8 minute read
Have a Nice Play
With more and more being written about the benefits of play, we took some time to speak to two men who are passionate about play. Simon Desorgher is a composer and Projects Director of Eye Music Trust and Colourscape. Vin Callan is a playworker living and working just outside Bath.
Model wears dress from The Happysads AW18 Collection by Bobo Choses, courtesy of Sister’s Guild sistersguild.co.uk. Photography by onetwentypictures.com.
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Hi Simon, thanks for talking to us about Colourscape. Firstly, what is Colourscape?
Colourscape is a completely open interactive space. The public are free to wander wherever they like exploring the colour, light and space. There is also live music played in Colourscape.
The intensity of colour, natural light and lack of any horizons or normal views of the world encourages a more playful response. This is true of both children and adults who feel less inhibited. We have seen very young children being very confident to explore in safety and interacting with other children in a natural way. Exploring is a natural starting point for play.
Do you think children play enough?
I feel too many contemporary children’s activities are passive (receiving television, receiving internet, YouTube etc). Colourscape encourages active exploratory play and this is very empowering for all.
We like the live music in the exhibition, but what do you feel it adds to the experience?
Because Colourscape has no boundaries (no stage, no separation of public and musicians, no seating) the public are more involved in the performances. Very young children can get very close to the musicians seeing the techniques of playing, hearing new sounds – even looking over their shoulder at the music.
At our weekday events we tend to work with a creative musician who moves between performing and creating spontaneous workshops with a large range of percussion instruments from around the world. Often, we see grandparents and young children taking instruments and joining in a spontaneous ensemble led by the professional musician.
What are your thoughts on creative subjects being removed from the school curriculum?
The UK had a very strong creative curriculum with instrumental lessons and composition being encompassed within the exam curriculum. Recent changes and emphasis on sciences and “core” subjects has restricted access to creative subjects in school. This is a short-sighted viewpoint. Research has shown that harnessing children’s creativity and natural exploration increases their capability in Maths, Science and English. Rigid teaching by rote and information being received is never as powerful as learning by discovery and creativity. That principle is accepted by all educationalists.
Do you think there is a link between lack of play and poor mental health?
Research into other species as well as humans has shown that inactivity creates a decrease in mental capacity. That is actually obvious as mind / body connections increase with activity. In extreme cases, lack of activity and lack of stimulation can result in degrees of depression.
Why did you set up Colourscape?
Colourscape was created in the late sixties by an artist who wanted to create pure colour installations. The inflatable technology allowed him to create sculptures of pure colour and space that he could take out into parks and open spaces rather than being restricted into art galleries. This naturally increased the audience from a more exclusive “arts” clique into a more diverse local audience. When Lawrence Casserly, a fellow composer, and I saw Colourscape in the mid eighties we decided to move our contemporary music festival out of a dusty old concert hall and into this exciting new space.The result was an increase in audiences from maybe 20 to 600 and upwards per day.
In the first year of the Colourscape Music Festival on Clapham Common in 1989 an ice cream van pulled up to sell to the queue and we realised that we had discovered a new way to vastly increase and widen the audiences for contemporary music. Now – 29 years later – Eye Music Trust is a regularly-funded Arts Council organisation with four different sizes of specialist Colourscape structures designed for music and workshop presentations.
For up-to-date information about Colourscape, visit www.eyemusic.org.uk
Colourscape in Bath 2019
Photography by onetwentypictures.com
GENDER & PLAY
Vin Callan, a qualified playworker outside Bath, writes about whether play and gender are connected.
What are the clearest play memories you have with you mum? When you think of play, what do you think of? Is it sewing, cooking, knitting, arts and crafts, reading and storytelling? Or is it wrestling, football, rugby, den-making, tree-climbing, making weapons, using drills or screwdrivers? Did the play differ depending on the gender of the adult playing with you? Was it because that’s what they enjoyed doing? Was it cultural? Biological? Or, was it due to who went out to work and who stayed at home?
Colourscape 2019
Photography by onetwentypictures.com
Speaking to a small number of grandparents, I asked them what their memories where. Overwhelmingly, they told me that their mum would do arts and craft, baking and sewing and their dad would have the kids helping to fix the car. Interestingly this was the same regardless of the their gender – girls would also help dad with the car and boys would bake with mum. This was much the same as my upbringing – boxing, wrestling and fixing bikes with my dad and drawing and baking with my mum. But things were a little different when it came to spending time with my brothers.
Our house was full of Action Men, Evel Knievel, Batman and Robin, Spiderman and the Fonz. We had toy guns, boxing gloves, Transformers, drawers full of toy cars and Airfix models of fighter jets. So, this is what we played with. It got me thinking. If we only give boys footballs, trucks, guns, superhero figures, robots and dinosaurs surely that’s what they are going to play with? Likewise, if all we give girls are Barbies, My Little Ponies, princess dresses, nail art and toy ironing boards, isn’t that going to be all they will play with?
What if, regardless of gender, we gave children the following:
● A box filled with card, wool, tape andcolouring pens
● A hammer, some nails and some wood
● A tool kit and a work bench
● Optimus Prime and Rainbow Dash
● Elsa and Batman
● Or just a massive pile of Lego bricks?
Would boys make guns and forts and robot armies? Would girls build princess castles and animal shelters? Would the choice be ours, or theirs?
A few years ago I was chatting to a film-maker about play and he paraphrased actor Robert Carlyle as saying, “Kids don’t need all these fancy toys, give ‘em a stick, a stick can be anything, a wand, a sword a person, whatever you can imagine it to be.” That resonated with me as it's also how I see play.
A lot of the time children, like adults, will choose what they know. If we offer them a balanced “menu” of play opportunities they can make informed choices and makes things more spontaneous and more fun for everyone.
This brings us around to play experiences with adults outside the home. Most children spend their weekdays away from home in either nurseries, schools or other childcare and after-school settings where female staff are the majority.
Just 1-2% of childcare and out-of-school-care workers are male, 15 % of primary school workers are male and 17% of playworkers in the UK are male. Why is the number of men working with kids so so low? Low pay, reinforced perceptions of gender roles and stereotypes – of woman being natural carers and recruitment and marketing have all been sited. In addition, the risk of being wrongly accused of indecent behaviour, the perception that men can be perceived as being threatening or aggressive, and the perception that working with children is a career path for women because they are perceived as more nurturing may deter men from choosing a career with children. These stereotypes run so deeply in our society we probably don’t notice at first, but just think about how supermarkets divide toys and clothes into “boys” and “girls” sections with unicorns in one aisle and dinosaurs in the other.
We all have masculine and feminine characteristics, characteristics which help us to nurture and care for children, to take risks and be adventurous, to find out how things work and to share our experience of the world with others. I feel we need to look to ourselves to provide and model that balance, to show our kids it’s OK to be themselves and to choose what they want to play with without being shackled by fictitious boundaries.
I can’t deny that some research suggests that there is a preference towards types of play depending on gender. There have been experiments where male monkeys gravitate towards trucks and female monkeys prefer playing with dolls. I’m not in any position to say that the research is wrong. I’m just proposing that, if all children have the freedom to choose from a balanced play ‘menu’ that it will enrich their play experience. And hey, you never know, it might even break down gender stereotypes and lead to a more equal society in the future.
