Playful Methods To Cultivate Playful Attributes

zuki Stewart Intro (enhanced): 00:00:05

Hello.

zuki Stewart Intro (enhanced): 00:00:05

Welcome to the show.

zuki Stewart Intro (enhanced): 00:00:07

I'm Suki Stewart from playfield, a startup helping organizations to enable

zuki Stewart Intro (enhanced): 00:00:10

everyone to rediscover their creativity through playful wonder and serendipity.

Lucy Taylor Intro: 00:00:15

And I'm Lucy Taylor from Mate Work Play an organization

Lucy Taylor Intro: 00:00:18

on a mission to use the power of play to unlock potential and possibility.

Lucy Taylor Intro: 00:00:23

Together we are.

Lucy Taylor Intro: 00:00:24

Why Play Works, the podcast that speaks to people radically reshaping work as play.

Lucy Taylor Intro: 00:00:30

Tzuki Stewart Intro (enhanced): Today I have the pleasure of speaking

Lucy Taylor Intro: 00:00:32

with Lucy Hawthorne, a campaigner at heart and founder of Climate

Lucy Taylor Intro: 00:00:36

Play through play-based programs.

Lucy Taylor Intro: 00:00:39

She helps make it safe, light, and fun for people to face climate change.

Lucy Taylor Intro: 00:00:44

Combining Lego with climate psychology and social change

Lucy Taylor Intro: 00:00:47

theory, Lucy helps organizations to engage more honestly, deeply,

Lucy Taylor Intro: 00:00:52

and creatively with climate change.

Lucy Taylor Intro: 00:00:54

Whether they're just getting started or have gotten stuck.

Lucy Taylor Intro: 00:00:57

Having spent a while in the NGO scene, she became concerned that the

Lucy Taylor Intro: 00:01:01

heaviness of the conversation was affecting people's energy to act.

Lucy Taylor Intro: 00:01:05

As a qualified coach and Lego Serious play.

Lucy Taylor Intro: 00:01:08

Facilitator, Lucy now challenges the norm of serious seriousness as

Lucy Taylor Intro: 00:01:13

the best way to get things done.

zuki Stewart Intro (enhanced): 00:01:15

In our conversation today, we explore

zuki Stewart Intro (enhanced): 00:01:17

the significance of playfulness when engaging with serious topics.

zuki Stewart Intro (enhanced): 00:01:21

Lego as a medium to understand and articulate ideas, feelings, and

zuki Stewart Intro (enhanced): 00:01:24

beliefs more honestly and simply, and the relationship between play

zuki Stewart Intro (enhanced): 00:01:28

and gamification in learning.

zuki Stewart Intro (enhanced): 00:01:30

We hope you enjoy.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:01:37

Hi Lucy.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:01:38

It's so great to have you.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:01:39

Thanks so much for coming on today.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:01:40

Hello.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:01:41

Thanks very much for inviting me.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:01:42

I'm very excited to talk about all things play.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:01:46

So let's kick off.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:01:47

I'd love to hear what the word play means to you.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:01:50

Well.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:01:51

I guess the word that comes to mind for me is mischief, followed by

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:01:55

experimentation and, but I guess that's for me how I like to play.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:02:01

I guess the thing with play is it's obviously there's two sides of it, right?

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:02:05

So there's, play is a state of mind or playfulness is a state

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:02:09

of mind and a way of being.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:02:11

and I think that's really important as an attribute to develop, which

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:02:14

I'm sure we might talk about that.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:02:16

There's obviously play as approaches and methods, and I'm

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:02:21

a learning, specialist I guess.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:02:23

So I'm interested in how we use playful methods to cultivate playful attributes.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:02:30

Absolutely.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:02:30

I can't resist asking you to unpack the mischief a little bit.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:02:33

So maybe, and maybe that leads me to the next question, which is what is your

Tzuki Stewart: 00:02:36

earliest or favorite memory of play?

Tzuki Stewart: 00:02:38

and has mischief always been a part of that?

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:02:41

I guess I, I think I've always been one of those people

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:02:43

that's, I think I've always been a sort of young child and an old lady trapped

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:02:48

in an adult's body, to be honest.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:02:50

So I think, the mischief thing is, For me, it's all about having that

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:02:55

glint in your eye and a cheeky grin.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:02:57

so I think often when people think about play, they, they think about

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:03:01

running round really fast or being super extroverted, but for me it's

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:03:05

actually more about, a kind of, a little bit of a sense of humor with things.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:03:10

and I guess I've always been like that really of slightly cheeky

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:03:13

and irreverent, but never too provocative, which I guess is the.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:03:17

The concept of my work, which I'm sure we'll come onto, but my earliest memories,

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:03:22

my very earliest memory, that comes to mind is standing in a garden with

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:03:29

one of my uncles and he had a bucket.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:03:32

I probably would've been about four, I think, and he had a bucket

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:03:36

with water, and he was just simply swinging the bucket around, insert.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:03:41

And my four year old little brain could not understand how

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:03:45

the water was not falling out.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:03:47

Like I just couldn't get it.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:03:49

And I really remember having this probably very dangerous game of trying to, as

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:03:54

he swung the bucket round of trying to get my hand in there and see if I

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:03:58

could get the water out, which, wasn't particularly good child supervision.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:04:03

But I guess there's something there about just raw curiosity

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:04:07

and a bit of a challenge.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:04:09

so I was asked as a real kid, but then there's another memory that

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:04:11

comes into mind of being a little bit older, probably a teenager actually.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:04:17

