When we organised the first CounterPlay festival in 2014, it was out of a sense of urgency. Personal urgency, yes, we wanted a more playful (professional) life, but of far greater importance was the urgency for society as a whole.
The ambition was always to create an ambitious, diverse, international play community, who could join forces to talk about play, to think about play and to play, exploring and celebrating play across society and throughout life, for anyone and everyone. It should be the best (whatever that means), most welcoming, inclusive and generous space to learn about play.
We never found big money for this, yet it couldn’t work without any money, obviously. Right at the beginning, we chose to base everything on registration fees, which we then aimed to make as reasonable as possible.
CounterPlay has ever since remained a not-for-profit, con amore undertaking that we can’t stop doing, simply because it feels too important and the growing play community is too dedicated and lovely.
From the outset of organising every festival, we don’t have any funds, no regular source of income, big sponsors or similar. Hence, most of our budget is still covered by the registration fees paid by participants, and in the end, we run the risk of ending up with a deficit to be covered by us.
We haven’t found the perfect solution, but we try to be transparent about the challenges of running a small play festival with high ambitions and limited resources. As always, we choose to see this as a joint event for and by the play community. We need each other to make it work.
Implications for you
So what does all this mean for you? I mean, you just want to play, right?
After consulting many related conferences who are facing similar challenges, we decided to develop a policy partly based on what seems to be common: everybody pays.
Many individuals have an organisation (usually their employer) to cover the expenses, but some don’t. In some cases, they can get support from within their own communities, by applying for travel funds, doing crowdfunding etc.
As contributor:
As a rule, we don’t distinguish between contributors and “regular” participants, as we ask both groups to take care of their own expenses (registration, travel, accomodation and so on).
No rules without exceptions, especially in play, and the more people who do pay, the more we can also do to help those who *can’t*.
If that’s you, please do get in touch.
If you’re a contributor, we’ll do what we can to help you if you have limited means and no one to support you. The extent of this depends, of course, on how many that need our help vs how many that don’t.
We would rather cover all expenses for anyone contributing, but so far, this has been our best option for creating the independent, playful event we’re striving for. Essentially, for the festival to survive and evolve, we ask you to consider it a play community that we all invest in.
As participant:
If you’re a “regular” participant, we usually can’t do much to help you financially, but we’re always happy to do whatever we can to support you – if you need just the right argument to convince your boss, if you need a letter of support when you’re applying for funds, or something else.
You can also use our Facebook community to find people in a similar situation to your own – who knows, maybe you can help each other out?
We are genuinely dedicated to making the play community accessible and inclusive for everyone.
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