Can you get a playground to swing from stationary

Yes. A swing does not depend on friction. The way you start up is by leaning back and pulling hard with your hands placed on the ropes. Your hand-hold positions effectively create a compound pendulum, so your mass is offset from null. By timing your shift in weight back to a "sitting-up" position, you essentially add energy to the pendulum system in phase and frequency with the full-length pendulum's oscillation.

I'm sure there are some pictures of this somewhere :-)

EDIT: I should have said, as Peter Shor did, that this makes use of gravitational force.