And this is an example I give, in some of my work is as me and my lifelong best

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:04:23

friend, my cousin in the summer holidays.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:04:26

and this is, before, The world went super digital, I guess.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:04:29

and what we would do is we would call each other up on the landline.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:04:33

We'd get an A to Z of wall the Hampton out, and we'd pick a random page, and

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:04:38

then we'd pick a, you know, one of us would pick a letter and one of us would

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:04:41

pick a number, and then we'd walk from our own respective sides of the town to

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:04:46

try and find each other in the square

Tzuki Stewart: 00:04:48

Wow.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:04:50

because I'm a massive geek.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:04:52

and I love maps.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:04:53

But I think that also is just for me, plays about, it's about exploration at

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:04:58

just being curious and just finding stuff out and a little bit of a challenge.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:05:03

It's quite niche.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:05:04

It's a niche example.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:05:05

I don't think anybody else on your podcast will have said that one.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:05:08

I'm here for the niche.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:05:10

Is your cousin as big a fan of maps and challenge and exploration as well.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:05:14

She's oh, really nice again.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:05:16

I mean, I think he

Tzuki Stewart: 00:05:17

Oh, sorry.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:05:17

I dunno why I

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:05:18

Yeah, that's all right.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:05:19

He still holds the same curiosity.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:05:21

And we have talked at various points of reigniting this challenge, without

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:05:27

smartphones, but I think people have, invented that in TV game shows.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:05:30

But we were there first.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:05:31

you were the OGs.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:05:33

Amazing.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:05:33

Thank you so much for sharing that.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:05:35

So tell me more about Climate Play and how it came to be born.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:05:41

thanks.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:05:42

So I guess climate play is an antidote.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:05:46

To the norm of serious seriousness

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:05:49

when we think around climate change and sustainability.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:05:52

and in essence it's a learning and development organization that tries

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:05:56

to help unlock more radical climate action through play and playfulness.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:06:03

So that's the concept of it.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:06:04

And the reasoning for it is that I'm trying to make it, I say I'm trying

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:06:08

to make it safe, light, and fun for people to face climate change.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:06:13

So that people can engage more deeply, honestly, and creatively.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:06:16

So that's my reasoning behind it really.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:06:19

and I guess the, or the origins of that, I'll talk a bit about what that

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:06:22

physically looks like in a minute.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:06:24

But the origins of that came very much from my experiences of working as an

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:06:28

environmental campaigner and a social issues campaigner for about 15 years.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:06:33

Really.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:06:35

And at the point when I was most successful, I became most jaded.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:06:39

So I was really heavily involved in the last couple of years, like the

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:06:43

key kind of turning point stages of theban fracking in the uk.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:06:47

we did a great job and we won, and that is a big, that's a huge achievement.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:06:52

but I really left, I was left with a couple of really key reflections

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:06:56

and one is that we'd become really good at playing the games politics.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:07:00

And we were really good at, influencing, but ultimately what we were doing is

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:07:05

moving the pieces of self-interest around the board rather than deeply

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:07:09

changing people's minds and hearts on the issues and thinking that in regards

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:07:14

to our political targets, but also just really noticing that the way in

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:07:19

which we were trying to engage people.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:07:22

Felt like we were either fearing or forcing them into action rather

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:07:27

than organically or naturally leading people towards us.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:07:31

And so climate play, I try to think about, well, how can I create conversations

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:07:36

and events and actions that people actually want to be involved in rather

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:07:41

than only feeling like they should?

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:07:43

And I guess the third aspect of it is understanding that in some ways the

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:07:48

environmental movement, and I think that's probably the case for other movements,

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:07:52

has a real problem with perfectionism.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:07:55

Like a really serious and corrosive problem with perfectionism and needing

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:08:00

to get everything right and to be able to hold your head up high because

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:08:04

you've done things in the right way.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:08:06

And unfortunately, it just polarizes people and it puts 'em off.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:08:10

So climate play is very much born from a kind of pragmatic belief of if we

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:08:14

can find ways of helping people to engage, you will achieve better impact.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:08:21

So that's the kind of backdrop of it.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:08:23

so there's a nice, big exciting, pitch to it.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:08:25

And then practically what that means is that I run workshops, I run play-based

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:08:30

workshops with a lot of Lego to help businesses and other organizations.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:08:36

Work out the human barriers to action.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:08:38

So we know that climate change is a bad thing, but how do we

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:08:42

help people move towards action and create a space for people to

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:08:46

engage in the human dynamics of it?

Tzuki Stewart: 00:08:48

I love that point around perfectionism immobilizing

Tzuki Stewart: 00:08:51

us and I'll can hear more about it.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:08:53

you also use the term plagiarism I'd love to hear more.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:08:58

What does that mean?

Tzuki Stewart: 00:08:59

Unpack that for us.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:09:00

so I spent many years working kind of activist or

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:09:03

campaigning spaces, and I guess that piece around perfectionism, resonates

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:09:07

here cuz I think playfulness and perfectionism are complete opposites.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:09:11

And so if I'm being conceptual, I think my work is quite countercultural in that way.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:09:17

But the.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:09:18

the word pla aist, I've slightly nicked it from somebody else.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:09:21

And there's a brilliant woman called, Yana Burra Tia, and she's got a fantastic

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:09:26

Ted talk on activist burnout, which I would definitely recommend, you watching.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:09:30

And she's a human rights activist and she calls herself a PLA activist.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:09:34

and in that talk, she's got this brilliant quote to me that summarizes the whole

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:09:38

point, which is that our outcomes are not meant to be playful, but our process is.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:09:44

