How Art and Play Enable Citizens to Change the World For the Better
by Nanna Amalie Dahl Play Designer, GGWCup and moderator.
Theme: What are the barriers, potentials, frames and success criteria to be aware of when creating the right frames for girls and women to play, be creative and activist? What is the sustainable development potential of art & play in work life and privately? And how can the two accelerate impact and enable citizens to #Taketheball to change the world for the better? These were some of the questions explored at the Talk Lounge during the GGWCup Finals in New York, September 2019.
Panel speaker was:
Jenn Sander Founder of the Play Atélier and leader of Burning Man’s Innovation and New Initiatives
Kely Nascimento-Deluca President of The Nascimento Foundation, documentary producer and GGWCup ambassador (TW @casakely)
Rouble Nagi Founder of Rouble Nagi art foundation and GGWCUP Dream Team Player (Twitter: @ROUBLENAGI)
Kirsten Allegri Williams Chief Marketing Officer at SAP SuccessFactors. (Twitter: @kirstenallegriw)
Below is a summary of the conversation that took place during the GGWCup NYC Finals, September 25th. The TakeTheBall-model referred to will be available soon at ggwcup.com.
Nanna: During my past year as a project leader for the GGWCup, I have been researching how participants at a GGWCup transform play into activism. The logic of the GGWCup is that becoming able to play and to act creatively is becoming able to take action. Over the past year I have realized that there seems to be 3 main conditions applying for the participating women who take the ball.
They participate in and create activities building togetherness.
They are able to speak up either by voicing their opinions within their team, communities or by being the voice of the course they are supporting.
They are co-creators or users of a HerStoryArenas – spaces designed for her.
What I would like to discuss with you today is what you see as the things factors enabling people to play and what makes people able to take action? I would like to start with you, Jenn, because you have promised to first of all share with us what you find play is.
Kirsten: I guess what I can add to this conversation is the lenses of what the humane experience means in the workplace. I think there are a lot of dimensions to add to the “conditions for play”-model in a workplace setting. First of all, we have to go beyond the fußball-tables and the entertainment features of a workplace and think about the diversion of thoughts and creativity. You have to really open your eyes of what diversity of thought really means and bring together what opens up that creativity by thinking of creating healthy conditions across ethnicity, gender, geographical and international representation and ability. (…)
Kirsten, cont:We want to be able to do meaningful work and we are moving away from an age where corporations and businesses measure success and performance on return on investment only. In this transition pivot we have to think about human connection. How can you create the culture and the psychological safety that aspires the best creativity and sustained enthusiasm in the workplace setting? If for instance your employees really were free to take up a challenge – say a sustainability challenge – how could that freedom of creativity actually create more head space to be able to challenge conventional thinking and allow people to innovate in a way that they weren’t able to do before?
Jenn: Yes for sure. And thank you for bringing us all together because I think this is a super unique dialogue that doesn’t happen very often, but it's also a really important one. So I think that especially as adults we are not playing very much. And also when we think that we are playing we are often actually just following rules of a game in which we have been told to be creative. Which in itself is great. But sometimes it doesn’t really allow for the same type of innovation in terms of breaking barriers, achieving new results and creating new cultural norms in society. And so, what I think play is, which isn’t commonly discussed, is the idea of free play. Free play is to be doing things for no reason and not being focused on the outcome. Giving yourself the freedom to get lost in time, not being afraid of looking silly, using your improvisational skills and putting imagination into your work (…)
Jenn, cont.: Bringing that spectrum of exploration and imagination into your work can be very much a part of play. And to your model about the 3 conditions for play, I think we need to make more space for the undefined and to put more focus on the unknown. That allow us to step into that mindset. And psychologically a place where freedom and connection guide our decision making.
Nanna: And now that we are also here today to address gender inequality. Kely, what do you think we should focus more on if we want more women to take the ball? Both in a literal level of making them more physically active but also in the sense of them taking actions for the Global Goals?
