Hey,
Last week I found myself deep down the rabbit hole of academic literature on the topics of play and work.
It started when I came across the term “plork" which was coined by Sister Corita Kent, who was an artist, a teacher and an activist, working at the Immaculate Heart College in California (I can’t believe she’s not better known; she seems like such an extraordinary lady and I'm not done looking into her work).
The term is the combination of “play” and “work” and is grounded in the idea that neither word fully encompass the creative art of making. A third one was needed - not work, not play, not even a mere combination of the two, but something completely new that repositions what it means to make art.
As a society, we are conditioned to see play and work as opposites: work is productive and valuable; play - particularly adult play - is of little-to-no-value and is often seen as socially unacceptable outside of a limited number of “approved” settings; sinful, even.
(Adjacent to this is the strange idea prevalent in our society that if you enjoy doing what you do, or your work improves society in some way, you shouldn’t be paid for it as much - something my fave David Graeber explores in great detail in Bullsh*t Jobs).
Scholars of play (yes it’s a thing) highlight five common key ingredients of play activity: that it is grounded in intrinsic motivation, that it is pleasurable, that it is voluntary, that it involves imagination, and that it is guided or focused by a set of rules (however loose they might be).
These key ingredients of play are often at odds with what we consider work: it is rarely voluntary, it is often not pleasurable, and it’s guided by extrinsic motivation (the need to make money).
Some work involves imagination, of course - like work in the creative industries - but that’s where the lines start to get blurry.
When - under the conditions of late stage capitalism - we put pressure on our creative activity to “produce” some sort of a result - e.g. contribute to a portfolio, the ultimate aim of which is financial gain be it from future clients or funding bodies - it’s extremely hard - if not impossible - to remain playful to make interesting work in the first place.
And yet the best creative work is often done by “playing around”, experimenting, exploring, imagining, trying and failing, starting over - and not worrying so much about the end result.
What’s the answer, then?
Well, I don’t think there’s one-size-fits-all answer, but one thing we can do is consciously cultivate our ability to be playful. Dan Castro, an animator and a researcher of plork, suggests one useful practice might be a personal playfulness manifesto (you can play with his over here, it’s fun.)
My own plork (before I knew the term) involved starting to make creative work that was not related to my creative job as a photographer - embroidery, collage, writing or even gardening (and I’ll fight anyone who says gardening is not creative). Freeing myself from any expectation of an end result is incredibly liberating and it seeps into all areas of life - creative and otherwise. I highly recommend.
Exercises in Words + Pictures is one result of my plorking around with text and image to reclaim my creativity. It was so helpful for me that I made a workshop to help others do the same (and it seems to have worked, judging by the reviews). The next round starts 12th October and I’d love for you to join.
Explore what it’s about over on my website, and ping me if you have questions or want to pay via instalments.
Antonina x
P.S. Playbour, I discovered, is an entirely different concept. It’s the sinister merging of play and work as an emerging form of labour exploitation, particularly in tech, creative and entertainment industries. We want to plork, not to playbour.
P.P.S. If you want to read the full paper that inspired this newsletter, here's the link: Plork! A foundation for playful making by Dan Castro.
Things I've got going on:
🏃♀️ Exercises in Words + Pictures (great for shaking things up if you're feeling creatively stuck, and learning new ways to work with text and image) returns for the third time, starting in October, enrolling now.
🍜 I am cooking up the next serving of my group mentoring programme The Soup; add your name to the waiting list here if you want to be the first to hear when it opens up for enrolment again.
📷 I have some last minute availability for family (or business) photoshoots in London or Surrey. Ping me a message if you'd like one before the year is out.
☕ Want to support my work? You can leave me a tip here.