So to me, plagiarism is about how do you hold the gravity and the seriousness of

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:09:49

the issues that you're engaging with, whatever your context, but understand and

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:09:54

allow for different ways of achieving the

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:09:57

outcomes.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:09:59

Now, sometimes we do need to be really stoic, and sometimes we do,

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:10:02

of course, need to be really serious.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:10:04

But I think there's just something about thinking about

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:10:08

what are the most effective ways.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:10:10

To get people involved, help them stay involved, and to

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:10:14

become more deeply involved.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:10:16

And so much of that is about culture and how we interact with each other.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:10:20

So a lot of my work is about trying to create an atmosphere that's conducive, and

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:10:26

that is with a very pragmatic head on it.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:10:28

So it's not saying, don't come to one of my workshops for escapism,

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:10:32

but do confer to one of my workshops if you want to engage.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:10:36

That you are scared of doing it in the way that we're, we are used to.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:10:41

and so I guess some of the thing with plagiarism or play-based activism

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:10:45

is just thinking about, what is it that you are trying to achieve and

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:10:50

being really clear on your focus?

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:10:52

And if you can try and find ways of playfully engaging people to

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:10:56

get involved in that, you are likely to be more effective.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:10:59

So whether you're organizing a.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:11:01

Protest March or a party in your village square.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:11:05

If you can use play in a way to help engage people in the way that you need to,

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:11:10

you are probably gonna be more effective.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:11:13

Yeah, I think the implications of that go so far and wide

Tzuki Stewart: 00:11:16

the decoupling of process by which we reach an outcome and the outcome itself,

Tzuki Stewart: 00:11:21

and that's has huge implications.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:11:23

Yeah, and it's quite, it's counterintuitive sometimes, and

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:11:26

I guess that's where the balance of.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:11:28

serious and light and silly, serious, and these things fall in.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:11:33

But I think also that there's a lot of people that are trying not to

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:11:39

be escapist about the issues, but they are definitely escapist about

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:11:44

the way in which they are engaged.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:11:47

And so I become a bit of a, a bit obsessed with this approach of how do we engage

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:11:52

people on things that matter to them.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:11:55

Because we know there's loads of evidence.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:11:57

It constantly comes out about how people want to engage in line with their values.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:12:02

And on the subject of climate change, we

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:12:05

know that overwhelmingly in the UK here, we know overwhelmingly

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:12:09

people support greener action.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:12:11

they want to

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:12:12

achieve net zero, they want it, but we just need to be really

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:12:16

pragmatic on how we can help people engage in the subjects that is.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:12:20

Polarizing.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:12:21

Scary, annoying.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:12:24

It is annoying.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:12:25

It's very annoying.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:12:28

you mentioned how you, that you used Lego as part of your

Tzuki Stewart: 00:12:30

work, so I'd love to bring that to life.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:12:32

Do you have some examples that you can share in terms of how

Tzuki Stewart: 00:12:36

you use Lego in your workshops?

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:12:39

So I use a lot of Lego serious play, but I, you

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:12:41

know, I adapt it to the context.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:12:43

So I'm a little bit flexible with it.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:12:45

the key thing with Lego is that obviously it's based around metaphor

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:12:48

and storytelling, but that particularly, it's really good for creating a safer

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:12:54

conversation because the Lego works like an intermediary cuz you build into your

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:12:58

Lego and then you describe your model.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:13:01

And that just allows a little bit, there's an extra step of

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:13:04

psychological safety for people.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:13:06

So a lot of my work is based around less of the technical

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:13:10

aspects around climate change.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:13:12

So I don't tend to do work with people that's, anything technical at all.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:13:17

It's more about how people engage with each other because it's

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:13:20

really breakthrough at surfacing assumptions, beliefs, values, feelings.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:13:28

So a couple of examples I can give of when I've worked with companies and have really

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:13:32

quite significant results of, one company.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:13:35

For example, I was brought in by the sustainability lead to

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:13:39

try and see if, we could create more of a, an organization wide

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:13:44

conversation around climate change and

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:13:47

brilliant leadership team and other, senior staff.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:13:50

And so we ran, a half day workshop.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:13:52

in three and a half hours, what can you do?

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:13:54

And using Lego as a way to help people reflect on their piece of the puzzle

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:14:00

within the organization, and then to bring that together collaboratively

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:14:05

and see where everybody else's pieces of the puzzle fit together.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:14:10

we were able to, in three, three and a half hours, fundamentally look at the

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:14:14

business model of the organization and say, actually, how well aligned is it

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:14:18

to their values around sustainability?

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:14:21

And so that has a very practical dimension to it.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:14:25

But really the secret there was it just helped 'em communicate.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:14:30

It just helped 'em communicate and it helped them to, understand the stresses

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:14:35

and challenges and the fears that they had, the assumptions they had around how

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:14:39

they might be judged with by their peers.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:14:42

All of that really superhuman stuff.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:14:44

And by the end of it, essentially they'd.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:14:47

Come to a conclusion that they were gonna shift their business model

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:14:51

away from flights and towards trains.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:14:53

and that's in three and a half hours.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:14:54

And that's just one example.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:14:56

there's plenty of other ways in which I've used it, so around

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:15:00

this theme of human connections.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:15:02

So I've done quite a bit of work with, say, sustainability consultants

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:15:06

or freelancers and dealing with the very human challenges of

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:15:10

isolation and needing community.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:15:12

Thinking about how do they find the energy to keep, doing what they're doing?

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:15:18

So the trick is really understanding, the needs of those groups.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:15:23

So what are their barriers to action?

