for us to remain open for the foreseeable future and potentially thrive once again as a beginner riding school!!”

Brooke, aged 17, “Park Palace Ponies means the world to me and many children in the community. It’s a place where people can build confidence, learn new skills, and experience the joy of riding ponies right in the heart of the city. 

For many kids who wouldn’t otherwise have the chance to be around horses, It’s more than just riding; it’s a place of belonging, excitement.”

Thank you for reading our story...If we are successful, we would like to thank every person that supports us by inviting you to the stables for a pony meet and greet. 

The ponies can't wait to see you!

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 1st September 2025 at 12:00am