David David

"I thought Charlie's comment about play being a different lense through which to view inequality, rather than a tool to heal it was totally excellent"

what do you mean? more info please if poss.

Charlie Tims

Right. I'll try. I don't know if you came to the tenth birthday party last year, but Douglas Rushkoff spoke in conjunction with the launch of his pamphlet Open Source Democracy. As I remember he suggested that that like the internet, democracy too was becoming open source; individuals could effectively "play" with the society's HTML code through different forms of democratic participation. In the Q&A session he came in for a lot of flack from floor. Many of the comments suggested that Rushkoff' analysis overlooked that some people had the means to play in society, whereas others didn't (some people have computers - others have to make them) and in this sense seeing Rushkoff's analysis as not applying to a large portion of the world (certain social brackets, occupations, groups of women, people in developing countries etc).

At the discussion the day before yesterday a few people made similar critisisms of Pat Kane's book "The Play Ethic". Chris Japp put it well saying that playing could only take place when you were working "on" rather than "in" the system.

Charlie contextualised these criticisms by explaining that play was a lense through which to understand (contemporary) inequality, rather than a catch-all tool to heal it. Nice. Basically if you had a heirachy of povertys with the (more) simple at the bottom and the more complex at the top; you would probably have something like food and fuel poverty at the bottom, and something like poverty of play or aspiration at the top.

The nice thing about Pat Kane's book seems to be that in many ways the word "play" is substitutable for the words "creativity", "learning" and "innovation" and thus feels very much like the still point of a turning Demos sphere.

Hope that makes sense. If not I'll have another crack you horrible, thick student. Get back to work. Now.

David David

thanks charlie... very kind of you to enlighten me.

but much as terms like 'creativity' have been used by some to mask the insecurity, risk and social divisions that come with a 'winner takes all' individualised culture, so too it seems can the term 'play' sound deeply attractive without really addressing issues of social justice. i'm glad that charlie sees it as a lens through which to view inequality but i must say that a comment like that must be pretty hard to take in a run down estate in a country where child poverty remains a massive issue. 'play' sounds like a good modus operandi for the knowledge economy freelancer with the cultural capital to move freely from job to job operating within a metropolitan elite, but i do feel that the question must be: who is able to play, why and who is not?

that said, i'm only going on your comments mr c as i haven't yet read the book.

now, in the spirit of your last comments, go and do some work yourself you ridiculous wonk. ;-)

Charlie Tims

yer, well that's the point i was trying to make. i don't want to split ends but, it's probably useful for understanding a different kind of inequality rather than poverty per se

pat kane

I think the question of 'who gets to play' - meaning, who is both capable and resourced to live the creative and self-governed life - is absolutely urgent. Charles Leadbeater often invokes hip hop as an example of Professional Amateurism - African-Americans mucking about with technology and culture until a major entertainment industry comes up. But it's also a locus for a strong, power-laden rhetoric about precisely 'being a player' - essentially, a street enterpreneur in the grey-to-black-to-criminal economy. This might be a violent, sexist, drug-dealing and gun-toting persona. But it's simply wrong to say that play is alien to the socially excluded - it's just that they can choose forms of play (play-as-power, play-as-fate-and-chaos) which don't fit well with the 'rational recreation' fondly imagined by governments (or even policy thinkers).

Come this election, we might expect the response to this to be another mighty crusade on street crime and 'protecting our streets'. Yet perhaps if we were able to, as Charlie L says, use play as a lens to re-percieve inequality, we might suggest more attractive forms of play as a response, rather than just the labour market or incarceration as the options. Isn't there a famous statistic (once quoted by John McTernan, now a cabinet wonk I think) that the well-lit basketball court was the most effective preventative measure against young male crime in American cities? I also talk about the Ken Loach movie Sweet Sixteen in the book: the leading character, considered abstractly, is almost a poster-boy for enterprise education - a charismatic leader, an innovator with mobile technology (from cellphones to mopeds), creating a just-in-time distribution system.. Only problem is, it's drugs he's dealing, not books from Amazon.

It's worth noting that the first-time actor who played him - Martin Compston, currently grinning his way through Monarch of the Glen - is also a Greenock boy from the same background, Yet Martin was a young football hopeful, clearly already able to perform well to his community and peers. So, sure, it takes a 'player' to play a 'player'. But I want to emphasize again that forms of play (like Gardner's multiple intelligences) are always potentially valid wherever we find them - if we can be literate enough about play to notice them. I think there's much to learn from a play perspective on how those who are deeply impoverished or marginal can find ways to re-engage with society, yet not necessarily through a work identity.

David David

all this talk about play has kind of got me thinking about russian linguist and theorist Bahktin and the his conceptual framework for the medieval notion of 'carnival'... as a form of play where the powerless are able to let off steam and subvert power roles in one long sweaty celebration of the topsy turvy. so the king can become a clown and vice versa for a day. as i remember bahktin saw carnival as a safety valve in a feudal society allowing the 'masses' to let off steam but that it was always an inherently risky proposition too as it could get out of hand and lead to a permanent shift in the status quo too. perhaps play operates in a similar way... at once necessary as a vital part of human creativity and simultaneously a radical gesture, one that challenges vested interests.

Charlie Tims

After this tremendous stream I thought I'd think of my top ten players, but then realised that it might take to long. Anyway here's three for starters

http://www.sonyclassics.com/dogtown/
Z-Boys - Group of skateboarders who invented modern skating by pretending to be surfers in empty swiming pools during a drought.

http://www.grandmasterflash.com/movie.html
Electronics student who allegedly built the first mixer for DJing and invented cueing - thus sporning rap/dance and all the genres inbetween

http://internettrash.com/users/louis_theroux/
The sensible Denis Penis, the playful parky