Proposal for a community-wide celebration of music, art, sports and scrap

Last November, Philip Ella Juico wrote published an article called "Sports for All" in the Philippine Star. The article was the result of several exchanges we had over the previous months, about bringing sports to the far reaches of the Philippines. Dr. Juico was very active with the major sports organizations in the Philippines, and, because he had access to some of the major players, he thought about organizing a tour in which they would run demonstration games in the nation's villages. This led to many fascinating conversations, a wonderful meeting, and, ultimately, my crafting the following proposal for:

A Festival of Junk, a Celebration of Play - an event to affirm the human capacity to play

A Celebration of Play - a public gathering that combines spectacle with empowerment, that provides a platform for the display of both athletic and artistic achievement, while providing an invitation to equal participation by all members of the community - all genders, ages, abilities - to everyone who wants to play.

A Celebration of Play - celebrating genius in body, mind and spirit; genius in sports, in individual and team performance, in individual and collective art and invention, in music and dance.

A Festival of Junk.

The invitation to play:

Aside from being perhaps the first public event to incorporate sports and arts, the Festival of Junk is also probably the first public festival that is created entirely with found materials. All the art is made of scrap, all the music is played on instruments made of scrap, even the sports equipment is made entirely from scrap.

Scrap. Found objects. Discarded materials. All free, local, accessible to anyone. No one too poor to be an artist or musician. No one too poor to play.

Along with economic access comes equal access. No one is too disabled to play. Or too old or too young to play. Or too weak. Or the wrong gender or race or nationality. Everyone can afford to play. Everyone is good enough to play. The invitation to play is available to anyone who wants to accept it.

The event:

Taking place in a large, open public area - a local playfield, a town square, a street - large enough to accommodate:

• three different games, played simultaneously - all variations on popular sports
  
• three different scrap-instrument bands with dancing area
  
• shops for selling, displaying, and creating scrap art, scrap toys, scrap instruments
  

The games areas are surrounded by shops, galleries, workshops, and music areas. The shops and galleries all feature work of local artists, and all the works are made from scrap materials. Works include: sculptures, mobiles, collages, clothes, toys, musical instruments, etc. The workshops are staffed by local artisans as well as by nationally recognized artists and musicians. There, festival-goers can make their own scrap creations, under the guidance of local and national masters, and offer them for sale at any of the stores or galleries. In the music areas, participants can listen, dance, or join in the music-making.

As you enter the games areas, you see people sitting and watching star athletes. There's a lot of laughing, because the star athletes are playing with local kids, using a ball the kids made by out of rags and plastic bags. The goals are made of scrap. The field is marked with scrap. The game itself seems to be some kind of soccer game, only there are two balls (a big one and a small one) and three goals (a wide one and a narrow one and narrower one), a player in a wheelchair and one on crutches, a 6-year-old boy and a teen-age girl. You sit to watch, and almost immediately someone comes up to you and asks if you want to join the game, or perhaps start a new game in one of the adjacent play areas.

Sports have a great power to bring people together. For many, just getting to see star athletes in person is reason enough to come to the festival. For others, actually getting to play with these athletes is an experience that they will remember for the rest of their lives. For the athletes, it's an experience of giving, of using their great fame to make sports more accessible to kids and community, and, most significantly, of deep and lasting fun.

Some benefits:

• Inviting equal participation from people of all ages, abilities, and cultures, the festival itself becomes a model for an equitable society, where individuals are honored for their accomplishments, regardless of gender, age, body type, physical limitations.
• Seeing and playing with star athletes is an invitation and inspiration for participation in sports. Playing informally, with adapted rules, and a focus clearly more on play than on winning, demonstrates how sports can involve everyone who wants to play.
• Involving the use of scrap materials, the festival demonstrates and validates ecological awareness and the value of reuse. Because scrap materials are free, it also removes barriers between the various levels of affluence within a community.
• The festival gives credence and honor to the things that get made out of the discarded - the art made out of findings and fittings and scrap, the music made with sticks and tin cans, the toys made out of bottle tops, the sports played with balls made out of shopping bags. This, in turn, encourages local artisans, musicians, and, of course, children, to value the things they create out of scrap.
• Promoting the sale of the scrap works of local artisans directly promotes entrepreneurial growth. Promoting the purchase and creation of scrap-built arts and crafts virtually eliminates economic barriers for any artisan or craftsperson.
• The few hours in which everyone is involved in playing sports, dancing, making music, creating art, are hours in which the entire community is at peace, at play, empowered.

Organization and development:

Much of the organization and development of a Celebration of Junk should be conducted at the local level - local sports organizations, youth organizations, art and cultural organizations. Once the star athletes are lined up, advanced publicity begins with the organization of scrap-collecting efforts from all over the community, especially those involving any businesses that regularly produce significant amounts of scrap.

In the mean time, athletes, artists, musicians with national recognition, and those known only locally, are identified and invited to participate as well as help support the event. Regular announcements to the press help publicize both the event and the star attractions. Wherever possible, all who stand to benefit financially from the event - local artisans who will be displaying their work for sale - should be encouraged to produce scrap-based works of art and craft and to be available for scrap workshops.

Some time before the event, participating athletes will need a guided workshop, exploring the idea of scrap-based games (a.k.a. Junkyard Sports) together, and designing a few to play at the festival - stressing that the games must be able to accommodate a wide range of players with an even wider range of abilities.