Plorking, Post Pompadour-y and Irresistible Revolution
Welcome to this latest instalment of the Play Radical newsletter! Here I share some insights into recent work I’ve been involved in, invite you to be a part of a Very Important poll and share the latest in a series of Easy Read for Palestine documents.
Plorking with Teens
Over the last couple of months I’ve been working in collaboration with Ruby Pester and Nadia Rossi (of Pester and Rossi/) on a project for Forgan Arts Centre (https://www.forganartscentre.co.uk/). We worked together and with teenage and young adult carers to explore themes of play, care and rest and then went on to design and create a play kit to live at the centre to be used by future visitors. You can find lots of delicious visual and snippets of insight for that project over on Pester and Rossi’s instagram but here I just want to reflect on the joy that is working with teenagers.
Looking back at that last sentence I immediately find myself wondering if it might come across as sarcastic. What an odd thing! I feel like a lot of adults and institutions don’t really know how to deal with teenagers. We seem to look at them and, instead of letting them occupy there unique and specific space, view them either as not-quite kids or not-quite adults. Doing the kind of work I do I’ve often been met with skepticism about doing play based sessions or activities with teens…. it’s assumed they won’t engage in that kind of thing and people often want me to offer something really structured or ‘functional’. But, I have repeatedly found that is just not true and some of my favourite play based work experiences sit with this age group.
Sometimes it takes longer for the comfort to engage in play and silliness to come, sometimes you need more solid and socially acceptable ways to engage alongside the looser, freer, weirder stuff but at the end of the day, teenagers, like anyone else, need play and find their own ways to it. I think the most important thing with this age group for me is just checking my ego; I really do need to be okay with potentially not being liked, being laughed at, being seen as weird or… the very worst thing of all; completely uninteresting. This is always true and being caught up in this stuff is generally a barrier to creating playful and freeing spaces, but it does seem to be a heightened risk when it comes to being an adult working with teenagers!
Loch Ness Post Pompadour-y
I recently had the pleasure of stumbling upon a series of gorgeously moss and lichen coiffed fence posts on the side of a winding lane near the banks of Loch Ness. This experience completely made up for barely catching a glimpse of the Loch Ness monster. I then founded the inaugural Post Pompadour Pageant. Please cast your vote below and I will share the results in my next newsletter in order to build appropriate tension and drama.
Easy Read for Palestine
I recently published the third in a series of Easy Read Style documents designed to help communicate what is happening currently in Palestine at the hands of the Israeli government. My hope is that these documents can be used by anyone who might benefit from this format be supported to engage with what is happening to help work towards a free and safe Palestine and end to the violence.
The latest is about how it is possible and essential to support Palestinians without being antisemitic. You can find it here: https://playradical.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/anti-semetism-easy-read.pdf Please feel free to download, share and distribute to anyone you may feel it might help. Free Palestine! Permanent Ceasefire now!
Irresistible Revolution
I want to finish this newsletter by sharing this quote from Toni Cade Bambara; Writer, Civil Rights Activist, Black Feminist Scholar and teacher;
“The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible”
I come back to these words a lot at the moment. They make me think about how fighting for a better, kinder, safer world is also about creating alternatives. Those alternatives don’t have to be perfect, they don’t have to be fully formed, they don’t even have to be possible. The act of creating alternatives, dreaming up different ways of living, different ways of caring for each other, different ways of resisting cruelty, oppression and capitalism, is part of the process. I feel increasingly, that more than artistic ‘skill’ or ‘talent’ we need to hone the skill of bravery and vulnerability it takes to share and embrace imperfection. How do we keep honing this skill? Through it all?
I’m still not really sure… I just sort of know that I’m trying and somehow getting better, sometimes they tiniest bit at a time. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Thank you for reading! Stay playful, wiggle on and maybe even get a bit muddy.
Max