Overview

The most effective Junkyard Sport sessions are those that involve the greatest diversity of participants. Involving children of different ages, including the elderly, the infirm and handicapped, makes for an experience that transcends boundaries, that expresses the experience of community in its fullness. This truth was observed over and over again by noted folklorists like Iona and Peter Opie who observed children at play in their natural element – backlots, streets and playgrounds (see the Opies’ Children’s Games in Street and Playground )

Venue

An unlikely location is always chosen – a parking lot, a street, a hallway in an office building. There is a pervasive theme of informality and ingenuity – the use of found and scrap materials in spaces not designed for play.

The players

Each team is composed of very diverse members of the community – anybody who wants to play, regardless of age or ability:cross-generation (parents, kids, grandparents) and cross-ability when possible (wheelchair, etc)

Junk

Collect lots and lots of socks and pantyhose, scrap materials from local manufacturers, beachballs, exercise balls, brooms…

And then there's all the junk you need so teams to make their uniforms: hats, ribbons, bolts of cloth, and duct tape, definitely duct tape…

And don't forget the video camera.

Junkmasters

The winners from the previous game become Junkmasters for the next.

They determine the collection of junk available for the game, the venue in which the game will be played, and the time limits.

Junkmasters have participated in a Junkmasters’ camp, during which time they explored game invention and techniques to assure safety and participation.

Example: Inventing the Sockput

We have socks. We have a roll of toilet paper. Our mission, should we choose to accept it: create an Olympic event.

Phase two: we explore the tensile strength of several socks tied together

Sockput: the event

Why

As physical educators, organizers, leaders, our interest in cooperative games is not as much driven by our desire to nurture cooperation, as it is by our understanding that we need to include everybody, to provide everyone, regardless of ability, with an opportunity to engage, physically, socially, spiritually, in active play. We are not against competition as much as we are against the divisive and exclusionary nature of competition. It was this understanding that led to the development and unprecedented success of the New Games movement.

Anyone who has played “New Games” knows that the games aren’t really new. What is new is the spirit in which they are played – a spirit in which it is clear that fun is more important than winning, the players more important than the game. Though many New Games can be seen as “cooperative,” the truth is that just as many of them involve competition – a competition that is held in check by the spirit of New Games and the overriding mandate for universal fun.

These competitive New Games (like Dho-Dho-Dho, Smaug’s Jewels, Tweezly Whop, Slaughter, Dragon’s Tail, Hug Tag, Lemonade and Ultimate Frisbee) were selected because they were not only fun, but also funny. They included silly names, silly rituals, silly noises, silly performances, because, as long as they were seen as funny, players would not take them too seriously, and hence be able to keep the competition in check and in appropriate perspective.

Perhaps the most successful strategy for keeping competitive games from being taken too seriously was the introduction of unorthodox equipment. It is difficult to take volleyball seriously when you’re playing with a six-foot-diameter “earth ball.”

It is this strategy that is behind the concept of “Junkyard Sports.”

Every culture has its version of Junkyard games – in the U.S., unofficial imitations of popular sports, broom hockey, stickball and halfball (as described on the Streetplay website - have, for many of us, become the very paradigm of childhood. Because these informal sports, by virtue of their informality, have no rulebook or body of officials, players are forced to make their own judgments about how a rule is to be followed or a violation to be dealt with. This requires a cooperative contract between all players, whereby, for the game’s sake, rules can be changed to accommodate the demands of the moment and the needs of the players.

The Junkyard Sports concept is built on this precedent. But takes it several steps further. The goal is to provide any population with an experience of active physical and social play – one that is inclusive and engaging, one that is not taken so seriously as to cause anyone to be excluded or penalized for lack of physical abilities, one that is undertaken for the sake of sharing fun.

Junkyard Sports are inventions. It is easier to invent a Junkyard Sport than a New Game, because a Junkyard Sport is merely an old game, played with found objects. That, in the process of reconfiguring the old game so that it can be played with junk, the old game becomes changed, adapted, new. Which is precisely the point.

Junkyard Sports can be based on any known game or sport, even board games, card games or arcade games. As seen from the above examples, even though they may be modeled after a game, there is no reason to adhere too strongly to the game as played. There could be three teams with two goals or two teams with three or even no teams with one goal (everyone playing for themselves). The only real goal is the invention of a game that is fun for all the players. And, even with that in mind, it’s important to remember that the act of creating the game is, in many ways, as valuable as the game itself. Even if no playable game emerges, participants will have worked and played together, constructively, creatively, inclusively. They will have exercised leadership and collaboration skills.They will have made use of a scientific method of play and experimentation to develop their concepts.

Predictions

I think the worst that can happen as a result of this new initiative is that we will be left with a collection of newer games. Which is not such a bad thing. On the other hand, if we can include in our practice and vision the process of collaborative game invention itself, Junkyard Sports can become a true, powerful innovation, leading thousands of children and adults to new levels of physical and social development. Because each game is designed by its players, the Junkyard Sport format can bridge generations as easily as physical limitations, culture as easily as race. Junkyard Sport events, similar in scope to New Games Tournaments, can become large scale community celebrations where locally produced scrap material becomes the very stuff of play. And, yes, compilations and illustrations of favorite Junkyard Sports will inevitably be sought-after, and conveying the design process and potential for continued development will no doubt all too often prove sadly beyond the scope of the publication. However, if luck holds, and enough schools and organizations pursue Junkyard Sports, there will be too many games to describe, and too many people who understand the joy of invention to fall for the lesser joys of collection.

A Personal Note

In 1976, I had the opportunity to design a massive "Playday on the Parkway" for 250,000 people as the culminating event of Philadelphia's Bicentennial celebrations. I created very large scale games - games that could be played by tens or hundreds of people at a time. The most successful games were based on junk like carpet tubes and cardboard cartons, My favorite - a game of Giant Pick-Up Sticks that we made out of those carpet tubes. It was the success of this particular game that led me, almost 30 years later, to the development of what I am now calling "Junkyard Sports."