The Play Ethic

Dallas Lecture: From Worker to Player

Welcome to all those who attended my Dallas Lecture last night, delivered in the quite humbling Trades Hall in Glasgow, on the shift "From Worker to Player" (the full text is in 'extended post' below).

This was a great week to address a business audience in my home town about the struggle between a work ethic and a play ethic, as there had been a bit of a stushie about 'workshy Glaswegians' thinking service jobs were beneath them, revealed in a report by the Scottish Chambers of Commerce this week. But my talk also allowed me to make some long over-due connections between my own music practice and the 'liberal arts' of management, as outlined by the late Peter Drucker.

The questions afterwards were informed and illuminating, and I hope some of you will repeat your points in the comments box below.

No Respect?

Just a heads-up to my consultancy partner Indra Adnan, who's now blogging regularly on our New Integrity blog. She's just posted on the UK government's new 'Respect' agenda, Blair's big plan to improve standards of public behaviour. I've commented there by citing quotes from Richard Sennett's interview in the Guardian, author of the book that Blair is supposed to have been inspired by (but has clearly entirely misread). My own take is very similar to Indra's - 'respect' (the invocation of every young playa on the streets) is too large and complex an aspiration to be reduced to yet another electoral pitch to the culture of contentment.

Largs Elegy

In the midst of a New Year's computer tidy-up, I keep coming across pre-edited copies of old newspaper articles of mine. There's so many of them, and I'm proud enough of them, that I'm going to start posting a few pieces - play-ethic related, if only tangentially - on this site.

First up is an essay I did for the Scottish edition of the Sunday Times in August 2003, about my experience and memories of family holidays in Scottish seaside towns (in extended post below). My theoretical dislike of the work-leisure/work-life dichotomy (I prefer the notion of a play-care continuum) doesn't blind me to the richness of holidays. This piece is closer to Tom Hodgkinson's idea of the vacation as a space of idleness, a chance to re-evaluate the structures of our productive, useful life. And also, to do that most restorative of play activities: be present with one's children, fully and unreservedly.

My big idea for 2006...

...Close down the schools (and open up the city). My old paper the Sunday Herald asked me to come  with a wizard policy wheeze for their 2006 supplement, and my piece opened their 'Big Ideas' section (on extended post below). It's partly based on research I've been doing for Urban Learning Space in Glasgow - report coming soon - but also is inspired by that visionary last chapter in Ivan Illich's 1970 classic Deschooling Society, 'the Learning Web', as well as continuing work in cutting-edge education from people like Stephen Heppell and Nesta Future Lab. Appreciate all comments.