Beginning again, again
The last time I posted on this blog was November 2024, which might contravene my ambition to write once a week. Since then, a lot has happened: I wrote a thesis, I had a viva, I passed the viva, I got awarded a PhD, I had my first public exhibition, I cycled 938km to Munich, got offered a Post-doctoral research fellowship at the University of Edinburgh, had my first peer-reviewed research article published attended two conferences, one of which I presented at.
It's been busy.
So when I sat down to think about what a good post would be to restart the blog - which I do want to keep up as a way of carrying on my research - I was at a bit of a loss. There is almost so much to talk about, that the easier thing to do is not talk about anything at all. It's been so long that there's no way I can create a stylish segue back into the realm of the blog.
But that wouldn't be in the spirit of play, would it? The fear of failure, of something not being good, rather than just doing the thing. So, this is it - the first post of a new host of posts.
But there is one thing I have been thinking about. I attended two very different conferences in the last fortnight - the Playful Learning Conference, and the Society for Animation Studies conference (where I delivered my paper Re:frames - A Manifesto for Playfulness in Animation Education). But one thing struck me as being common to both: that at both, there in discussion with other delegates, there seemed to me to be little discussion as to what playfulness actually is. Not definitively - I mean at all. This was particularly surprising at the PLC, where there is lots of discussion about play and different activities that can be used in an educational context - but not a lot of discussion as to what that is, what effect that is having, or even what needs to happen in order to support people coming to these activities ready and willing to play.
Reflecting on the last 9 months makes me think about reflecting in general. I wonder if perhaps we all need to be reflecting on whether we're actually placing as much importance on playfulness as we think we are. Full disclosure, I'm not sure who 'we' is in this scenario. But perhaps that's for another blog post.
Now. Shall we play something?