One incredible thing about play is the way it keeps you in the moment. It inspires joy and laughter, movement and social engagement, it builds attachment and positive relationships – and more than ever we need those. So here’s wishing all of you a safe, peaceful and most of all a play-filled New Year.
Here at CreateCATT, we believe that, with playfulness, life can and will be better.
That’s something to hang on to at the start of 2022 when life doesn’t look so different from the previous two years, as the Covid-19 pandemic continues and threatens to bring a mental health pandemic in its wake. But as the evolutionary biologist Peter Gray says in his YouTube talk on the Decline of Play, play is where we can find an inner locus of control and overcome anxiety. So as we start this new year we hope that you will all make time to be playful and to find calm by doing things with your hands, reflecting, being in nature, and surrounding yourself with people you love. Nurture your inner child and promote play with the children around you.
It has been a year of overcoming some challenges at CreateCATT, but mostly of exploring new ways to change the world through the power of play. We would like to share a few projects, as well as our plans for the new year that we hope will inspire.
Playing across the globe
It has been a pleasure to train the team at BRAC IED based in Bangladesh. This NGO is one of the global leaders in learning through play and it has been a privilege to work with front-line workers in our PlayZOOM, including in Cox’s Bazaar helping Rohingya refugees. We have built amazing relationships together over the ether and started to explore the many languages of children through play. Play is its own language with many different dialects to discover, so it has been a year of wonder as we dived deep into it.
CreateCATT has also started to work in Africa with the Ethiopian Ministry of Health and the BRAC team, as well as with international schools in Asia. Thanks to technology, play knows no boundaries. We recently developed this short YouTube animation about what we do.
If you would like to find out more or discuss collaborations with us, please get in touch.
Playing together
We have also been training social workers at the National University of Singapore in our Developmental Play Model as well as several pre-school chains keen to embed play into their early childhood practice. Working with whole teams is a great way to build sustainable change in the understanding of why play matters. It’s also meant getting back to some face-to-face work which has meant great hands-on messy play, engaging all the senses away from a screen. Post-pandemic we are advocating play-fests, mess-fests and movement-fests.
We have also started to explore more collaborations in the UK and how our model can support children at risk where existing services are too stretched to meet the demand. Here at CreateCATT we try to see opportunity and build hope. That, we believe, is the creative power of our human capacity manifested through play.
Play resources
Our Stay at Home, Play at Home resources are available FREE in 14 languages on our academy for sharing to inspire play. Many thanks to our partners across the globe who helped with the translations.
We have relaunched our Developmental Play book, previously titled ‘Fighting the Dragon Finding the Self’ with new chapters on Nature Play and Working with Trauma, plus fresh illustrations by Barnaby Duffy. Check out our second edition on:
New team member
We are excited to introduce a new member to our core team, Christy Davis.
Christy is a social innovator, advocating for the public, private and social sectors working together to solve social challenges none could do by themselves. With three decades of experience across these sectors in Asia, most recently as Executive Director of Lien Centre for Social Innovation at Singapore Management University, Christy is our new partnerships and business development advisor.
If you are interested to work with us and want to discuss how, please get in touch with Christy at Christy.createcatt@gmail.com. We would love to work with you to support organisations bring play to the children who need it most.
Training in Play
We welcomed more Certified Developmental Play Practitioners to our Play Community last year and look forward to more completing their training this year. If you are keen to join this community, please check out our upcoming courses on:
We are also excited to announce the launch of two masterclasses:
Developmental Play and Trauma – Masterclass February 15th 2022
Mess and Monsters – A Masterclass exploring fear and chaos and ways to transform them. March 15th 2022
These short Zoom workshops are a great chance to explore the power of play in our PlayZOOM, meet the founders, and learn new skills to take you into 2022. Check them out on:
Join us as we continue to build our Developmental Play Community in the coming year.
We wish you all a safe, healthy and play-filled 2022.
Warm wishes,
The CreateCATT Team
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