the politics of play

Wed, 1 Sep 2010 18:25:25 -0600

hot off the press. and in a business magazine no less.

now with less rights

Wed, 1 Sep 2010 00:50:20 -0600

reserved. i’ve decided to drop the non-commercial from the creative common license i’m using on the goodwood deconstruction blocks. so take and run with it.

i’m just taking the notion a step further than before. i believe the blocks are good for kids, and i want more kids to have a chance to play with them, and that’s more important than protecting the market from knock-offs, so then its simple. ideally though, what i would like to see happen is not for a bunch of existing companies to copy the designs. but rather, for a bunch of little income generation initiatives grow out of this. if you’re reading this and interested in pursuing the idea somewhere, contact me and i’ll send you the design specifications so you can a nice job of it.

fun and games huh?

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 16:42:46 -0600

toot toot.

teaching as a subversive activity

Mon, 9 Aug 2010 07:46:45 -0600

this book is a classic, and i’ve just found a site that has the full-text online.
http://iwcenglish1.typepad.com/Documents/Postman_Teaching_As_Subversive_Activity.pdf
the second chapter is particularly worth reading.

tacit teachers

Fri, 6 Aug 2010 13:23:39 -0600

think about the world around you. think about the world around our children. now, remove the stuff that's directed at them, remove the explicit stuff. remove the parents' lectures, remove the teacher talk, remove the moral of the story, remove the product that the commercial is telling them to buy.

what you're left with is everything else. it's a lot. it's actually pretty much everything. in the big picture, what's written on the billboard doesn't matter nearly as much as the fact that they are surrounded by billboards. what the teacher says doesn't matter nearly as much as the fact that the kid needs to sit in their desk for eight hours a day listening to it. what's playing on the television doesn't matter nearly as much as the fact that it's the centrepiece of the living room and the focal point of family life.

we focus so much on the messages, while we ignore the medium. by being selective about the messages, we feel like we're doing good things for our children. but the messages are the low hanging fruit. they're the easy part to deal with. the medium is the insidious part... it slides across into the mind of the child, just below the level of awareness, as an unquestioned understanding of what the world is all about. it's hard to argue against or react to something which is not explicit. it's hard to identify our assumptions.

there's no conspiracy theory here... it's just that we take a lot for granted. we accept a lot without asking questions about it. we we're not intentional enough, about enough. which is why it's important to pay a little bit of attention to the tacit teachers--the things which are taken for granted... the things which define normal for us.

toys are a part of it, but they're only just a small part of it. when a kid asks, "why is it a garbage truck?" they're not just trying to make conversation, and they're not just stringing together random words; they're rendering a sense of reality, they're exercising their minds, they're trying to make sense of the world through language... their minds are infinitely more malleable than ours. they’re actually asking about the sound of one hand clapping, and, the difference between an orange. things like this matter just a little bit more than we think. and a lot of what we usually treat as important matters just a little bit less.

so then what are the tacit teachers? what is the "everything else" which relentlessly socializes us into conformity and complacency? it's too easy to dodge the question by pretending that it's obvious by just looking around. but if we actually want to start doing something intentional with it... if we want to be constructive in our approach to the hidden curriculum, we need to tease the everything else apart a little bit.

i've started playing around with this in the context of classroom teaching. the model that is emerging still needs a fair bit of work, but it's starting to coalesce. the point is to treat each factor as something which should not just be taken for granted, as is, at face value. but it’s not to say that the teacher should be held accountable for each. the teacher’s control of most of these is indirect at best. these are nested systems. the point is to start by becoming aware that these are some of the many factors which are shaping our children, and in so doing, shaping our culture and future. then we can start to have some substantive conversation about the goals of the education system, and how to line up these various factors so that they support, rather than subvert, those goals.

they only come in green?

