A Rumpus Fishing, Autumn Offerings and BDS
Hey there! It’s me Max Alexander sliding onto your screen with a newsletter.
A Rumpus Fishing
In late July I had the pleasure of Playworking at Rumpus Room’s Summer Play Club. The theme’s were wonderfully simple; build and play. Rumpus’s holiday clubs are the kind of place where about 40 days worth of play and creativity will somehow condense into 3 days and at the end of it you’ll still be processing what happened on day 1. I completely adore working at this place, the staff, volunteers and kids are some of the coolest, weirdest and kindest around.
A highlight for me this time around was the fishing corner that sprung up on day one and kept developing over the days two and three. Early in the day I had put up a deckchair on one of the quieter outskirts of the space and propped a bamboo stick with a bit of string tied to it against the chair. Within an hour there were multiple ‘ponds’ (plastic trays filled with water coloured with paint), fish made of vinyl sometimes floating/mostly sinking, multiple chairs and stools and I was working with a pile of sticks, beads, string and picture frame hooks to fulfil an avalanche of fishing rod orders. All led by the kids of course.
The fish and rods did theoretically ‘work’. It was possible to hook a fish and pull it from the pond, but it took a lot of time and patience, sometimes the kids would be focussed on doing this but sometimes they’d just be sitting holding the rods out, string dipped in water, not saying much. Some were more focussed on making fish, stirring paint into the water and making sure the scene was just right. Some spent moments there but many longer. At one point a 10 year old fisherperson leaned back in their deckchair and said with a knowing sigh “this is what fishing should be like”. The space which so organically grew from a couple of simple objects seemed to create a space where kids could just come for a quiet moment and be held in the structure of the fishing.
Upcoming (free!) Offerings!
I’m delighted to be able to share a few different free offerings and opportunities online and in Glasgow over the next couple of months.
Firstly coming up on Wednesday 4th September 16:00-17:30 I will be launching my Speculative Care Futures Report online. The report is written from the perspective of an imagined social care facility who are questioning their practices and exploring new ways to nurture a meaningfully connected community of individuals with profoundly different ways of being. It has come out of a recent project I did with Cherry Road Day Centre exploring play for service users and staff. The event and report may be of interest to artists who have a collaborative practice, wish to develop one or anyone who shares their lives with Sensory Beings or individuals described as having PMLD. You can find out more and sign up for the event here: https://www.independentartsprojects.com/speculative-care-futures/
Also in collaboration with Independent Arts Projects and supported by Imaginate Children’s festival and Platform Glasgow I am facilliating a series of 5 full day workshops. This are aimed at artists and practitioners looking to expand their practice into making work more inclusive to neurodivergent audiences, explore their own playfulness and creative processes and widen their understanding of communication, connection and interaction. They are free to attend and you can find more information here: https://www.independentartsprojects.com/workshops-autumn-24/
Posters for Autistic Autonomy and Play
I recently updated the downloadable resources part of my website to include a series of posters celebrating autistic play as well as a poster version so my “7 Principles for Valuing, Prioritising and Enabling Autistic Children’s Autonomy. Please feel free to download, print and display in your settings. I would love to hear from anyone who does so :) It’s such a pleasure to get to see my work out in the world.
https://playradical.com/resources-2/downloadableresources/
Congratulations Saoirse!
I’m overcome with joy to announce that the winner of last months Post Pompadour Pageant with an impressive 36% of the vote is Saoirse. Saoirse would like to use her platform to raise awareness of the BDS movement.
"Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) is a Palestinian-led movement for freedom, justice and equality. BDS upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity.
Israel is occupying and colonising Palestinian land, discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel and denying Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes. Inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, the BDS call urges action to pressure Israel to comply with international law.
BDS is now a vibrant global movement made up of unions, academic associations, churches and grassroots movements across the world. Since its launch in 2005, BDS is having a major impact and is effectively challenging international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.”
You can learn more at bdsmovement.net or at https://www.instagram.com/bdsnationalcommittee/
Thank you for reading. Stay playful and wiggle on!
Max