This interview came about because Brian Sutton-Smith was invited to deliver a keynote address at the 50 th Anniversary International Play Association (IPA) Conference in Cardiff, Wales, but due to failing health, he was unable to attend. The conference organisers were keen to have input from Brian and delegated Fraser Brown to conduct an interview during the 2011 conference of The Association for the Study of Play (TASP). In collaboration with Michael Patte, the President of TASP, questions were framed for the interview and shared with Brian in advance. However, those who know Brian will not be surprised to hear that on the day of the interview he simply checked that the camera was rolling, and then started talking. He stopped about an hour later, having delivered a presentation of the highest quality. Those who were present felt privileged to have been there.The interview took place in the Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play, at the Strong National Museum of Play, on April 29 th , 2011. An edited DVD of the interview was shown at the IPA Conference on Thursday July 7 th , 2011, and is available to download from: www.ipa2011.org.
______________________________________________________________________Fraser Brown & Michael Patte: Would you like to start by sharing some of your memorable childhood play experiences from Wellington, New Zealand? Brian Sutton-Smith: Sure, I'll tell you some of my own ways of playing. We used to like to go past the grocery store where there were eggs outside on sale. We'd steal a few eggs and then walk about a hundred yards along the road where there was a big advert for the movies -flicks we called them. And we'd take the eggs, I'm afraid we were very sexist, and we'd try to hit the beautiful women's faces. We did that a few times. The last time was when the proprietor came running out and chased us. I was running up the street that was very shady, and I lay down in the gutter because there was no light there and it was dark. He came hammering past but didn't catch me. I stopped taking eggs from then on.Another one was a wonderful game involving cow pots. Now a cow pot is a big round cow poop that dries on the surface but is still soft and sloppy underneath. And we had fights. You put your hand on top, scoop it out on the dry part, and then throw it at each other's faces. It was difficult as it would break and get on your clothes and your mother would go nuts. That was combined with horse dung grenades; use your imagination.One of the other great childhood New Zealand amusements happened in the forest. After World War I a lot of people were out of work and so they were put to work planting pine trees. So, all round the hills were pine trees. When we started exploring the pine tree forests we found that these were the places where lovers went. If you went quietly through the trees you could find lovers doing their thing. We would be laughing and we couldn't stop ourselves. We'd take pinecones and throw them at the lovers. Several times we'd have great contact, and a pinecon...
This article concerns a therapeutic intervention with a group of abandoned children living in a Romanian pediatric hospital. The children, ranging in age from one to ten years old, had suffered chronic neglect and abuse. They had previously spent most of their lives tied in the same cot in the same hospital ward. They were poorly fed and their nappies were rarely changed. Although able to see and hear the other abused children, they experienced little in the way of social interaction. The article focuses on the play-based methods that were employed to aid the children’s recovery, while at the same time highlighting the general benefits of this very specific therapeutic approach to children’s recovery and development. In particular, there is an exploration of concepts such as symbolic representation, negative capability, joining, and the significance of play cues. However, despite the clear value of these individually focused techniques, the article proposes the tentative hypothesis that the most powerful healing factor was the unfettered playful interaction between the children themselves. In other words, the children in a very real sense may have healed each other while playing.
If play is not part of programme specifications its importance could be lost to educators already delivering a full curriculum. Nurses could be qualifying with little or no knowledge around their role in facilitating play for their patients.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.