The Common Threads Blog

Well it seems the whole world is blogging now so we thought you may like to know just how things run here at Common Threads play zone! You are more than welcome to pass comment (really? Yes, we must be mad!) in the normal way - contact us

January 2008

Ok so I'm starting with a lie - it's actually February, but only just, and I seem to have lost October, November and December! I could of course just fill in the missing months and nobody would be any the wiser. I spent October either in hospital or at home recovering from pneumonia. Not sure where that came from. Probably something to do with global warming. Which left me (and Shelly, Emma and Jackie) one hell of a lot of ground to make up. We really needed to get our brochure out around Christmas time and we still had lots to do. Has anybody noticed that we've gone all posh and now have a 'brochure' instead of a catalogue? I'd like to think that we've gone up market but the reality is that what exactly do you call a publications catalogue which also has training information in it?

During the last few months we have also been trying to 'standardise' our corporate image. Stop laughing. Most companies employ pound eating agencies to do this and I'm sure you all know just how much the London Olympic logo cost? We decided that we should follow the look of the website - so if you see things changing (gradually, we're too eco-friendly to throw stocks of paper away for no good reason) then you know you've been corporised. That's like being Tango'ed but in our case you go three stripy colours instead of orange!

Part of this process has involved re-writing, re-formatting and very swishly binding the handouts for all our courses. Yes, all! Not only that be we have been adding moving pictures and other techno stuff into the delivery of our courses. It's all just been soooo busy, but rewarding - if I say so myself the new material looks fantastic.

On this point, purely by chance, the first course to use these new materials was for an organisation called Playright in Hong Kong! Yes, that's the Hong Kong the other side of the world (not the one near Accrington). Shelly was due to attend the IPA conference there, Playright got wind of this and asked her to stay on for another week and run a Playwork Basics Plus training course for 20 people! Of course I was meant to be going with Shelly but due to my poor health record, and perhaps because Emma is far more experienced in training, I had to stay and watch the store. Bah humbug!

September 2007

I don't know, some people will do anything to get out of writing this blog...the sharp-eyed amongst you may have noticed that this September section has just appeared nearly at the end of October. Well, that's because - yes, you've guessed it, it was Neil's turn to write it and at the end of September he went and put himself in hospital (see January!). Apart from that (!), September was a normal month when it came to training courses and publications orders as the new academic year gradually sprang to life. On top of that,  Emma enjoyed herself running some games sessions at a London conference and Shelly road-tested some of the summer film footage as part of a presentation on playful environments at another conference. The film clips worked really well and caused some great discussions - just when is tipping a table over 'bad' or 'playful' behaviour?! Shelly and Neil also went to the ICCP conference in the Czech Republic at the start of the month - but really it should be Neil who does this bit as he had such a great time! Shelly also enjoyed the conference but also came back with another job - the ICCP rep. for the UK. Much though she is looking forward to working with an international group, she is also now loathe to come out of the office in case she is 'volunteered' for anything else!

August 2007

Well, it was the worst August for rain and miserable weather since records began - so what did we decide to do? Send out two film crews to cover the length and breadth of the country for the first time - genius. Having said that, it was just the best fun ever....Our brave film crews coped not only with the weather, but projects that cancelled on them at the last minute (nobody mention castles...), children trying to disrobe them, recalitrant sat. navs. that sent them up the garden path (literally!), and being flogged artwork by children who were much, much quicker than they were...There's more about the filming project elsewhere on the site so enough here already - but do take a look at the outtakes if you've got a moment and need a smile!!!

Jackie staffed the unthreatening-but-imposing edifice (sorry, just love that pc language!) whilst Shelly and Neil made a nuisance of themselves out filming and as far as the office went, it's been blissfully, blissfully quiet...We even had time for a few visitors from various organisations to come and chat about training, publications, life the universe and everything - which was really nice because we don't usually get visitors!

We had our Playwork Plus (Playwork Induction Standard Level 3) evaluation meeting in Hertfordshire - lunch was good and we swapped stories about playscheme madness and things to tweak about the course and all agreed what a darn fine job we'd done!

And on National PlayDay at the start of the month we all had an 'official' day off to go and play with our nearest and dearest - so much fun in one month? Hardly possible...roll on September, back to the grindstone!

July 2007

How is it that people have time to 'blog' each day?!!! It was Neil's turn to do this bit in July and for those of you who were keen to hear his take on life here in the office, well, sorry - he sort of didn't get round to it! However this is good news as far as Shelly is concerned - we're supposed to be taking it in turns to write each month and we're having a small competition to see who gets the most readers...so Shelly must already be ahead by default!!!! (not that she has a competitve bone in her body you understand....)

So what was happening here in July? Well, sanity returned and so did Jackie (though we're still not committing ourselves to whether the two things were connected or not..!). We had cakes to celebrate the return of the traveller and then later that week all went out to lunch (fill in your own punch line here...). Beth continued to organise/scare us all into being tidy and then was whipped away from us to go and vacinate cattle against foot and mouth....honestly you just couldn't make this stuff up...We managed to see off another few temps and then decided to give up and have a quiet summer instead!

