Playstock – Woooooo!

I’ve mentioned the upcoming IPA2011 Conference before – and I couldn’t be more excited about that.  I get to present on Ethnographic Playwork, meet fascinating people from all over the world, and generally return to Cardiff with a sense of splash.

It was thrilling to recently discover that this isn’t the only amazing, glorious happening in Cardiff that week.  If you haven’t heard about it already, prepare to get your mind blown.

PLAYSTOCK.

Cardiff Arts Institute, Tuesday 5th from 9 – 5:30, and NOW (by popular demand) additional time on Wednesday 6th.

From the official information:

Where did the idea come from?

A lot of playwork folk are, like me, pining for the pilgrimage to PlayWales’ ‘Spirit of Adventure Play’ conference. ‘Spirit’ is the old-school, adventure playwork event, every year in May, except it was cancelled this year to make way for IPA. Now a lot of people can’t make it to IPA for all sorts of reasons, most of which are about money, and jobs, and pay, and work issues, oh, and the recession, which we are all in together. And in any case IPA is not the same – it’s a prestigious—dare I say more ‘academic’—conference, more for people who study children’s play, or work in a range of disciplines, and playwork is only one part of that.

It’s going to be a ‘fringe conference’, in the way that the Edinburgh Fringe Festival offers an edgier, more alternative complement to the ‘official’ festivities, and I can vouch for the organizers and participants as the most passionate, literate (play and otherwise) and fabulously hardcore people you’ve ever met in the play field or any other.

As I said to my friend Rusty when passing him the information – you have to come.  It’s going to be a SCENE.

For more information, check out the Facebook event and group pages, or email the core ‘organisy’ people:

The inimitable Eddie Nuttal: ejfnuttall@hotmail.co.uk

The superbeous Arthur Battram: plexity@onetel.com

Adopted Ancestors

I have recently begun collecting old photographs.  They sit in a large cookie tin at Pippin Vintage, in New York City, and only cost a dollar each.

My favorites are of women in groups or alone, or of family groups.  I look for the ones with some quickness of expression, some hint of narrative that whispers at me through the paper.  In speaking with the man in the shop, I learned that my tastes run precisely counter to those of the wider market, where men in uniform command the highest prices.

Finding a set of photographs is wonderful.  You have to search through a box of photographs of different sizes, eras and locations, and then one face will emerge as abruptly familiar.  You’ve seen it before in a slightly different pose, a different setting.  There are collections taken on the same day or taken moments apart so that they show the evolution of a smile, a turn to speak with someone else, the arrival of another in the frozen scene.

Handwritten messages on the back feel like bottles washed up on the shore.  Usually there are names and dates only in a spidery pencil hand, but sometimes there’s an inside joke, or explanation.  One had I assure you that this was unposed and another (on an image I chose not to take home) Me and Joe at the Falls, sitting.  He says he can only cheat standing up!

Always, always, there are more questions than answers.

On the back: On a Walk with the Fords

On the back: With This and the Fords

It seems that Mr. Ford took the first photograph, that his hat is seen in the shadow.  Does that mean that they asked a stranger to take the second?

Is the baby called ‘This”?

There was one more, which feels like a bedtime story compared to the other two.

And on the back of this one is written nothing at all.

Below are her faces enlarged.  I had thought they were the same woman in the first two and the third, cradling the infant and on that Walk with the Fords, but now I’m not sure.  They might be the same woman at different ages, or a girl and her mother.  I’m not sure anymore, and am always open to opinions.

        

I have asked the man at the shop to keep aside any for me of children playing.  He didn’t have any at the moment, but there were many of children in family groups, and some interesting ones of them posed alone.  They’ll have to wait for scanning, I’m afraid.

Am wondering now what exactly I might do with them.  I’ll start posting relevant ones as I can, and anyone who wants to can use them as they please, though I’d appreciate a link back.

“Let’s play sisters…”

“Let’s play sisters,” the girl said to me.

“Okay,” I said, crouching down on my heels so I could peer into the den.  The door was very, very small.  She laughed and clapped her hands.

“Better!”  She said.  “Let’s be TWINS.  And this is our house, and oh no!  The lava is coming.”

“Oh no!” I cried, checking that my shirt was tucked in tight at the back (a prerequisite for all responsible playworker clambering).  She leaned in and hissed urgently.

“You have to get in here first.”  I ducked in tight and crammed myself through the tiny cardboard doorway.

