Creative Play

I've been recording myself and my daughter whilst we play, she's very much into lego at the moment, but she uses her small figurines instead of the lego mini figures, I think this is great, it means that she has a whole bunch of different toys form different places and shows and films or whatever, animals and all kinds of different characters to inhabit her worlds. Anyway, I've used these audio recordings in my audio piece for the performance, distorting her voice whilst she's playing, playing it backwards etc.. This will play over me doing the performance piece, a slightly more abstract way than I've worked before, I seem to want to have a reason for everything to exist, I think it's from a film making background, probably more so a screenwriting background, with everything being so clearly written in black and white before shooting the film, there's not much room for things that don't make sense. So it's only a little thing, but to me it's a big step in a much more abstract way of thinking and working.

Delving into this world of creativity and the way that children think and behave has really got me thinking about creative education, and I stumbled upon a great Netflix series just as I was discovering all this, it's called 'Abstract: The art of design', each episode is a deep look into a designer or artists creative process. I haven't gotten through them all yet, but there are some note worthy ones so far, most inspiring to me is the one on Cas Holman, called Design for play. I've watched this 45 minute episode in full 3 times, and skimmed it a few times more. I'm completely blown away by Cas's creative process, the way she works so visually and creatively, and how deeply she feels about creative play for children and adults, and how important it is that young people are not stuck in class rooms, and are outside building and being creative through play.

"When I design toys I want children to create from their imaginations rather than following instructions. If I were to give kids a set of parts and tell them to build a car, there would be a right and a wrong answer, they already have an understanding of what a car is - its a finished idea. On the other hand, if I give them the bits and pieces and say build a way to get to school then there's room for for many idea's, then they could make a side walk, or a rocket launcher, or a bird saddle. My work as a designer is to give then the tools so that they are free to imagine, explore ideas and invent new things.."

It seems so simple, but it speaks to me on a hundred different levels, even as far as how Cas explains her job role, she says "I don't design toys, I design for the circumstances of play to arise".

"If we can play together, we can live together"