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The Financial Dimension of Play

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Our Story

When Mathias Poulsen organised the first CounterPlay festival in 2014, it was out of a sense of urgency. Personal urgency, yes, he wanted a more playful (professional) life, but of far greater importance was the urgency for society as a whole. Play was being increasingly marginalised, children’s time was more institutionalised and structured by adults than ever, and then there was adults’ play? Was that even allowed? Maybe there was – and is – a link between the lack of play and the explosion in people suffering from stress, anxiety and a general feeling of dread and misery? We can’t say for sure, but it seems highly plausible.

Something had to be done, but where do you begin? 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. It was either that or nothing (or so it seemed).

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 personally – every time. It’s probably more luck than “financial literacy” that has allowed us to break more or less even every time, neither making nor losing any money.

We haven’t found the perfect solution, but we try to be transparent about the challenges of running an independent play festival with high ambitions and limited resources. As always, we choose it 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*. Perhaps inspired a bit by the Danish welfare state, we think it’s only fair to redistribute some funds to those in need.

If you’re a contributor, we’ll basically do whatever we can to help you if you have limited means and no one to support you.

This time, we have said that for contributors, we can offer to cover the registration fee and up to €400 pr. team. The extent of this depends, of course, on how many that need our help vs how many that don’t. Again, if nobody pays, we have no money to redistribute.

We would rather cover all expenses for anyone contributing, but so far, this has been our only 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

Dreams for a more playful future

We’re always working to improve the festival and the financial situation on which it hinges.

Part of that means being able to better help the less fortunate to attend the festival. It pains us every single time our limited resources prevent passionately playful people from joining the play community, but it happens more often than we like to admit.

Overall, we’re dreaming of having to worry less about money and creating a more solid foundation for the festival. We aim to be around for as long as play needs us, and there seems to be no end in sight. This is, for all intents and purpose, a lifelong journey.

In the end, however, it’s more important for us to pursue our ambition of creating the best possible space for play, independently and with integrity. If we’ll ever have to choose between lots of money and the integrity of the festival and the community, well, that decision is already made.

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