“So,” she continued.  “The lava is coming and when it does we’ll be all eaten up.”

I look down at the floor of the den, littered with paper streamers and large squares of foam.

“If we stand on these, would we survive?”  She shakes her head.

“No, we’re definitely going to die, but it’s okay.  There is magic medicine, so…”  She turned around quickly.  “What is it?”

A boy stood behind her, his hand still raised from where he’d tapped her on the shoulder.

“This is a castle, actually.  It’s a castle for puppies and it’s not for big people.“  He looked at the girl, and then at me.  His tone was abrupt but businesslike.  Nothing personal.

He was perhaps two years younger and a foot and a half shorter than the girl I’d come in with, and they looked at each other for a long moment.  In that look was a mutual assessment – of need, perhaps, or rules of prior claim.  Maybe it was a contest of pure stubbornness.  Finally she nodded.

“Castle,” she said.

And I popped out of the door like a cork from champagne, to land at the feet of my colleague Anna.  She laughed.

“That was amazing,” she said.  “Like a clown car.”

“We’re like vampires,” I said.  “We fly out when uninvited.”

One week to go!

Hello, everyone.

Regular readers will know that I’ve co-founded a non-profit project in the US called Pop-Up Adventure Play.  Our work is to bring rich and open-ended play opportunities to children all over the country, and we do this through direct training, fostering partnerships between organizations, and hosting events.  These events, called Pop-Up Adventure Playgrounds, are incredible opportunities for large groups to come together with a mix of raw, recycled materials and supportive Playworkers.

They are places where communities can play, and where people of all ages can celebrate the skills and the magic of a free childhood.

We have been working hard for the past year to get this project going, and we’ve had some amazing successes.  Delivering playwork sessions in a country without an established playwork field means a lot of explaining – but it’s been clear from the conversations we’ve had that many Americans need this desperately.  People here, as in so many places, have been feeling the absence of play in their lives and in their children’s lives and wondering what they could possibly do about it.

That’s where we can help, by providing information and encouragement – by helping people see that children don’t need expensive equipment or complex strategies to play.  We’ve known for a long time how empowering play is for children, but this project is teaching me how empowering playwork can be for parents, families and everyone else who cares about children.  Pop-Up Adventure Playgrounds are a low-cost, inclusive and immediately powerful way to start helping people to bring play more deeply into their communities, their homes, and their lives.

We’ve been very busy, helping to create Pop-Up Adventure Playgrounds as part of the Ultimate Block Party, the New Museum’s Festival of Ideas for the New City, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum’s Earth Week Celebrations, and many more to reach thousands of children and family members in a remarkably short time.  We even held our own Pop-Up PLAY Day, in partnership with PLAY Greenpoint, in McCarren Park.  We’ve inspired and supported independently organized Pop-Ups in Boston, Yonkers, Anchorage, and Costa Rica and in so doing are helping to spread the word about children’s right to play, and practical ways that adults can help.

Now, we’re embarking on our greatest challenge yet.

Our Governors Island Pop-Up Adventure Playground Residency is eighteen – yes, that’s EIGHTEEN –  consecutive weekends of Pop-Ups.  This weekend, we’ll be doing two sessions there as part of the FIGMENT NYC Sculpture Garden, and two more with FIGMENT Boston on the Rose Kennedy Greenway.  Through these partnerships, we hope to reach hundreds of thousands of children and families, helping to bring the core concepts and skills of playwork to a massive audience.

We couldn’t have done it without the incredible legacy and support we’ve received from friends, family and colleagues internationally.  Now we need your help to accomplish all that we’ve got planned.

We started an IndieGoGo campaign to fill in funding gaps.  We keep our costs low and source in-kind donations wherever possible, but some things are difficult to get donated – such as the plane ticket and travel grant for our Senior Playworker.  Her name is Suzanna Law, and she’s a student with Fraser Brown at Leeds Metropolitan University.  We needed to buy waterproof storage boxes, and an early kit of the materials that get used up fast – things like bamboo poles, rope, and endless rolls of tape.  We want to print materials for interested parents and carers to take home, so that they can have tangible reminders of the Playwork Principles and other essential information.  We want to develop an online forum where people can make connections with others in their area, swap ideas or share concerns so that the experiences of this summer can make long-term changes in children’s lives.

We have one week left to raise $7000 to meet the cost of this busy summer programming.

Please help, whether by donating whatever you can or by forwarding the information on this campaign to the people in your networks. 

Thank you.