Fri, 6 Aug 2010 11:49:38 -0600

well, maybe green and red. aroundsquare is pleased to announce that goodwood deconstruction blocks have recently been awarded a “best green product” award, by Stevanne Auerbach, Ph.D., aka Dr. Toy.

from the press release available on Dr. Toy’s website: “The award winning Green products are made by companies striving to inspire children to appreciate the environment and help them learn to take better care of our natural resources. These companies are making products to teach children more about our planet or producing playthings that are based on Green principles.”

benefitting the beneficial

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 16:24:54 -0600

aroundsquare is committed to conducting business in a way which delivers benefits at each step. to that end, we're constantly percolating questions like whether or not it is right to be selling our products to stores who are simply out to make a buck. we do want to continue to support good folks and good little independent stores, because we think they're important for the communities we live in... but the fact is, we want to leverage our efforts, and so we're extending our hand to non-profits and charitable organizations, and other groups that are out to do some good.

it's a little ironic that the archetypal fundraiser for kids' sports teams is chocolate covered almonds. we can do better than that. if your group, or a group you know about is looking for fundraising ideas, please pass along the suggestion that they contact aroundsquare (matt@aroundsquare.com or +14033997449). we would be pleased to share our ideas on how we might be able to help!

open source toys

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:54:08 -0600

aroundsquare toys are originals. we take pride in coming up with new and innovative ways to play, and super creative things to play with. we have experimented with patents in the past, and certainly see the place of patents in encouraging innovation. but as we've made the transition to a more concerted focus on delivering benefit rather than profit, we have started to drift away from the whole idea of protecting the designs. we feel like it's more important to actually get the ideas out there and to scatter the seeds a little. we give the toys away to children we think would benefit from them, so it makes sense to give the ideas away and let people run with them!

so for this reason, we've decided to skip the whole patent pending process with the new designs, and just to toss everything into the creative commons as artistic works. we reserve some rights, but not many. our creative commons license reads like this:

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

You are free:
to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
to Remix — to adapt the work

Under the following conditions:
Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
Share Alike — If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

With the understanding that:
Waiver — Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
Public Domain — Where the work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.
Other Rights — In no way are any of the following rights affected by the license:
Your fair dealing or fair use rights, or other applicable copyright exceptions and limitations;
The author's moral rights;
Rights other persons may have either in the work itself or in how the work is used, such as publicity or privacy rights.
Notice — For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page.

with all this in mind, if you want to make some of the blocks yourself, or if you have an idea in mind for an extension or a new mulch... give us a shout. we’d be happy to share with you all our design specs and work processes!

AO2 - a certified B Corporation

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:13:54 -0600

aroundsquare ltd. is pleased to announce that we have completed all requirements to be granted status as a certified B Corporation. unlike regular businesses driven by profit, aroundsquare is driven to generate benefit--to provide something good not only through our products, but also through the processes we use to conduct business.

B Corporations are a new kind of company which use the power of business to solve social and environmental problems. certified B Corporations meet higher standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability. essentially, it is like LEED certification, but for businesses rather than buildings. the performance standards are comprehensive and transparent. they measure a company’s impact on its employees, suppliers, community, and the environmental.

unlike traditional corporations, certified B Corporations are legally required to consider the impact of their decisions on their employees, suppliers, community, consumers, and environment.

in the long term, this will lead to a legally recognized new corporate form and tax incentives, procurement preferences, and a social stock exchange for sustainable businesses.
--
About B Corp
Certified B Corporations 1) meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance; 2) legally expand their corporate responsibilities to include consideration of stakeholder interests; and 3) build collective voice through the power of the unifying B Corporation brand. Currently, there are over 300 certified B Corporations from over 50 industries, representing a diverse multi-billion marketplace.

About B Lab
B Lab is a nonprofit organization dedicated to using the power of business to solve social and environmental problems. B Lab drives systemic change through three interrelated initiatives: 1) building a community of Certified B Corporations to make it easier for all of us to tell the difference between “good companies” and just good marketing; 2) accelerating the growth of the impact investing asset class through use of B Lab’s GIIRS impact rating system by institutional investors; and 3) promoting supportive public policies, including creation of a new corporate form and tax, procurement, and investment incentives for sustainable business.

another ribbon

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 15:33:53 -0600

remember what it was like to get a ribbon at sports day? or science fair? or even a valentine for that matter?

well, i’m a little late in posting this, given that vacation is nearly half over, but aroundsquare was recently awarded a “best vacation product” award by Stevanne Auerbach, Ph.D., aka Dr. Toy, for the newly introduced goodwood deconstruction blocks. while this certainly isn’t the first award for aroundsquare... it is notable in that it’s the first for a design which we’ve kept in hand, and the first for goodwood.