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:15:25

And

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:15:25

then just literally designing playful opportunities for them to

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:15:29

explore it, where you're taking the sting out of their reality.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:15:34

and you give them a prompt and kind of Lego

Tzuki Stewart: 00:15:37

blocks to, to build something that manifests how they might be.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:15:41

Feeling without the need for articulation through words.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:15:44

Yeah, cuz there's massive limitations, with language.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:15:47

But the principle with the Lego series play, the key principle

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:15:49

is that each brick is a metaphor.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:15:52

So you take people through a process of getting them used to playings

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:15:55

Lego again, cause most people have forgotten unless they've got kids.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:15:59

And you take them through a process where they get used to that again and

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:16:02

you stretch their kind of metaphorical muscles and their storytelling muscles.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:16:06

And then you just go through processes where you ask some very sharp questions.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:16:11

So you need

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:16:12

to know your crowd very well here.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:16:14

And a lot of this is really just about good facilitation.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:16:16

As much as

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:16:17

it is play methods, you know, really have done your work and you ask them

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:16:21

the right questions, people build their answers, and then everybody shares.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:16:25

So you get a real brilliant reduction of hierarchy because

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:16:30

everyone builds, everyone shares.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:16:32

And so it's a very kind of collaborative.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:16:35

Form of play.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:16:36

so the main thing I tend to do is Lego.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:16:38

And the reason for that is because it's got a very low barrier for entry.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:16:43

So I'm all about making play accessible.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:16:45

So people are afraid of climate change and they're afraid of playing

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:16:48

as an adult because they're worried they won't be taken seriously.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:16:52

So there's loads of other playful interventions.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:16:55

there's thousands of different ways we can approach things, but

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:16:58

there is just something about the familiarity and ease of their going.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:17:02

That just allows people in, which is why I tend to overuse it possibly.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:17:09

I'm not sure it's possible to use that.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:17:12

And you've mentioned.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:17:14

Earlier in our conversation, the kind of tension that does exist between this idea

Tzuki Stewart: 00:17:18

of being playful with your methods and what feels like serious weighty topics.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:17:24

So how do you work with maybe your own discomfort around that,

Tzuki Stewart: 00:17:28

or especially imagine others discomfort around that tension.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:17:32

A similar tension that a lot of people working in play will

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:17:35

have, because whether you are working on, say, leadership programs in play,

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:17:40

it's all about the notion of needing to be serious you know, that norm of

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:17:44

serious seriousness I mentioned it's just born from, it's born from capitalism

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:17:50

essentially.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:17:51

and how we're replicating that in all.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:17:53

Corners of our life.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:17:55

I think I get a mix of the way that people engage with my work is quite mixed.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:18:00

Some people are like magnetized to it and they get it really quickly

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:18:05

and they're just up for a bit of joy and a bit of experimentation.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:18:08

Other people are a bit more suspicious, so guess that plays out.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:18:14

Most commonly when I'm working for an organization and the

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:18:17

attendees themselves haven't necessarily consented to play in the

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:18:21

same way.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:18:22

yes.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:18:22

this is a very familiar facilitator's

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:18:24

challenge.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:18:26

Generally what happens there is that people soften after a bit

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:18:31

when they see that it works.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:18:33

And when they see that they don't have to be silly, because

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:18:36

I don't push it too far, really,

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:18:38

they see the value of it and ultimately people do tend to follow their peers.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:18:44

so I guess those, you know, those questions are.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:18:47

Are a challenge, but I think I've been a bit surprised really,

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:18:50

that I thought I would get more kickback than I actually do.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:18:56

I definitely get rolled eyes, and I wouldn't say it, it clicks with

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:19:01

everybody, but does it have to, there's a million different ways we

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:19:05

can approach things and for me, you asked about how this works for me is.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:19:12

This, the development of this line of work has been really helpful

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:19:16

for me of understanding my role

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:19:18

and how I contribute to these really big issues.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:19:22

And so for me it's really quite settling in a way to understand that this is

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:19:28

what I can do, this is what I can't do.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:19:30

And actually if trying to contribute by making some spaces that make it

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:19:35

a bit more helpful and conducive for people is quite helpful.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:19:38

I guess just one other point is around, I mentioned psychological

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:19:42

safety before, so people are afraid of both dimensions of my work.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:19:48

And so in the way in which I design sessions and I guess the tone

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:19:52

through which I try to communicate with people is just about trying to

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:19:55

help people lower their barriers.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:19:57

So practically as a facilitator, I really think about room dynamics, the dynamics

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:20:03

of how it's facilitated, who speaks when, what my role is, all of that stuff.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:20:08

So you're thinking about power and those questions, but also just making sure you

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:20:13

don't, people don't walk into the room and then suddenly you make them put on a

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:20:16

silly hat and start dancing on the tables.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:20:19

Yeah.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:20:20

And alienate.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:20:21

Yeah,

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:20:21

It's not a wedding reception.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:20:22

That's such an interesting point that both sides of the coin

Tzuki Stewart: 00:20:25

that you're working with can feel daunting, even if it's not intended to.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:20:30

And that's a really interesting point that there's a.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:20:34

For some people, there'll be a double challenge in that.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:20:36

And I guess it comes back to the thing around

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:20:38

play being, something to develop.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:20:41

it's about it being a skill or an attribute to develop, to be willing to try

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:20:46

and develop and do that in your own way.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:20:49

So I very much think about playfulness being a real key kind

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:20:55

of 21st century attribute in the same way that we think about the

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:20:59

other buzzwords around resilience or ability to deal with uncertainty.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:21:04

