Play Journal

The Play Ethic and the Toy Industry

A fascinating morning recently, delivering a keynote speech to the Toy Industries of Europe 'Toy Safety' conference in Brussels. The toy industry has had its troubles to bear in 2007 - many safety recalls of toys from major manufacturers, largely located in their Chinese factories (80% of all toys in Europe are made in China, 95% in the US). As I said to the audience at the conference, with books like Eric Clark's The Real Toy Story being published (which tries to do for the toy industry what Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation does for convienience food), they are an industry which risks a lot by not lining up their ethical business practice, with the trust that parents put in them to provide safe, ethically and sustainably created products. But if they extend 'play ethics' throughout their business - from labour conditions in China to the nature of the toys they produce - the opportunities for their business (exemplified by the turnaround in Lego, whose CEO Jorgen Knudstorp delivered the other keynote) are major, given the general shift of social values in a 'play-friendly' direction.

NOTE: I'm using the embedding function of Slideshare for the first time here - if you go through to the actual link, you can download the PPT of the presentation with extra notes.

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New Labour's plan for children's play

Extremely positive announcement by the Westminster Labour government on a new "Children's Plan", in which the provision of play spaces and the validation of their exuberance and explorations is front and centre. The BBC news report quotes the relevant minister, Ed Balls (appropriately enough) as saying that "children should be both seen and heard", and is promising to:

- build play spaces for "tweenagers" (aged eight-13) with £225m to build or upgrade 3,500 community playgrounds
- put an end to "no ball games" culture - bringing importance of play into public spaces and planning
- provide £160m for positive activities for young people in sport, drama and art

"We want to move away from the 'No Ball Games' culture of the past so that public spaces in residential areas are more child friendly," says the plan. Great news for play advocates - now the question is, will they ever address the right to play for adults too...

Tim Gill, the commentator and children's advocate, made this necessary point in his Guardian blog:

there is tension between the positive vision of children's competences the plan implies, and some of the excessively risk-averse measures brought forward by government in recent years... Its policies on both antisocial behaviour and safeguarding urgently need to be rethought. If not they will undermine the goal of creating a society where young and old are more at ease with each other.

Gwen Gordon: Play Magus

It's a delight to bring Gwen Gordon's new site to your attention. Gwen is a play advocate, life-trainer and scholar operating out of the Bay Area in California. Gwen has a fascinating history - she started out designing and building Muppets for Sesame Street! She branched out from there and has established a practice that does personal, group and organisational consultancy, using all the dimensions of play to revivify lives and enterprises.

I deeply admire both her practicality, and her searching, spirituality-meets-science approach. Some of the academic papers she has recently published on definitions of play (What is Play? Toward a universal definition, Integral Play, and Are We Having Fun Yet?, all PDF's) are ground-breaking, in my view. She's beginning to point towards the idea of developmental levels of adult play - play that gets more capacious, more complex, more ethical - which I've begun to talk about in some recent presentations, particularly at the BBC Digital Futures event at the beginning of the year.

For those of you Enlightenment, neo-Calvinist Brits who can't quite cope with Californian optimism, suspend your scepticism, and dive in. As Martin Buber says on the cover: "Play is the exultation of the possible".

Escape from the poverty prison

I've written this short piece for the Sunday Herald, my old paper, this week, on the question of child poverty in Scotland. It's framed by this piece from another old colleague, Neil Mackay, on a really-struggling family in a towerblock in Glasgow (Neil, ever resourceful, has also put together this little film of his encounter). I know this doesn't seem like usual Play Ethic territory, but as the piece explains below, I think so much of this social dysfunction is a result of the long-term psychological deformations of industrial identity. And that a positive narrative for productivity and purposefulness - a play ethic to replace a work ethic - might be a solution.

The New Seriousness

Another Guardian Comment Is Free post from me - a bit impressionistic, subjective and not that analytical, about something maybe abroad in the culture, but certainly in my own life, called the New Seriousness. I agree with Acid Jazz's comments below - this isn't about abandoning playfulness, but deepening it, and making a more ethical use of the powerful interactive toys that suffuse our lives at the moment.

