Rapping by the seat of my pants

Well here I am writing my blog without typing it up first and getting it checked by Jonathan.  I'm flying by the seat of my pants! And I don't know what to say after that!  But I feel my posts have been a little intense of late...not enough jokes in them.  After all you can't have worked for some of the organisations I've worked for (one of which had a VERY silly name) without a sense of humour.  I think many people believe that if you're working for a charity you need to be earnest and intense (and boring).  But I've found that actually, when you're working on an intense issue, you NEED a sense of humour to get you through.  And, in the participatory work I've done with children I found that taking this sense of humour to the limit - i.e. humiliating yourself by dancing like a loony (which seems to be my particular form of ritual humiliation) wins you brownie points all round.

I've been thinking a lot about the difference between working with adults and children this week as I've been writing some training on children's participation.  At Children Unite, we decided we wanted to promote participative work with children in everything we do - which is not just because it's the new empowerment thing to be doing (it's not that new).  It is because, to be frank, participative work with children is exciting, it makes you think more creatively, you end up doing things you never thought you'd do (dancing like a loony), you are ALLOWED to have a lot more fun and the food is generally good.

So, I think all 'work' should be participative in nature (given the latter definition which I know is not actually a definition of participative work but, hey, this is a blog and I'm flying by the seat of my pants here).  I guess, as far as Children Unite is concerned, it's up to me to make this one of our policies.  Mmmm... I quite like that idea...a policy on 'fun in the workplace'.  Today, for example, instead of working solidly in front of my computer for six hours I should have had a break after every hour and composed a rap about practice standards of children's participation then performed it.  That would have been fun! And my daughter pointed out a rhyming dictionary to me recently so I know you can rhyme quite a lot with 'participation' - 'emancipation' 'infestation' and 'constipation' for example!  I'm sure those words would have come in handy!!

I don't quite know how to round this post off though - perhaps with thanks for the jokes I've shared over the past week with my colleagues. Particularly those with our Trustees at our first Board Meeting of 2011 where we had lots of laughs in appointing a Chair and Treasurer - who both have a good sense of humour! Perhaps also with a TERRIBLE pun I've just thought of...it was no Bored Meeting!  Arg! (Yes, yes I agree - I'll stick to dancing like a loony to get a laugh!).