Because, the earth is moving very fast beneath our feet and

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:21:08

we need to be on our tippy toes.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:21:10

So being able to practice playfulness is.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:21:15

Is just an ongoing journey, and I'm definitely included in that myself.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:21:19

Yeah, absolutely.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:21:20

Me too.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:21:21

so yeah, let's go there.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:21:23

Why do you think the.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:21:25

Ability to engage in playfulness using playful methods of working is important

Tzuki Stewart: 00:21:30

both today and into the future.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:21:33

I suppose there's just something about being lightfoot about it.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:21:37

So if everything we did was completely playful, it would be a bit of a problem.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:21:42

So in the context of climate change, in no way just to let

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:21:46

make, let me make this very clear.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:21:48

I do not think that we should only talk about climate change through the

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:21:52

medium of Lego because sometimes we need much more kind of hardline actions.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:21:58

But there is just something about creating spaces where you can experiment and try

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:22:03

stuff without worrying about consequences.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:22:06

Now that feels counter-cultural on issues like, racial equity or climate

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:22:12

change because there's a real poverty, because there's a huge sense of urgency.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:22:17

But it's about being willing to experiment and try things and just

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:22:21

see what happens and learn as you go.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:22:23

So it's very strong connections with Carol Dweck, growth mindset stuff.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:22:29

so the ability to just experiment and see what you learned and then that.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:22:34

Ladder or the steps between play creativity and innovation is that if

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:22:39

you can give yourself more space to try stuff without worrying whether

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:22:45

it's gonna work or not, you'll, whatever you do end up investing

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:22:48

in is more likely to work better.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:22:51

but I also think there's just something about trying to.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:22:54

Hold the seriousness without being utterly miserable at the same time because it,

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:23:00

the seriousness isn't gonna go away, and that takes a lot of guts, I think.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:23:06

And do you think this need to be light footed,

Tzuki Stewart: 00:23:08

create space for experimentation, try different ways of doing things?

Tzuki Stewart: 00:23:12

Do you think we're in a chapter of history where that's more required than before?

Tzuki Stewart: 00:23:16

Or do you think it, this would always have been a kind of helpful intervention?

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:23:21

but one of my other childhood play fantasies was

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:23:23

totally time machine, so I would love to go back and see whether our world actually

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:23:29

bears a lot of similarity in some ways.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:23:32

but yeah, things are changing really fast.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:23:34

we're in a state of rapid change on literally all fronts, in terms

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:23:39

of our social norms, in terms of our global connectiveness and

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:23:43

cultural overlaps and, technology.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:23:46

Everything is so fast.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:23:48

And so the skill of being able to hold complexity and adapt

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:23:56

is just really important.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:23:57

And I guess to me, playfulness is about how you do that, but with

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:24:00

possibly a smile on your face.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:24:03

but this is all, it's all conceptual stuff, but I think it

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:24:06

is, you can boil that down really to willingness to experiment.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:24:11

And you've mentioned before, gamification versus play and

Tzuki Stewart: 00:24:15

learning environments and that is something that I've encountered lot

Tzuki Stewart: 00:24:17

people thinking when you talk about play, you're talking definitely about

Tzuki Stewart: 00:24:20

gamification, whereas definitely.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:24:22

nuance between those things.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:24:23

So what do you see the difference being between gamification versus

Tzuki Stewart: 00:24:26

play and when is one helpful?

Tzuki Stewart: 00:24:30

Where is the other one less

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:24:31

Yeah, it's a good question.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:24:33

I think.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:24:34

Gamification is used a lot in social movements as ways to en as ways to

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:24:38

engage people and just trying to make things a bit more fun, I guess pure play,

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:24:44

if we're gonna be technical about it.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:24:46

Pure play is without clear outcomes in a way, and it's just allowing people to

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:24:51

follow their nose and dig what makes sense to them in their own distinctive way.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:24:57

So deep.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:24:59

Playful engagement.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:25:00

For example, let's just take the example of the climate movement.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:25:06

Deep playful engagement would be helping people understand how

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:25:09

they like to play and how they combine that with their interests.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:25:13

So for example, I've done bits of work with activists about looking with the.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:25:17

Play styles, so the Stuart Brown, eight different styles of play and

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:25:22

how you understand what you are Exten instinctively drawn to, and combining that

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:25:27

with ways that you can do your activism.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:25:29

So that's playful and that's much more open and about people

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:25:32

interpreting things in their own way.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:25:35

Gamification, is a little bit more instrumental in terms of using a

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:25:41

bit of fun and a bit of playfulness.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:25:43

And some games to help people engage for a purpose that you've already prescribed.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:25:48

So there is an outcome of this game, which is that you will learn X, Y, Z, and I'm

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:25:53

gonna help you get there, and you're not gonna have a horrible time in the process.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:25:57

Yeah,

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:25:57

So that they're both really valuable approaches and there's

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:26:01

loads and loads of really great climate change and sustainability

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:26:05

related approaches that help make learning more palatable and more

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:26:11

effective.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:26:11

So there's the.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:26:13

2030 s d g game, which is about helping people understand the

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:26:16

sustainable development goals.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:26:19

there's loads of different card games, like Greenhouse is one, there's loads of,

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:26:23

gamified knowledge learning approaches.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:26:26

So the Financial Times, we've got this really great simulation

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:26:31

where you essentially have to pretend to be a global leader and

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:26:35

you answer a bunch of questions.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:26:37

So those things are really super helpful at helping people get

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:26:40

on board with the knowledge.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:26:42

