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8/7/2019 play betrayal cycle5
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introducing the…
PLAY BETRAYAL CYCLEdescribing how the movements for children’s play in the UK have
been betrayed, describing the cycle but not who is to blame…
START⚡ At 3 o'clock on the cycle where we won! Didn't we? Well
look at it like this: we have a point on a cycle that goes on and on -
here we have (in 2005?) the establishment of the ‘national body’,
always on limited funding from government. We then see the rapid
‘growth of a funded infrastructure’ - schemes, inishatives, proh-
jecks and ofcers and ‘development’ and ‘development
ofcers’ (and interestingly, in the case of PlayEngland, many
‘incomers’ from the professional do-goodery sector - the charitiesand quangos and trusts and foundations - not even from the play
field, a massive increase in incomers compared with the previous
NPFA and Playboard ‘infrastructures’. We also see this growth
controlled by sucking up to government, showing o to local
authorities ( producing strategies and lots of rushed plans with
silly timescales that they partly invent and partly are arm-twisted to
do) and ignoring the one part of the field that is always here and is
where play lives when it is not invited into the farmer’s garden -
the edge of the wildwood of grassroots action. We won! we get
‘targeted (allegedly massive) government money’ (and the ‘dieback’
starts, quietly, in the undergrowth…) Ofcers of the glorious
agency start using powerpoint and stop listening to play
associations and the grass roots. The national body gets leaned on
by the ministry and suddenly there’s a bandwagon - hey play could
do X, play could do Y, play could be a way of getting unemployed
‘youngsters’ a degree! Play could be funded as part of a glorious
expansion of working class access to university! Media studies
degrees for all! All shall have degrees! (Apart from Penny’s worker
who got a weeks notice that his playwork degree was cancelled
because play is waning and we can't get the tutors…)
⚡ The grumbling is big style now, in the wild wood… as existing
play organisations, play associations and play action bodies find
they can't get lottery money to continue their leading edge work,
honed by 20 years of continuous experimentation, but some
duckwit in a rural shire in the Leisure department thinks ‘I’m a
genius, lets stick playstations in a coach and it’s rural e-play and
the lottery clowns love it…
⚡ This is how the waning starts - we see, as I say, a ‘waning of
PVS’ (play voluntary sector).
Then we get the cuts. Change of government, oil crisis, war, hous
price crash, whatever - cuts, which because of the waning, aren't
e ectively opposed, because the grass roots
are dying o and the field feels betrayed by th
national body, so we land in the wasteland
again. We scurry back into the edge of the
wildwood and grizzle. Grizzle grizzle. That’s
me grizzling. Then we start the renewal (goog
David Hurst’s ‘Crisis and Renewal’ an eco-cyc
model of change) with grass roots campaignin
( I’m suggesting).
⚡ That’s where we are now - hiding in the lo
grass, watching the hunter-killers hovering
overhead, busily signing petitions. The long
march. Lobbying MPS and local councillors.
Maybe an Early Day Motion. Maybe a Review b
a nice safe unambitious politically naive MP w
was a playleader (sic), or a teacher or a sportymotivator developmenty ofcer or something
Cue pictures of dicks in ties (never laydees -
have u noticed that? always MPs being big daf
lads. We’d say reliving their boyhood but they
never were children, they are Nexus-5 vat-grown replicants, fres
from the lab, almost human. Never mind, smile, don't correct him
when he says ‘playleader’, don't wince when he says ‘youngsters’
or ‘playgroups’. Go on marches. Buy new shoes.
⚡ Just to finish a complete circle, if we continue rounfd it, which
I’m arguing we SHOULDN'T - The next phase is the tipping point
where suddenly it’s all happening - but beware hijackers! This is
the point at which bandwagoning and co-option of our cause will
happen - the point at which it starts to take o , and we lose it -
you can't read my writing but at 12noon on my diagram it says ‘c
option by nationals’ meaning other bodies, with their own agenda
getting involved. This time around we actually let our glorious
revolutionary leaders invite the vampires in - that’s why the
principled play activist Jan Cosgrove of FPFC resigned from CPC
when national children's charities, quangoid outfits like ROSPA an
local authorities were invited into the tent as friends because it
made political sense to a few people, drunk on their vision, to bu
a broad base or something).
⚡ So then government announces a new National
body..again….and around it goes....
⚡ Then we get the cuts…again…
What have we learnt?
Shall we start the renewal?
©2011 Arthur Battram, PleXity.
Feel free to copy this to anyone but don't ttake my name off it,
please or alter it unless you send me a copy - Creative common
type rules. [email protected]
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