Day 14 - SPACE

I've been wanting to do some research alongside this challenge. So it was good to get a book out this afternoon and just enjoy reading about why play matters.

I've had "Michael Rosen's Book of Play" on my shelf for a while now - the accompanying book to the "Play Well" exhibition in London which made the case for play "as an essential tool, crucial for both children and wider society." So a good place to start. 

I remember the exhibition well. I stumbled across it whilst killing time near St Pancras Station, waiting to catch a Megabus back to Hull. Wandering near the British Library then pitching up at the Wellcome Centre after a sudden downpour. Glad to be somewhere warm and dry and as I looked around, extremely colourful. 

It was a really interesting exhibition anyway and I remember being particularly struck by a section about creating spaces in tricky places, like refugee camps, where kids could play and begin to feel safe. 

These children, for example, are Rohingya refugees at a camp in Bangladesh having fled Myanmar during the 2017 genocide. Working with artists, playworkers and therapists, they were given the chance to play again in spaces they could make their own. So out came the paints, the pencils, pens, colourful fabrics, tissue paper, scissors, glue... And from them poured out paintings, drawings, banners, lanterns, paper flowers, decorations... Each one a reminder of their Rohingya culture and of home, helping give a sense of rootedness at such an unsettledness and traumatic time.

I remember finding these picture really moving but also familiar. Taking me back to Cambodia days,  setting up an ArtSpace in a red light area. For kids who lived on the streets or whose Mums were working late there. A space where they could just come and play and draw and make it their own. 

It was good to see something similar and feel like it meant something. That it was important for the kids and their wellbeing. As Miriam Needham from The Flying Seagull Project says of their work in refugees camps in Europe: 

“Happiness matters like food, like water, like warmth, like shelter. I’ve seen the change it can bring to people, how it can make people strong just to laugh. Happiness and joy are contagious – it goes from the children to the parents out to the whole community.”

So yep, the power of play!! And joy. It's heady, belly laff,  healing stuff.

Since the exhibition, I've wanted to look into into all things play and fun and trauma and healing. And give time to reading and experimenting. And seeing where it goes. Which is why I'm so glad of this time. So glad of the space it's giving me to muse and ponder as well as make and do and play. It's great!! 

So bear with, only 36 days to go!! Looking forward to what's ahead and seeing what unfurls beyond the big 5 0 too.