And

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:26:42

I do, one of the things I do in my work is I run a monthly, run a monthly

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:26:47

meetup, first Thursday of the month at one o'clock UK time people, where we

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:26:52

look at gamified and playful approaches.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:26:54

And so there's something, the benefit of the gamified things

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:26:58

is they're quite tangible.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:27:00

So if there's a game, for example, you can take that into your workplace.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:27:03

You can take that into your.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:27:05

School and you've got a boundary time to do some reflection.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:27:09

The broader concepts of play, is more about helping people

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:27:14

understand how to combine who they are with what they care about.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:27:18

I, it massively simplifying what you're saying, but

Tzuki Stewart: 00:27:20

I reflect on your response there.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:27:22

It's this idea of gamification is almost a kind of clear road to a defined

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:27:26

Yeah.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:27:27

area you want to explore, whereas playfulness feels

Tzuki Stewart: 00:27:30

more open-ended in that you don't dunno whether that is that road's gonna lead.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:27:33

Um, but as you say, massive kind of helpfulness E either way.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:27:37

But it depends what you're trying to achieve, I guess

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:27:39

Yeah, definitely.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:27:40

And I think there's something about the tangibility of games, and I guess a lot

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:27:43

of the work I do is, I have a workshop and all of the workshops have gone outcome.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:27:47

So in a way, I'm still doing gamified learning to an extent.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:27:52

It's just that I've tried to contextualize that with the bigger

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:27:55

challenge, which is about the.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:27:58

state of being that is playfulness and that latter point, for me

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:28:03

has been quite a breakthrough understanding in terms of my work.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:28:07

So I mentioned the classic Stewart Brown play styles, which I'm sure have

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:28:10

come up many times on this podcast.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:28:13

But and relating to my eighties ed example is that I'm a huge explorer.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:28:17

So that is, I am just that through and through.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:28:20

And so for me, I'm able to harness my explorer in my work.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:28:25

It is wildly curiosity inducing.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:28:28

I find it fascinating, and so I'm able to be exploring on a day-to-day basis,

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:28:33

and that's what allows me to stay engaged in a topic that really stresses me out.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:28:38

So I guess the playfulness piece is about helping people understand

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:28:42

what their connection is so that they're able to sustain themselves.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:28:46

I'd love to hear a bit more about that in terms of how

Tzuki Stewart: 00:28:49

your own play preferences can inform

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:28:51

Yeah.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:28:53

the best way for you to engage in this.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:28:54

So Absolutely.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:28:56

I understand you're quite a big explorer preference.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:28:57

So I have a big director preference, and actually a big physical mover

Tzuki Stewart: 00:29:02

preference, with that insight, how would you, how would you suggest

Tzuki Stewart: 00:29:06

I was to engage that might be different from your way of engaging?

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:29:09

I'd say you're probably already doing it, to be honest.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:29:11

So 10 out of 10.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:29:12

Um, and I'm pretty similar, so I'm also got a strong director.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:29:17

I've got a bit, a good bit of the joker, but I definitely

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:29:19

don't like

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:29:20

to be, there's the mischief.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:29:22

I definitely don't, like to be center stage, but I do a lot of dad jokes.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:29:26

but the director thing is for me, comes out very clearly in

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:29:31

my work as well because it's about, for me that the way that.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:29:34

Plays out is about organizing events and pulling people together.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:29:39

and I'm a facilitator by trade and when I was a teenager I

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:29:43

was a hospital radio presenter.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:29:45

So all of

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:29:46

these,

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:29:46

it's all coming out now.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:29:47

Radio Warfarin.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:29:48

the Hamptons Premier, premier Hospital rehab station, it was absolutely

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:29:54

horrific, I'm not gonna lie.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:29:56

but it's all that sort of thing about trying to bring people

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:29:58

together and just organize stuff.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:30:01

And again, that's, I do a lot of that stuff.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:30:03

I've got various different side projects and I run this meetup group, so I'm

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:30:07

employing my, my, my explorer drives me.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:30:12

My director helps me put it into action, but understanding that

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:30:16

as being play actually is quite enlightening because then you are

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:30:21

able to enjoy your work because you realize that you're actually doing it

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:30:24

this way because you really love it.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:30:28

if you are a storyteller or you are a curator or whatever else, or you know

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:30:32

you're a killer seat and you really just like to get people moving, it's

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:30:36

really about saying, look, how can you gimme 10 ways that you could.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:30:41

Bring this into your engagement with your family.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:30:44

when you're talking to your kids about climate change or you're trying

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:30:47

to think about how to get your green network up and running at work, or any

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:30:52

other CO or you're trying to bring new volunteers into your community group.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:30:56

It's really about trying to understand your preferences and theirs so that

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:31:01

you can design opportunities for people to engage that actually work for them.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:31:08

Yeah.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:31:08

I love that.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:31:09

Okay, so you mentioned your monthly meetup.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:31:12

It would be great to hear about how.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:31:14

We can engage with your work, learn more about it and get involved.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:31:18

Do you work with both kind of individuals and organizations?

