Making play

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I have a lot of warm fuzzy feelings about play, I’ve done a bunch of what you could call playwork in my wobbly career journey. Including my absolute favourite – an 8 year stint working in the education & outreach department at South London Gallery. Who if you ask me (and I’m probably a bit biased) have a really beautiful way and dialogue with their audiences around play. I suppose you’d call it a programme but it always felt like much more than that to me. It always felt like in the context of the education team that everything (event, workshop, activation, exhibition) was an invitation, an invitation to play and direct your own experience of the ‘gallery’ and ‘Art’. And I’ve definitely taken a lot of that with me into my teaching. It comes back to what I was talking about in my last post about empathy. The two are so closely connected – surely the first place you learn empathy is through your early years of play.

https://www.instagram.com/p/_PWg56uaGp/?igshid=h0kkzacoevi4


I’m really interested in how we keep allowing that level of play at university level, how do we create environments that encourage the same push/pull of play and negotiation that comes along with it. Negotiating with a playmate, navigating conflict, winning & losing etc. The playmate might not even be a person – perhaps it’s a material, a process, a structure. And how do we empathise with the material? the playmate? the classmate? and I suppose to link it back to what I do in my teaching. How and why does this make us better designers/ makers/ entrepreneurs/ intrapreneurs? Because at this point I’m firmly in the camp of believing it does. Do we even have to stop there? do we have to stop playing once we graduate? Once we launch a business? once we register with HMRC?

To create something for a client – you have to empathise with them

To negotiate a deal often takes empathy, not just for the clients perspective or purse strings but also empathy for yourself – weighing it up. How much have I already invested in myself and therefore how much am I giving away for too little and compromising for the sake of survival (a choice too many people aren’t privileged enough to make)

To create a product takes empathy with the customer, being able to humanise, visualise and cater to them demands empathy (if done ethically)

Empathy for your supply chain, your community, your team, the list goes on.

Ultimately even in enterprise it’s about connection, right? relationships, collaborations & conversations. Which all have empathy at the heart of them.