By Penny Wilson
Play is a universal biological imperative.
Sport is an artificial construct, elevating the survival of the fittest
(in this I include disabled sports people).
Sport revels in elitism – it is a status term, a badge of pride.
Play is antithetical to competition.
It is predicated upon the joy of failing.
Play is egalitarian.
The play of every child is valid, creative, unique and stunningly beautiful.
To reduce the glorious essential complexity of the neurological processes which inform the intricate business of the exquisite slow nurture and growth of each individual human body, mind, soul, ethical foundation, empathy, wit, relationships – the genius, continuing, discovery of one’s existence in this world as uniquely different from every other amazing individual – to equate this quotidian miracle with an externally imposed set of shallow rules, pointless goals, team kits, and bought loyalty is farcical.
To imagine, because one small sliver of play incorporates physicality woven in and out of its luscious tapestry, that this splendid phenomenon of humanity should sit under the aegis of a burpee obsessed mindset is risible and insulting to our species.
Play cannot be sold for a handful of glass beads.
It is not ours to sell.
We do need money, but we need our souls too.
To have our treasured craft of playwork governed by goal-orientated mindsets is simplistic and ill-informed.
It is adulteration (this is a loan word employed as a neologism by a man of genius who had dedicated his life’s work to understanding and advocating for play). Sturrock used the word to describe the corruption of the play process leading, if unchecked, to the annihilation of that play process.
That is a superb example of ow to reinvent language to express complex and nuanced concepts, by the way.
Just because the concept of sports and competitive tunnel-vision-based constructs are easy enough to understand that they can secure funding… Just because there is a naïve success agenda 0 rewarding externally imposed trained behaviours with treats (money, fame, praise, tasty biscuits) this success agenda bringing proxy glory to sponsors and funders, just because that is easy enough for even he most binary of adults to understand, doesn’t n that we should snuggle up to them. Ewwwww.
Years ago, Thatcher’s Government realised that investing in children’s play could go some way to placate and quell the city riots. The existing tried-and-tested infrastructures that had evolved around the play process, to support it as its core, those infrastructures which included playwork theory and language and practices and training and education – all of this was unpicked and reconfigured, remodelled at the whim of the unsafe minds behind the Tory agenda.
We were coaxed to accept this rebrand with sugar lumps of money.
Play was used as the opium of the people in communities that were being treated contemptuously. The, what a shock everything was dropped, disowned. We were left with the suggestion that we take funding from the tobacco industry. The responsibility for training playworkers was handed over to tick-box minds wo knew nothing of the delicacy and essential vibrancy of what they were doing. Of what they were systematically killing off.
We are still reeling from this colonisation and the oppression of children whose playhoods are being stolen from them. Abused by adults who failed to recognise their right to play.
This will not happen again. Not with us advocating for the people whose work is predicated on its primary focus and essence being to support the play process on behalf of children.
This article was written by Penny Wilson of AssemblePlay and a Trustee of The Playwork Foundation. These views are her own personal views and not necessarily those of AssemblePlay and/or The Playwork Foundation.
The Playwork Foundation 