Tzuki Stewart: 00:31:21

Just give us a flavor of how people can get engaged and involved

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:31:24

I'd say there's three key ways.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:31:26

So number one is that I work.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:31:28

Predominantly with SMEs.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:31:30

So they're small and medium sized businesses.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:31:33

And I run workshops to help you unblock barriers to action on

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:31:38

sustainability and climate change.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:31:40

So that tends to be about how you collaborate and how you get past

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:31:43

blockers in your organization.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:31:45

So that's the first thing.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:31:47

the second thing is, I do, a lot speaking around these issues.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:31:51

I'm speaking opportunities and engagements.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:31:54

It's another thing, and that's partly about, the pitch for playfulness in space,

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:31:59

because I think people are often really interested in, they're interested in the

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:32:04

story of what I'm trying to do often.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:32:08

And then the third piece is about, teaching play-based engagement

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:32:12

in relation to climate change.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:32:14

So that is a combination of bits of Lego serious play.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:32:18

Other bits of creative facilitation, and also some of the kind of

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:32:21

play theory that we've touched on

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:32:23

today.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:32:24

So that is, something that I'm gonna be launching as a different

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:32:27

approach, in addition to the other work later in the year.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:32:30

That sounds fantastic.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:32:32

Drawing towards the end of all of your conversation, do you have a playful

Tzuki Stewart: 00:32:37

kind of practice or method that you can share, which we can take away and

Tzuki Stewart: 00:32:43

try for ourselves or with other people?

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:32:46

what comes to mind is, it's not climate focus, but

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:32:49

it's totally my favorite game.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:32:51

And I was taught this by a woman called Catherine Wilkes, who runs an organization

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:32:55

called Soup, which she uses improv to help young people And I'll describe the game.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:33:01

So

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:33:01

you've got a bunch of people and you split them into small groups.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:33:05

And, you give them a random letter.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:33:07

each group has to come up with the name of a game that illiterates.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:33:12

So for example, like popping pirates or something like that.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:33:16

So then all of the teams share their names and everybody votes on their favorite.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:33:21

So let's say popping pirates wins.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:33:24

Then all of the teams then go back and have to make up some rules

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:33:27

for the game of popping pirates.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:33:30

Everyone then shares their rules.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:33:32

The different team share levels and there's another vote on the savor

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:33:36

game, and then everyone plays the game it's every time It's really weird.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:33:42

Often very surreal.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:33:45

but because you are, you're giving people ownership.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:33:49

And that's one of the other things that I didn't just really talk about

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:33:51

too much on play about, playfulness is about giving people choice.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:33:56

And, giving them agency.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:33:58

So I find this game is something that's actually, it's really silly of course,

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:34:02

but it, you are actually starting to model, giving people like creative power.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:34:09

but mainly it's just generally pretty weird.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:34:13

the things that fully grown adults can come up with are, have been

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:34:16

the, a source of much confusion to many conference centers.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:34:21

What?

Tzuki Stewart: 00:34:21

What is the name of that game?

Tzuki Stewart: 00:34:22

Does it have

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:34:23

I don't know, to be honest.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:34:24

but hopefully I've explained that literally enough.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:34:27

We could take that

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:34:28

it's weird.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:34:29

into practice.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:34:30

Amazing.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:34:31

Thank you so much.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:34:32

Is there anything that.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:34:33

I should have asked you or you wish I'd asked you that I haven't in

Tzuki Stewart: 00:34:37

the course of this conversation.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:34:38

I can't think of that really.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:34:39

But I guess one thing that I forgot to say is just if people, people wanna get in

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:34:44

touch is, how you can find me, which is.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:34:48

You can find me@climateplay.org, so www.climateplay.org.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:34:53

And if you look up, Lucy Water on LinkedIn, you'll find me.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:34:57

I'm always just super curious to talk to people working in this space.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:35:02

I guess one other thing I could just note how people listening to this

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:35:06

might be able to help me in my cause.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:35:08

Yeah, put

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:35:09

So I'm really up for partnerships

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:35:11

because what I'm trying to inject into the sustainability space

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:35:16

is different ways of engaging.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:35:18

Now, sure I can do my work and I fully trust that is effective.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:35:22

But what I'd really like to be able to do is help other people do their work

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:35:26

more effectively through playfulness.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:35:28

So I'm really up for conversations with people who are trying to

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:35:32

engage people but are getting stuck, and to see if there's ways.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:35:36

In which we might be able to ally join forces.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:35:41

Yes.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:35:41

Consider it out there in the universe, the invitation.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:35:45

Brilliant stuff.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:35:46

Thank you so much, Lucy, for sharing your reflections and your

Tzuki Stewart: 00:35:49

insights and more about your work.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:35:50

It's been such a fantastic conversation.

Tzuki Stewart: 00:35:51

Thank you.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:35:52

it's an absolute pleasure.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:35:54

Thank you very much.

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:36:01

Tzuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): So, Lucy, what did you think of

Lucy Hawthorne: 00:36:02

our conversation with other w c?

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:36:05

it was really inspiring That work is very close to my heart.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:36:08

what she's doing is so important because, you know, that challenge

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:36:12

is so pressing and I work with a lot of NGOs and that sense of kind of,

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:36:18

Heaviness and burden and burnout.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:36:21

You know, the burnout that happens in that world is intense, and so

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:36:25

anything that anyone can do to make that lift lighter and more

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:36:30

sustainable, I kind of fully salute.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:36:34

Yeah.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:36:34

So I just thought, go

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:36:35

Tzuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): yeah, absolutely.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:36:36

I really liked the kind of examples she was using around.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:36:40

How we'd have insights into our own ways of play and our own kind

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:36:43

of playful preferences to help us understand how we can sustain our

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:36:47

own en energy when navigating through something that we find difficult.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:36:51

And you know, absolutely with climate change, but I was thinking also applies

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:36:54

hugely beyond that as well to anything that we might be finding a challenge.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:36:57

So just kind of thinking or how, how do I like to play and how can I

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:37:01

use this insight to understand what you might need to do to restore that

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:37:05

kind of energy bank within yourself.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:37:07

Really like that insight.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:37:08

Yeah, that's really nice.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:37:10

I really, enjoyed, I.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:37:13

The fact that she brings mischief in, like, I think mischief is just such

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:37:19

an underrated kind of part of life.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:37:22

And I really would like to see a world with a bit more mischief in and that

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:37:26

sense that of playfulness being like a glint in your eye and a playful

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:37:31

cheeky grin, um, really spoke to me.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:37:34

especially, you know, in this world of seriousness and, um,

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:37:39

heaviness that's quite heavy.