Kely, cont.: I think starting conversations like you do, Rouble, when you go from door is the right thing. Or host a Global Goals World Cup. The point is that these projects take the focus away from the issue so that you can talk about and address the issue. We have to go and find the unicorns in the room, that one courageous one, and then change the perception that women shouldn’t play by getting more women to play.
Kely: I seem to always be the person bringing up gender. But I think it is important to understand that play – professional play and play for fun – is traditionally the domain of men. Women in the developing countries, which is more or less all countries, do not have the free time to play. It is not expected of them and not something that they are believed to require. Their fulfillment should come from fulfilling their duties. And that is what we have to change. Because once you make someone able to play it is really hard to put that ability back in the box. Also we need to create safe spaces for women to play, because playing is one of the least unselfconscious things that you can make people do if you are doing it right. But you cannot do it if you are being preconscious (…)
Nanna: I think that leads me over to you, Rouble. You work as an artist and social activist by painting the slums of India to make them look more colorful and therefore attract citizens to take part of your work. Why are the spaces that you create important?
Rouble Nagi w/ (from left Lea Wermelin Minister for the Environment and actor & UNDP Goodwill Amb. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau.
Rouble: For me it is about being creatively courageous. Being an artist and being a social activist that is two sides of my work but I kind of walk together with them (…)
Rouble, cont.: I started this project Misaal Mumbai, Misaal India now actually, because Misaal means “setting an example”. We took our paint buckets and went to the slums. And with the whole team of my 400 team members we just entered and we started painting the walls. After two weeks we had 450 community members working with us, picking up our buckets, painting the houses and just going home to home checking if the child from that home was going to school or not. So we took almost 6500 children in one of the slums to school in that one year. And then slowly and gradually we started libraries, we started skill centers because I strongly believe women should work so they can stand on their own feet (…).
Rouble, cont.: In fact we told all our students to go back home, tell your mammas that in the evening we are going to play anything that you would like. Just for 15 minutes. And the feedback we got after 3 months is that they had a big number of all the mammas playing with their kids, going out of the box to play with the children. Earlier they would just drop their children and go back and make food, but they were like “no, we can take that 20 minutes of our cooking and homework schedule to play with our children”.
Nanna: Thank you all for your inputs. It’s been a pleasure to listen to you all. The last thing I would like you to do is to share your best advice on how to make play unfold within your areas.
Jenn, cont. And then what happens is that people go home with a new sense of agency. They go back to their neighborhoods and feel like they have the permission to create the world that they want to live in (…). So I really think that it ultimately comes down to holding a space for the unknown.
Kirsten: When you think about what creates human connection, think about what moves people. They won't remember what you said buy they’ll remember how you made them feel. And what moves us is the art, music, poetry, dance. Things that pulls us in draws us in as humans. More and more, the winners of experience economy and those who will be able to make significant impacts on global issues that are challenging our planet will be the ones who focus on bringing up the best of each of us in everything they do in their life and in their work.
Jenn: Ultimately, you create the permission for play to happen and the conditions and the environment for it to happen largely through how you communicate the entry into it. Burning Man started as an art movement but led to people experimenting with infrastructure and communities and as a result of that it turned into a participatory pop-up setting. And the driver behind that is participation. So when you told that you have to pick up a shuffle or volunteer it breaks down the barrier of engagement. Which leads to a sense of play as you can say “for a period of time I am going to be an architectural assistant. I have never done this before”. Looking at the art as a catalyst you can become what we call an entrepreneurial learner – somebody who is curious. There is a great pressure today in society to become an entrepreneur or leader or founder but really being an entrepreneurial learner is something that is accessible to everyone, no matter where you live, what resources you have access to, because it ultimately just means being curious and allowing permission for yourself psychologically to do things you have never done before (…).
Kely: I think it's so different in every culture. But the first thing you have to do is that you listen (…). And really importantly, find a team. I think that ultimately goes for any kind of human judgement: Everything is always easier with support.
See video from GGWCup NYC Finals 2019.
Go to event page and learn more about the teams.
Get social: @GGWCup #taketheball – #playdesign #freeplay #art #Erasmusplus #SAP