Ritual Play at Work (part 1)

I don’t normally put posts on here, but needed somewhere to dump some travel thoughts about play quickly! (I’m on my way to the Counterplay festival.)

Over the last few months I keep being bothered by the thought of ritual play and that we don’t seem to think about this aspect of play as much as other facets of play in work or education. Even though work, to me, seem full of ritual!

When I started my first graduate job, I even had ceremonial costume to wear, with clothing rituals in the office. A full suit and tie was required, with suit jacket off whilst sat at your desk, but hung in a specific place in each office, to be put on immediately that you left your desk. All the men in that office made the same movements as they entered and left their desk, a ritualistic movement that marked the transition, wearing objects that signified meaning to other in the building. That same job we had other fairly anachronistic rituals too, with the rattling of cups marking the coming of the tea lady, who dished out hot drinks (and biscuits to more senior staff), with firm structures marking the tea ladies operation and movement throughout the companies hierarchy of offices.

More recently, the rituals and the symbols that many of us may wear, may be less visually obvious (or auditory for the tea lady), but are absolutely still there.

We Chair meetings, solemnly intoning each of the sacred agenda items passed down to us from upon high, whose meanings are often lost to time. We carry out unchanging verbal dances around the coffee machine, change our language and act more subservient when the high priests of senior management swing by. We routinely show lip service to the project manager’s spreadsheets and Gantt charts, while planning to sin against them.

Much of our work lives is ruled by rituals we carry out each day, without realising that’s what they are, often devoid of meaning beyond the creation of a shared understanding of what work “is”, how it operates as a social environment thanks to these rituals.

So how could we make that ritual more playful? Subvert it to bring back joy and creativity, freedom and fun, within these shared rituals? Perhaps even shift the meaning of work through new or subverted rituals?

That’ll be for part 2 I think, we may or may not appear while I’m on my travels this week and next!