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:37:41

Yeah, I think that meant something that

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:37:42

really, really spoke to me as well, kind of linked to that was this idea

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:37:45

of play as a tool to help us overcome.

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:37:49

Kind of crippling perfectionism.

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:37:51

and that's something that spoke to me really, really deeply

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:37:54

around how, how players almost the opposite of perfectionism.

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:37:56

And I think the world, the words she used were to loosen the grip.

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:38:00

And, uh, yeah, that just really resonated with me.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:38:03

Yeah, that's really nice.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:38:05

And also kind of the power of offline fun.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:38:07

So I loved her example of her game that she played with her

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:38:11

But A to Z

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:38:12

Yeah.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:38:13

And just thinking like, actually there's something so valuable, you know, that

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:38:17

was back in the eighties or nineties.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:38:19

But, um, Of doing that now, just

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:38:22

Okay.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:38:24

Taking, and as you know, our previous, one of our previous

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:38:26

guests, Catherine Price, you know, she's all about disconnecting from your phone.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:38:30

And I felt that was a lovely example.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:38:32

Like how could we bring that into those sorts of things

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:38:35

into our day-to-day in 2023.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:38:39

Tzuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): a brilliant prompt.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:38:41

I, I, I also really enjoyed hearing her effect on the way that she uses

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:38:45

Lego, which obviously comes up a lot in our conversations with, our playful

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:38:48

partners, but kind of using Lego as a way of communicating, kind of surfacing

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:38:52

assumptions and fears and biases and how that can remove the pressure on

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:38:58

us to use language to really surface those things and how we can just.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:39:02

Use these amazing small pieces of, of plastic to kind of work beyond

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:39:06

the limits of language and surfacing those assumptions and those fears.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:39:09

So I really enjoyed her kind of bringing that to life for me a little bit.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:39:13

Yeah, and it kind of creates this pause where you are, you're

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:39:17

reflecting and you're using your hands and you're making before you then have

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:39:21

to put it into words this little, as you say, kind of non languaged space.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:39:26

Um, and also interesting, it's kind of like a gateway drug, Lego into play.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:39:32

It's like this safe thing that people have a frame of reference for.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:39:36

it doesn't feel too vulnerable, so it's like a nice entry

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:39:40

point into playful working.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:39:42

I thought that was an interesting point

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:39:44

I mean, I completely agree, and also I

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:39:46

think something that I found really helpful in this conversation was.

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:39:51

How much she kind of demonstrates the power of decoupling the outcome we're

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:39:56

seeking or the outcomes we're seeking from the means of getting there.

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:40:00

And that's what I'm really keen to explore with kind of play voice of

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:40:03

working is you might not be getting too, you know, the outcome you're

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:40:07

seeking might not be play, but can you take a playful path for getting there?

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:40:10

And I think just the conversation with Lucy was really helpful to

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:40:13

kind of decouple those two things for me in a really powerful way.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:40:16

Yes, absolutely.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:40:18

What, what else resonated with

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:40:19

I think the last thing, um, that's left me

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:40:21

with is, and probably, uh, fittingly at the kinda end of the series too,

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:40:25

was I just wanna ask everyone I meet for their earliest memory of play.

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:40:30

Because every time I've asked that in this series, it's just

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:40:34

invited our guests to share.

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:40:36

Really beautiful snippets and recollections from their past.

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:40:39

each ones has been this kind of glorious surprise that's so different

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:40:42

from anything I might have expected.

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:40:44

And I just have this sense of kind of, you never know what you're gonna

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:40:47

hear when you ask someone that.

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:40:49

and yeah, I just think it's, it's a lovely opener for the next time you

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:40:52

meet someone, in any kind of scenario.

zuki Stewart Outro (enhanced): 00:40:54

It just invites something really, really beautiful for them to share.

Lucy Taylor Outro: 00:40:57

Lovely.

Lucy Taylor Special Outro: 00:41:03

And that is a wrap on series two.

Lucy Taylor Special Outro: 00:41:05

Thanks so much for listening.

Lucy Taylor Special Outro: 00:41:06

We're taking a break from recording, but are keen to explore other formats

Lucy Taylor Special Outro: 00:41:10

and approaches for series three.

Lucy Taylor Special Outro: 00:41:12

So if you have any ideas, we would love to hear from you, be at guest suggestions

Lucy Taylor Special Outro: 00:41:16

or things you'd like to hear about.

Lucy Taylor Special Outro: 00:41:18

You can get in touch with us at hello@whyplayworks.com.

Lucy Taylor Special Outro: 00:41:22

Tzuki Stewart Special Outro (enhanced): And as always, if you enjoyed listening,

Lucy Taylor Special Outro: 00:41:24

please do rate and review as it really helps us reach other listeners.

Lucy Taylor Special Outro: 00:41:28

And if you'd like to join our growing community of People United by the idea

Lucy Taylor Special Outro: 00:41:31

of play at work, you can sign up to the Playworks Collective on our homepage.

Lucy Taylor Special Outro: 00:41:36

Until next time, folks, and stay playful.