Playscheme training was bright and beautiful as ever....loads of Playwork Induction Standard Level 2's and a good handful of Playwork Induction Standard Level 3's for the first time ever...Feedback was really good on the new course Playwork Plus despite the heavy management content which we thought might take a few of the playscheme leaders by surprise - the evaluations showed that they really welcomed the new input and fresh ideas for leading their schemes. Our Level 2 trainers did their utmost to persuade their participants not to do iced biscuits on their playschemes (sorry, trainer's joke!) and Emma was out and about for the first time in her new role as our 'lead trainer', doing quality assurance visits on our trainers and thoroughly enjoyed herself.

The highlight of July had to be the first day of filming for our management skills materials - and didn't we all have a good time! Highlights of the day included Neil and Graham's 'YMCA' act, Jackie as the 'damsel in distress' being saved by the dragon and Shelly's umpteen attempts to sit down on a chair quietly - which of course resulted in gales of laughter from all involved and therefore completely defeated the object! Sadly none of these gems were scripted pieces so they didn't end up on film, and despite there being more camera equipment on site than you could shake a boom at, nobody had a 'normal' camera so we can't even show you pictures of Graham in his wig - sorry! 

And the other thing we did in July was finalise all our plans for the great summer filming extravanganza....see August!!!

June  2007

It has to be said that we are glad to see the back of June here at Common Threads! It wasn't the rain that got us down - although having to have the fans on in the office due to the humidity whilst it was pouring down with rain outside was not a barrel of laughs. No - it was the chaos caused by the various comings and goings in the team - some planned and some unplanned! Jackie was on her canal boat for a month, Kirsty still off on long-term sick leave trying to recover from her operation and Juliette came back from her holiday just before our first 'trainer for trainer' course and then went off sick! We also had a trainer go down with a throat infection - occupational hazard but we could have done without it this month! - and we had to have a weird and wonderful assortment of temps in to try to help out. Unfortunately none of them lasted very long - one told us that she 'didn't do play' and another one had a strop when Shelly politely said that she didn't think that she was the right person for the job and was still yelling as she went down the corridor!

Which left Neil and Shelly holding the fort - and the phones - and the emails - and the training courses - and the publications orders...Oh, and before it all started to go pear-shaped they had also decided to take up an offer they couldn't refuse on an exhibition stand in London to launch Playtime!, which then entailed getting all the publicity produced and the stand organised in record time - whilst of course making sure that the Playtime! books, DVD and wallets were going to be delivered by the deadline!

In the meantime T4T Level 2 Playwork Induction Standard happened - not sure how looking back on it! - and then we got the Playwork Induction Standard Level 3 standards - a week before the T4T course was due to run. The sound of a head banging on a desk was to be heard from Shelly's office when she realised that the standards had changed from the last time she had seen them and our course would need to change! A very late night in the office the night before the T4T course at least meant that the course was ready and the trainers who attended were pleased with the result - and very understanding about the slightly bizarre handout arrangements! Everybody went away excited about the new course so a very worthwhile late night!

Back to Playtime! and to  co-incide with the launch at the exhibition in London we also launched a new website  www.playinschools.org.uk which we put together in a couple of days flat (there's nothing like a bit of a deadline to focus the mind!). We got mobbed at the exhibition with loads of interest in our training and publications and nearly died - not of exhaustion surprisingly but at the price of a cup of coffee - £2.50!!! The Playtime! orders were sent out the week of the exhibition and feedback so far has included 'brilliant' and 'a triumph' - phew! Shelly also spoke at a county conference at the start of the month about playtime where a lot discussion ensued and even some controversy - see the right-hand column!

But no time to sit back and congratulate ourselves yet - at the end of the second T4T Shelly jumped into her car and drove up through the floods to Lincolnshire to run a workshop at the NUT annual conference. Feedback was really positive and Shelly says she wants to join them now - such a great attitude to children!

June wasn't all slog (it just felt like it!) - we did the first scripting weekend for our new management skills DVD and had a really nice meal with lots of those who are going to be involved getting to know each other on the Saturday night. We'd planned a barbeque but rain did stop play on that one so indoors for pizza instead with loads of kids tearing through Shelly's house throwing those sticky things on the ceiling and then calling for the tallest adult to come and get them down again!

There were more reasons to be cheerful when Beth - our university student who's been with us for three years now and who we will miss dreadfully when she graduates as a vet next year - turned up unexpectedly like the cavalry and spent the first week with us tutting every five minutes at the state of the offices! (Sorry Beth - we've been a bit busy!!!) But two weeks later she's gradually getting us back in order - good job too as at the time of writing Jackie's return is imminent (having been flooded out of her canal boat - that sort of thing could only happen to Jackie!) and Rebecca starts with us shortly - hoorah!

So many apologies to anybody who had to wait a bit longer for their publications order or if emails have taken a day or so to get answered and the training course we had to cancel when Plan B failed us too (!) - we're now back on track and up-to-date and looking forward to a quieter month...oh no, it's July - playscheme training here we come!!!!