play today | build tomorrow

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 22:43:32 -0600

why does it matter what we let our kids play with? at one level, the answer is obvious... isn't there a big difference between army guys and huggy dolls? but there is a fair bit more to it than that... at another level entirely, army guys and huggy dolls are basically just two versions of the same thing. they both prescribe a certain kind of play, they both frame the same kind of toy-child relationship, they're both heavily gendered, and completely lacking in imagination.

the thing about toys is that they are among the first material things that children spend any amount of time interacting with. the quality and character of that interaction is something which feeds in substantially to the child's development. it conditions them and habituates them to certain types of behaviour and patterns of thinking.

the trouble, in terms of citizenship, is that in most cases, we begin conditioning kids, from a very early age, to be passive, complacent, unimaginative. the toys tell the kids who they are and what their job is. too often, through toys, we restrict children. the child's mind is naturally open, and it's through this kind of conditioning that we gradually narrow their thinking by imposing artificial structures.

the trick is to surround our children with playthings which present opportunities rather than restrict them. and by this, i don't just mean toys. we need to start thinking, just a little bit more, about the quality and character of our children's play, and the way in which they learn to read the world around them.

dubulludilo

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 18:25:58 -0600

whodolowhatnow?

recently, most of this site has focused on the goodwood project, but experiment that sort of started it all was monkey knuckles... on the surface, it couldn’t be more different from goodwood, but the underlying philosophy of creative play and free expression is the same. to get a sense of what it looks like in action, check out the videos.

this toy is another aroundsquare original. it’s currently not for sale, but contact us and we might be able to dig up a set that we have kicking around, or else just make your own! when you make something yourself, it changes your relationship to the thing.. come on try it!

the toy has gone through a bunch of iterations and a variety of names... the first one that kind of stuck was monkey knuckles, but when i was told that it sounded like a tribal weapon, i started looking for alternatives. recently i’ve been calling it dubulo... kind of reminiscent of diabolo, and a bit of a slack interpretation of dubulludilo, which would mean two clump toy, or something like that, in esperanto.

right to play

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 10:30:20 -0600

aroundsquare toys serve a purpose. they do good for kids. as i’ve said before, i don’t jump to call these toys educational... most of the time i cringe when i hear people talking about educational toys, because usually what they are referring to are these inane gimmicky glossy slick flashing lights widgets which trivialize the concept of play as well as whatever content that they are purportedly teaching. there is lots of time down the road for kids to learn “stuff”... and there is even a pretty good case to be made for the line that this kind of cram-play is miseducative:
http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/features/hurried-infant/

but i do think our toys do good. they create a space for kids to play, to think for themselves... they open doors and tap into the developing imagination.

and so with this in mind, and social justice in heart, aroundsquare makes a point of donating our toys to various places where children may not have a lot of opportunity for this kind of play. i’m fortunate, in my day job, to be doing work which takes me to interesting places and puts me in contact with interesting people who are doing interesting things. and through these experiences and this network, aroundsquare toys are reaching out to spark imaginations in surprising corners of the globe... orphanages and childcare centres in Bangladesh, Egypt, China, Mongolia, Vietnam, and also here in Canada.

recently, i’ve added a spot on the website where people can, finally, purchase the blocks online. at the same time, i’ve put in a little button to donate a set of blocks as well. this part of the site is going to grow, since there are other things which tie in which i also want to facilitate. i’m planning to add space for donating trees, to offset the wood used in the blocks’ production, and also to make donations to support children who may not be able to attend school because of the fees or materials costs.

freestyle

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 17:59:29 -0600

i can’t count the number of times people have told me that i should sell goodwood with some photos of what to do with it, showing some things for people to build. some think of it as inspiration; others envision full out challenge cards, or instructions of various creations with various levels of difficulty. to me that sounds a whole lot like lego. or barbie. lego and barbie are great for what they are. but goodwood isn’t about copying or being told how to play. it’s about making the space for kids to make their own decisions for a change. if we want little people to grow up into big people who can think for themselves, we need to pay attention to how much we let them do that. consider goodwood as a tool for doing just that. there’s something kind of cool about a kid who decides that he’s going to wear his lion costume to breakfast in july. that’s why goodwood doesn’t come with anything.

something new

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 11:48:10 -0600

we’ve been busy, down in the old aroundsquare atelier. there have been new designs in the pipeline for quite some time now, but we’ve just gotten some production samples from the factory, and we’re pretty freaking excited about them.

here’s sneaky peek at what’s on it’s way. these are going to be ready for shipping by summer time.