Protocols, protocols, protocols
Ah, academia. As someone who doesn’t feel they naturally sit in an academic mode, I keep encoutering things that surprise me and basicaly none of my supervisors, peers further along the process than me, etc. This week, the piece of writing I’ve been working on for the last few weeks has become a lot more unwieldy than I was expecting. What started off planned as a 1000 breakdown of the process of making UPUP, my latest piece of practice that contributes to my research, has become a 10,000+ word document of reflections and observations of my own process. Undoubtedly it needs some editing, but also, I’m quite pleased with it - not because of the length (overwriting is definitely a habit I need to practice my way out of - hence the blog!) but because the reflection itself has raised a lot of really interesting avenues to explore. Ta-da! Research.
I’ve already introduced - and indeed, been introduced to - the idea that playfulness encourages engagement and creativity, and the notion that playfulness and pleasure facilitate further play. So some of the questions that I have for my own practice going forward is - where do I start to if not play, engage playfully with my own practice? What exercises, meditations, actions could I take at the very start of - or indeed, before - a project that would allow me to engage more playfully with the making?
Lübbert, Heimann and González-Fernández’s The Protocol for the Playful Academic (2021) takes this idea of the setting up of play into an academic setting. Their protocol consists of a series of exercises, workshops, activities and engagements to be undertaken not necessarily at the start of a project, but as a semi-regular practice: “six activities that help inquire into everday playful academic” (Lübbert, Heimann and González-Fernández 2021, p4) by providing “both theorteical and methodological frameworks for how to work intentionally qith scaffolding and promoting playfulness” in their fields (ibid). The activities include and encourage experimental drawing, writing without using words, self-reflection, and working as a group to name a few outcomes. The protocol was tested on a range of academics from a variety of backgrounds, and resulted in “greater satisfaction…stronger motivation and the courage to continue to challenge and surprise oneself” (ibid).
Lübbert et al.’s research takes some of the principles discussed by Corita and Steward in Learning by Heart - possibly the work that’s had the strongest impact on my research in a non-theoretical way - and grounds it in theory. Learning by Heart collects many of Corita’s classroom assignments alongside research and writing, but focusses not on the production of art so much as the belief that “…creativity is based on the close observations of the ordinary, and…art cannot be learned except by the heart” (Barbara Loste, quoted in Kent & Steward 1992, Foreward). Corita believe
Costello’s work I wrote about last week (A Pleasure Framework, Costello, 2007) shows that engaging in specific, separate, explorative and creative activities can encourage satisfaction and motivation - engagement, really - with ones own work. Dewey’s writing on playfulness (Dewey 1910) implies a similar thing. Other writers such as Corita, Lübbert et al., focus on possible ways to engage in that playfulness. This leads me to wonder what a Protocol for a Playful Animator would look like. What exercises could I do before starting a project to engage with the work - and the world - more? To ready myself to play-for-work, to plork?
I don’t know what shape my final research is going to take, but I can begin to see gaps where I can be of service to both myself as a practicing animator and the wider animation community. I believe there is a potential need and desire to more proactively engage with a playful spirit and attitude. I believe that as well as knowing when a creative project is finished, it is worth investigating how I start a project, and what I can do to set myself up for that project in a way that maximises my engagement in said project. And, subsequently, how I can teach that.
References
COSTELLO, B. 2007. A Pleasure Framework. Leonardo, 40**,** 370-371.
KENT, C. & STEWARD, J. 1992. Learning by heart, New York, Bantam Books.
LÜBBERT, A., HEIMANN, K. & GONZÁLEZ‐FERNÀNDEZ, P. 2021. From What Is to What If to Let’s Try: a Treasure-Box for the Playful Academic. The Journal of Play in Adulthood, 3**,** 52-70.