Knowing too much, doing too little

Into the swing of 2007 with a new Comment is Free post at the Guardian today. It's pegged to quite a few Play-Ethic-oriented items - the UK Trades Union Congress's report that UK workers give their employers 7 hours unpaid overtime a week; the recent noises from the Conservative Party about exploring the possibility of a 35 hour week; and my usual concern with the great contradiction of the developed world - so many options for informed and connected action, so little time and resources by which to realise them. Lots of hyperlinks in the piece, be keen to hear your reaction.

Update: a reasonable response from CiF commenters - my own comment, and this response to it, enriches the argument considerably. And Jackie Ashley seems to have perused this material ever so slightly in today's Guardian...

Big Babies, Rejuveniles and the limitations of 'growing up'

The Independent just published a version of my review of Micheal Bywater's Big Babies: why don't we just grow up (Granta). I had so many problems  with it, as a thesis, in its stylistics (never mind the barely suppressed patriarchalism-blending-into-misogyny). The newspaper version is a little cut-down, so I'm putting the original review in extended post below.

As an alternative to this 'Grumbulist Manifesto' - apart from The Play Ethic - let me point you to Christopher Noxon's growing empire around Rejuveniles. And for a youthful, creative, playful sensibility given its proper infrastructural due - rather than slagged off as consumer narcissism - I'd strongly recommend Charles Leadbeater's coming book, We-Think. I read his article in the FT this morning, and I half-thought I'd written it myself...

Well beings or ethical beings?

Been fascinated by the recent convergence on wellbeing and happiness between the main political parties in the UK. This op-ed article for the Guardian comment page (here's a lovely PDF of it) explores the hidden affinities between conservative philosophy and the more normative aspects of the happiness agenda (which I've explored elsewhere in this blog, here and here and here). If you've come from reading the article, I'd love to hear your comments below.

Guardian, June 1st, 2006

If you’re happy and you’re Tory, clap your hands. So skilfully is the young pretender, David Cameron, pressing buttons on wellbeing, quality of life,and happiness that charges of superficiality and empty trendiness are coming thick and fast. But a deeper examination of his  recent speeches shows an underlying rigour that his political opponents would be foolish to underestimate

Street parties and sultan's elephants

Just received a mail from someone I came into contact with during the Bristol Ideas Festival, on his relaunched Street Party project. It’s a simple idea, but Chris executes it very well. Here’s the blurb for the umbrella site:

Streets Alive is a charitable group which promotes culturally thriving communities through traffic-free street events.

We have been working with residents and councils on street parties in the UK since 2001. We think street parties are an important way of developing neighbourliness as well as a rare chance to enjoy their street without traffic for a day.

Our vision is to make street parties widespread and a regular part of life. We are doing this by promoting best practice with communities, the media and councils.

There’s a very succinct video of one event in Bristol, and a deep cache of supplementary material, services, and methodologies. The evident joy, commitment and self-empowerment of Gittens’ street-party-goers is one route to a more playful public sphere. I’ve been contacted by a number of these ‘convivial activists’ over the years – most recently the people behind Brisbane Kids Markets, but also the social gaming of Bernie De Koven (Junkyard Games), as well as many others I’m planning to dig out of my e-mail accounts.

In London this weekend, the extended family and I went to a street event on a much grander (though arguably, less effective) scale...

Play beautiful, pay later

Had a fascinating family experience in London recently, on a Friday in the Easter holidays. I joined my partner and her son on a visit to Trafalgar Square, where the sports manufacturer Nike was holding something called a Joga 3 tournament. We wandered up to the familiar landmark, and saw five small pitches, a full stand, and hundreds of wiry kids-to-late-teens, playing three-a-side football/soccer with remarkable skill and intensity.

Joga turns out to be a new set of soccer rules, adapted/appropriated by Nike from the Brazilian tradition of futsal – three minute games, no tackling, the most goals wins or it’s sudden death, and a high premium on close control, tricks and skills. The event was heavily branded, not just with the familiar swoosh sign but with the slogan Joga Bonita – ‘play beautiful’ in Portuguese/Brazilian.