Edited by Pat Kane (email)


:: They Shut You Up, Your Mum and Dad ::

Confusing times in the kidult wars. Do adults fear and resent kids? Or do adults want to return to childhood as much as possible?

A report last week from the UK's Children's Society claimed that "children are being prevented from playing outdoors by intolerant adults who claim they cause a noise or a nuisance". Amid the usual barrage of sample study statistics, some great and grumpy details:

One plan in Oxfordshire to set up a netball hoop on a village green was blocked because residents did not want to attract children...
There are 115 "No ball games" signs on one housing estate in Stockport, Greater Manchester...
[The report] also cited the case of an eight-year-old girl in west Somerset who was stopped from cycling down her street because a neighbour complained the wheels squeaked.
In another case, it said an irate neighbour burst a ball belonging to a three-year-old boy every time it bounced over her hedge.

The Guardian editorial notes that government policy is already aiming to build a multitude of new public parks, and hopes their success will set a standard for others.

But the play-ethical question is surely more than infrastructural: as the recent Demos report put it, it's about a culture that welcomes children in all their complexity and energy, rather than always seeking to control or pathologize them.

If adults in power developed (in the words of Rebecca Abrams) a profound "childness" (as distinct from childishness) - meaning an openness to the new, a willingness to experiment, a faith in progress - could this be a significant motivation to reform, in our education, organisations and communities?

There are signs that younger parents are beginning to forge new spaces where they can be "in play and at play" with their children, amongst their peers - see this article, 'Chill out: take the kids clubbing' in the Telegraph (not yet perfect, as the details in the article show).

Yet when enlightenment fundamentalists like the people around Spiked and the Institute of Ideas berate the playful softening of adult authority as "infantilsation" - exemplified by this piece, 'The Children Who Won't Grow Up' from Frank Furedi - then it's clear that we need a mature, multi-accented vision of what play means, both for adults and children, more than ever (see my recent columns for the San Franscican blog Brainwaves). Otherwise we'll be caught up in the same old dualities.

Might not "unruly" children, and "kidult" adults, have a better conversation than this - based on their mutual interest in play forms? And aren't there the best of psychological reasons for doing so?


:: Playa Ethics ::

Promised for a while that I'll engage with the significance of play in hip hop and African-American culture (and its powerful critique of the work ethic). But it's such a huge and interesting topic that I'm content to amass the links through the journals, and make sure I'll grapple with it properly at some future date.

How Hip-Hop Holds Blacks Back - John McWhorter "Anyone who insists that hip-hop is an urgent “critique of a society that produces the need for the thug persona”(Professor Eric Dyson) — step back and ask himself just where, exactly, the civil rights–era blacks might have gone wrong in lacking a hip-hop revolution. They created the world of equality, striving, and success I live and thrive in. Hip-hop creates nothing." Though Nobel prize winner in economics Gary Becker suggests that 'levelling the economic playing field' for young black males may involve drugs decriminalisation.

Where You're At: Notes from the Frontline of a Hip-Hop Planet - Patrick Neate "Worldwide, the gap between rich and poor, powerful and powerless... is widening by the day, and hip-hop is one of the few cultural forms that successfully bridges that gap on a global stage." More reviews here. Though does this exuberant young fan improve or disprove the thesis? (wmv file) Some lyrical insight into his predicament.

:: Ludology News ::

The computer-games intelligentsia continues to grow...and we're doing our bit. Come to our 'Playsalon' at Dundee Contemporary Arts on September 11th (ominous and appropriate date), titled 'More than a Game: The Ethics of Play'. With guests from the Beck's Futures 2003 finalists Inventory, and Vis Games (creators of 'State of Emergency').

And in the meantime, some ludology: Penetrating new books about digital play and simulation and learning... Conferences like 'The State of Play: Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds' at New York University Law School, or 'Power Up: Computer Games, Ideology and Play' in Bristol... Ambitious first-principles papers on such topics as an anatomy of games, and maturity and play... All this as the new Microsoft X-Box campaign takes an even more play-ethical turn than before: new slogan - 'It's Good To Play Together'... And has the most intellectual computer game ever just come out - 'Republic: The Revolution'?


:: Play Times ::

Bumper Summer 'Profound Fun' Issue!

(with thanks to Bernie DeKoven at DeepFun)

Mind Sports Olympiad, 16th August Manchester Play everything from Abalone to Twixt.
Sorting People, from PBS How the "racial profiling" game is often misleading

Taprats Computer-generated Islamic star patterns
You Can't Touch This (But We Already Have): Illegal Art Art playing fast and loose with commercial brands. Could Todd Haynes make his Barbie-led Karen Carpenter epic Superstar these days?

High-stakes poker Now everybody wants their geopolitical card games
The Tricycle: Reloaded Try the 'Trikke', and burn way more calories than a Segway.

The Terminator Terminated "Californians will not be trifled with!"
Fun is Good Friend of the Play Ethic Douglas Rushkoff explores his own theories of ethical play


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