Hello Fraser Brown, Bob Hughes, Gordon Sturrock, Mike Wragg, Wendy Russell, Pete King, Adrian Voce, the whole bloody lot of you clever bastards. You failed to do this, and it’s been left to a bunch of bloody Yanks, who don’t even have bloody playwork, ffs, to do it. Doubtless bloody Tim Gill, even as we speak, is busy blogging that it is his success, because he is a mate of David Ball. Whatever. And now, precisely as the last few APGs are being smashed in Bristol, and local councils continue relentlessly to make some of the most monumentally short-termist, cheese-paring and pointless and counter-productive cuts ever conceived of by a bunch of bigoted little Englander dickheads who basically would legislate for children to be put into landfill if they could, and in Solihull, they’re probably planning that right now, while all that’s happening, 60 people are going to spend two days sat on their arses in Ely, wailing about playwork.
Playwork deserves to die with advocates like these.
Currently, Wallsend is having its children saved. Hurrah.
Childrensaving is happening, thanks to a government-funded programme, delivered by a national children’s charity, saviours of children, heroes in their own lunchtime {a lunch of rocket, kale and organic polenta, to be precise}.
This is part of the ongoing long-term —some things are long-term, aren’t they— the ongoing long-term deracination and outsourcing of the role of local government in the public realm.
Successive governments, red and blue and yellow, have decided that local government can’t be trusted. Central government prefers to impose 3rd sector agencies from London on communities, because local government is infested with a ‘can’t-do’ mentality and is bogged down in local politics and can’t make the thrusting managerialist interventions, on absurdly short timescales [ie. before the next election], that politicians command but can’t control.
If you wanted to talk about shipbuilding to people in Wallsend, which is the topic today, BTW, you might start by learning that shipbuilding is all one word, it’s not Ship Building. A ship building would be the hut in which you keep your little rowing boat, by a river bank. Or is it riverbank? A river bank would be a bank in which you keep rivers, or something.
So anyway, here is The Theory Which Will Transform Wallsend, starting from the ‘Past Context’ of “Ship Buildings (Lost)”…
And here is another Theory of Change…
You’re all busy people who don’t have time to listen to some bloody lefty pop song from 1982, so here’s the lyrics for all you busy managers who need it one side of A4 by 9 o’clock tomorrow morning…
Is it worth it? A new winter coat and shoes for the wife And a bicycle on the boy’s birthday
It’s just a rumour that was spread around town By the women and children Soon we’ll be shipbuilding
Well, I ask you The boy said, Dad, they’re going to take me to Task But I’ll be back by Christmas?
It’s just a rumour that was spread around town Somebody said that someone got filled in For saying that people get killed in The result of The shipbuilding
With all the will in the world Diving for dear life When we could be diving for pearls
It’s just a rumour that was spread around town A telegram or a picture postcard Within weeks, they’ll be re-opening the shipyards And notifying the next of kin, once again
It’s all we’re skilled in We will be shipbuilding
With all the will in the world Diving for dear life When we could be diving for pearls
It’s all we’re skilled in We will be shipbuilding
With all the will in the world Diving for dear life
These half-baked musings are lifted directly from Facebook, I’m making no attempt to disguise that. I’m also assuming that my lovely friends won’t mind…
Now we need to know if the supergirl (probably a model photographed for the article, shame) becomes WHATSHEISDESTINEDTOBE. So we’ll just have to wait.
What’s interesting about this is Penny Wilson. You are a mum. And your motherness is always present in your playwork. I can’t think of another playworker who has their motherness so clearly woven into their playwork. Contention: most women playworkers are doing older sister, or older brother, even the ones that are mums?
Arthur BattramActually, Eddie Nuttall, that piece you did here on FB about taking Jesse on a Felix daytrip, *that* was evidence of burgeoning fatherness in your playwork.
My playwork was just older brother stuff.
I have no understanding of what older playworkers are like.
(I mean the ones that keep doing playwork, not the ones like me that move into training, or [shudder] management.)
I used to see playwork as a ‘young person’s game’.
Some male playworkers just carry on with the older brother schtick until it becomes embarrassing. Not ’embarrassing dad’ embarrassing: that’s the point, they aren’t channeling any fatherness.
You’ll all know one.
Even the ones that are dads don’t bring their dadness to work.
The first word of Miles Davis’ autobiography is LISTEN. He described jazz as being about “freedom and space to hear things”
I often declare that I will write a book called “Everything I Learnt About Management I Learnt From Playworking.” A bit like a preschool version of Mark McCormack’s “Things they don’t teach you at Springfield Elementary”. (But I digress,and I’m also in danger of revealing my punchline.)
🎶 You can’t improvise if you don’t listen.
🏭 You can’t manage if you don’t listen.
🗽You can’t lead if you don’t listen.
Here are somebody else’s wise words about listening: please listen…
“They are always listening. Not just to the words we say to them, but those we say in their presence to others. That is their real learning environment. When we managers take that seriously, that’s when our people begin to make us better managers, the kind who think about the words they say and the tones we use with the people in our lives. They make us work to become the managers we’ve always wanted to be, if only because that’s the sort of person we want them to be.
“Our staff don’t learn anything from obedience other than how to command and control, a dubious education at best. They learn everything else by listening (and watching, of course). Real learning requires processing, repetition, time, and experience to fully comprehend. It takes place on their schedule, not yours, which is why it can seem as if they are not listening. But they are: know it, and strive to be the manager you want them to be. That’s the real work of management.”
Donella H. Meadows
“So, what is a system? A system is a set of things—people, cells, molecules, or whatever—interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time.
A system is an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something. We can’t impose our will on a system. We can listen to what the system tells us, and discover how its properties and our values can work together to bring forth something much better than could ever be produced by our will alone.
There are no separate systems. The world is a continuum. Where to draw a boundary around a system depends on the purpose of the discussion.
We know a tremendous amount about how the world works, but not nearly enough. Our knowledge is amazing; our ignorance even more so…
You can drive a system crazy by muddying its information streams. Purposes are deduced from behavior, not from rhetoric or stated goals.
Missing information flows is one of the most common causes of system malfunction. Adding or restoring information can be a powerful intervention, usually much easier and cheaper than rebuilding physical infrastructure.
Remember, always, that everything you know, and everything everyone knows, is only a model. Get your model out there where it can be viewed. Invite others to challenge your assumptions and add their own.
Thou shalt not distort, delay, or withhold information.”
― Donella H. Meadows,
Thinking in Systems: A Primer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donella_Meadows
Donella H. Meadows (March 13, 1941 – February 20, 2001) was a pioneering American environmental scientist, teacher, and writer. She is best known as lead author of the influential book “The Limits to Growth” and “Thinking in Systems: a Primer”
“Outcome measures in research about treatment and service provision may not seem a particularly controversial or even exciting domain for citizen involvement. Although the research landscape is changing – partly as a result of engaging stakeholders in knowledge production and its effects – the design of outcome measures has been largely immune to these developments.
“The standard way of constructing such measures – for evaluating treatment outcomes and services – has serious flaws and requires an alternative that grounds them firmly in the experiences and situations of the people whose views are being solicited.”
Thank you, dear academics and researchers, for noticing!
