Playgroup | Creativity through play

Playgroup and printers Good News Press invite students, graduates and young photographers to submit entries to a photographic competition entitled “The Power of Play”. 

Winning entries will be printed in a high quality publication themed around play which will distributed to all the top creative directors in London and beyond. It’s the perfect opportunity to show off your skills and get some exposure with the most influential people in the industry. To launch the brochure Good News Press will also be hosting a special private view of the winning entries. 

Theme

The human need to play is a powerful one. As children we learn as we play, and through play we learn how to learn. Play holds no boundaries – it encourages an uninhibited, free-thinking, just-try-it-out kind of mentality that stimulates imagination and creativity.

"The true object of all human life is play."

G K Chesterton

Around children we are given permission to play, unrestrained by the need to conform to social norms of what is ‘acceptable’ grown-up behaviour. But while play is vital to child learning and development, it is also crucial for adults too – for our mental creativity, our health and our happiness. Play gives us a platform for new perspectives and enables us to generate ideas in an organic and fun way.

Brief

We’d like you to give us your interpretation of play. We’re looking to create a collection of striking images that give a sense of why play is vital throughout our lives.

All of the images need to be of high resolution and can be either colour or black and white. The brochure will be showcasing Good News Press’ new Staccato print process. Staccato printing is typified by extremely fine detail, excellent reproduction of subtle tones (like skin tones) and smooth gradations of tone or colour so we’ll also be looking for images that display some of these attributes.

Deadline

In the first instance please email your entries to Steve Cluett, Creative Director, Playgroup steve@playgroup.com Please include your contact details and a brief title/description of your shot(s). All entries will then be uploaded to a dedicated Flickr page at www.flickr.com/photos/thepowerofplay for viewing. For reproduction purposes all winning entries must be available as high resolution images (minimum file size 15MB). We are happy to receive photos via file sharing websites such as File Dropper (www.filedropper.com) if you prefer.

Closing date for submissions is Friday 11 September 2009.

Happy playing ;-)

• Comment on this post

In these days of the aggresive hard sell, it was really refreshing to encounter a particularly ‘soft sell’ the other day.

We were at the wonderful Hat Fair in Winchester, which is the UK’s largest festival of Street Theatre. Milo, our little lad, had spotted a number of kids carrying around fairly convincing monkey puppets and he just had to have one. Eventually we found the Monkey Man’s stall and Sharon went to ask how much they were – twenty minutes later, we were still there.

Chris, the monkey handler, informed us that we weren’t allowed to buy a monkey. We could adopt one, but only if the monkey agreed to go with us. These were vulnerable monkeys that had been treated badly when they were young and their mummies had left them – that’s why they were being so quiet. Chris got down to Milo’s level and only showed him the little monkeys. Milo immediately fell in love with Mikey. He listened intently as the Monkey Man laid down some adoption rules. Mikey was to have bananas or banana sandwiches every day and if you take him into MacDonalds or KFC an alarm goes off from a microchip he has in his ear. If he becomes really unruly you can gently rub his ears to calm him down (apparently this also works on ladies). If it doesn’t work you can call him and he’ll come and pick up all the unruly monkeys in a big lorry (also full of naughty children). Milo had to promise to look after Mikey, and Mikey eventually agreed to come home with us.

Milo doesn’t think Mikey is real. But he is enjoying the responsibility of looking after him. We’re going through bananas like there’s no tomorrow.

Incidentally adoption costs for a small monkey are just £7. Almost all of the puppets are sold by street traders, who bring a playful spirit to our streets, entertaining children and adults alike. At the same time they raise awareness of the plight of our primates and raise some cash for their rehabilitation, with a proportion of all sales going to The Orangutan Foundation.

www.mightybanana.com

• Comment on this post