Founded in 2005, the Come Out and Play Festival is an annual festival of street games that happens in different neighborhoods of New York City. The goal of the event is to provide a forum for people to come together and play both traditional and new types of public games. For the past five years it has gone beyond classic street games like stick ball or kick the can to include games that use public space as gamespace and alter players’ perception of their environment. The 2010 installment of the festival happened from Jun 2-4 in Brooklyn, New York. I wish I had known about it in time to help spread the word, but… there’s always next year!
Among the variety of games they think up and bring to life every year are “pervasive games” that take gaming away from the computer screen and back to the three-dimensional world; urban games such as Parkour (see Sally’s recent post about it); GPS-enabled hide & seek, and much more.
While a good number of these games are for adults only, family-friendly ones abound and are clearly marked in the festival’s program. For instance, last year the game Hidden Parks invited kids to imagine what would happen if a group of property developers wanted to ruin Central Park and they had to save it, which meant the children had to assist the preservation efforts of the Magical Wildlife Protection Agency by trying to prove fairies and dragons live there. Hmm… I think author Tom O’Leary and his daughters would have enjoyed this one…
This year, children’s book author Linda Perkins (in her spare time she is a volunteer tutor at 826NYC) and research scientist Rachel Schutt designed and organized the first Paper Airplane Derby, where contestants of all sizes and ages competed in a level playing field.
Mixing old-fashioned fun with interactive games that connect technology to public spaces, this fun-filled and eye-opening festival shows that the reality of how and where we play and what play means to us is ever-evolving.
I hope all this talk about play is inspiring you and your children to go out and perform some random acts of fun!
http://www.comeoutandplay.org
For a list of books on imagination-powered playtime, you can check this annotated list of my personal favorites, or this one from Common Sense Media.
In his Personal View for our current issue of PaperTigers, How Children Play Around the World, author Tom O’Leary describes how he recently learnt some important lessons from his daughters…
Tom is the author of RetroActive: Skip, Hop and You Don’t Stop: Games We Played (BookSurge Publishing, 2009) and also has a great blog – Games We Played – so, I have to say, it was kind of reassuring, as a parent, to read his article – but also inspiring. I really urge you to read it all the way through – it did make me chuckle; and I’m going to quote the inspiring bit here:
The participation in natural, unstructured and creative childhood play teaches our children more than any coach ever could:
In play, children learn how to resolve conflict through compromise
The simplicity of “do-over” as a method of balancing two opposing opinions during play could be a lesson for many corporate and political quarrels.
In play, children learn how to be fair
The process of selecting “It” is based on pure objectivity.
In play, children learn how to be tolerant
They learn that no player is too small, too slow or too awkward to be included in the game.
In play, children learn to adapt
Rules are introduced or adpated as needed to ensure an even playing field, or to increase the challenge for skilled players.
In play, children learn teamwork
Making a human chain in jail to give our remaining teammates a better chance to free us demonstrates our unity.
In play, children learn to trust
There is no greater ally than your playing partner.
In play, children learn to take chances
Is it possible to make it to the other side if I run now?
In play, children learn to laugh and not take themselves too seriously
It’s just a game, after all.
And in the perfect imperfection of unstructured, creative play, children are reminded of the most important thing: that they are children and that play is fun, just like it should be.
How about that as something to print out and stick on the fridge? It is so great to be reminded of this, and particularly timely for me now, as soon my two will be winding down for their school holidays. Here’s hoping it will be one they look back on as an endless summer spent playing out of doors…
Thank you, Tom, for your great Personal View.
Tim Vyner, “a reportage artist who travels the world recording sporting events as he sees them (World Cup football, Olympic Games, street soccer)” is one of the artists featured in our The Art of Play e-gallery, which is part of PaperTigers’ current focus on How Children Play Around the World. His mixed-media illustration (image#8) is from the book World Team, where he takes readers on a journey around the globe and through the world’s time zones via the world’s most popular game: soccer.
The book was published by Random House-UK and Roaring Brook Press-US in 2002, just before the beginning of that year’s World Cup. Its opening sentence “One big round world, one small round ball. Right now, more children than you can possibly imagine are playing soccer” sets the tone for the glorious slice-of-life text and illustrations of children playing soccer on fields, beaches and streets across the globe.
On the occasion of the book’s release, Random House put together a mini-website for it. In the section “The Making of the Book” we find a picture of Tim’s journal, where as a six-year-old he wrote and illustrated a story about an England vs Brazil game that took place during the 1970 FIFA World Cup. In the section “Paintings”, Tim comments on all the images, by country, and says of South Africa (remember: he wrote this in 2002):
South Africa is one of the emerging African football nations. They have won the rugby world cup and the cricket world cup. Will they be the first African nation to win the Soccer World Cup? Soccer in South Africa is played as much by black Africans as white Africans and is really important in the development of the new South Africa.
Will South Africa win the 2010 World Cup? I guess we’ll find out the answer to that in a few weeks…
Tim Vyner is currently “recording the changing skyline of London”, in preparation for the 2012 Olympic Games.
