Spring Fever, Relational Mapping and Disability Justice
Hello and welcome to my ‘March’ Newsletter that is now a not-March newsletter! It has been a pretty busy time for Play Radical. One of those seemingly unavoidable freelance times of many projects going into action at once. This alongside feeling quite weighed down by the world has left me pretty out of beans/beanless/in a bean deficit/ up bean-creek without a ladle for the last couple of months. I have much rest and bean-gathering planned but before I disappear off the internet for a couple of weeks I thought I’d do a bit of sharing!
Spaces of no-translation
In my role as bursary artist with Independent Arts Projects (IAP) I’ve been working with Cherry Road, a day service in the Lothians providing community, care and support for adults with complex needs. Having worked with individuals there previously with Function Schmunction I was keen to return with a more focused and longer offering and was very grateful for the opportunity to do so with IAP.
An ongoing question and avenue of exploration in my practice is how we might create meaningful, playful and connecting experiences between individuals with extremely different experiences of the world; bodies and minds that function in fundamentally different ways. For example a neurotypical non disabled adult and a neurodivergent disabled adult. I think often we fall on translation… we work to find ways to translate our experience or what we feel is meaningful into a language that the other converses in (when I use the world language here I mean it in the broadest possible sense not just verbal language). This is not wrong, or invaluable, but I think there is also great potential in seeking out spaces where translation isn’t needed… because you are existing and connecting through shared experience. This is where play and often highly sensory play comes in!
At Cherry Road I’ve been exploring this idea with a series of play sessions. Starting off with having individual 1:1 play sessions with service users and staff separately and then working to bring them together for collaborative sessions. They process has been extremely rich, fun, emotional and at times challenging. I will have much more to say and share about this process as the next step is creating something that documents the experience and project!
Wait… I like teaching?!
Recently, after many years of sporadically providing training I realised that I actually really quite like being in that teaching role. Because I’ve done so much of it lately I think it’s finally helped me shake off some of the anxieties and imposter-syndrome I feel around standing up in front of a bunch of people and sharing knowledge and ideas. I’ve definitely become more comfortable being my wiggly, stimmy, excitable and sincere self in these situations. My approach to teaching has become more clear to me; it’s all about crafting ideas and concepts into different lens that people can pick up and try on… different ways to look at things, to make abstract things more tangible and workable. For example, I’ve delivered a few different trainings around ‘Seeing, supporting and enabling neurodivergent play’ recently. In here I use a version of my ‘autistic play shapes’ theory I’ve been developing (kind of an autistic version of Bob Hughes Play types but perhaps a little less definitive in nature) to give people a lens to look through when watching neurodivergent children playing in their workplaces. This allows them to see what they might not have seen before and hopefully makes them feel emboldened and able to celebrate and enable more of it.
One such play shape that people have found particularly helpful is the idea of ‘Relational Mapping’. This is the name I give to play that’s about exploring the sensory and social properties of ‘I am me and you are you’ to ask the question; who are we and how can/do we meet? This might look like positioning and moving another persons body, running social scripts on repeat and exploring patterns of touch and cause and effect.
I’m currently developing a piece of work explaining and expanding on my Autistic Play Shapes which I intend to self-publish this summer. So if this interests you keep an eye out!
SPRING FEVER
Since the first inkling of spring I have been broadcasting this phrase high and low. It is my current favourite vocal stim and delights me as much as it bemuses others (and maybe slightly frustrated/confused some when I continue to roll it out during the dreichest of days). I implore you to shout joyfully as you pass daffodils and blink at the shining sun.
Spring Fever!
Free Palestine
As I write this we are over 6 months in to the genocide of Palestinian people by the state of Israel. We must continue to speak up and out whatever from our voice takes. No one is free until we are all free. Today I want to elevate voice of disabled Palestinians and voices from the Disability Justice movement who demonstrate the urgency and essentiality of the movement to Free Palestine for the future of Palestinians and all human life.
This webpage from the organisation Disability under Siege is collecting stories from and of disabled Palestinians living through this genocide.
https://disabilityundersiege.org/
This article by US based write and Disability Justice activist Alice Wong explains why and how Disability Justice and Palestinian liberation are one and the same: https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/2023/12/02/why-palestinian-liberation-is-disability-justice/
Thank you for reading! Stay playful!
This is really interesting, Thankyou