TOTAL LICENSING
Look for the helpers... In the latest of his regular columns for Total Licensing, Gary Pope, CEO and Co-Founder of Kids Industries and Children’s Commissioner for Products of Change talks about the responsibility we all have to make the very best playthings we can.
This might be a bit personal. Not very British, perhaps. Let’s see. Silly season is over, and it’s almost Christmas. The year has streaked past us, and as ever, none of us are quite sure how it did that without us noticing. This point of the year can be a moment for a bit of a reset, to reflect on what’s been going on and begin to think more about what’s to come… even thinking into the new year. Is that weird? Is it just me? Like many of us, there are three things that drive this reflection for me: my family, my work and what’s going on in the wider world around me. I’m leaving family out of this column because my kids would kill me. So that leaves work and the wider world. My reflections on the wider world are sometimes over-coloured by my reading about current affairs more than is “normal”. And in my work time, I focus on what the future might be for the next generation. Sometimes they conflate. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes it’s not. Now is not a good time to have a conflation. Most of the world is in the toilet. And most of what isn’t in the toilet is burning. I have never been so concerned for the next generation because of current affairs. Sure, I’ve felt like this before, but of late, as my favourite non-Jedi said: I’ve got a really bad feeling about this. Until today. Today, I stumbled across this quote from Fred Rogers: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realising that there are still so many
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helpers—so many caring people in this world.” I hadn’t heard this before – but perhaps you have. Apparently, it has become problematic in the US in recent years. It has been shared as a conciliatory meme after the unspeakable horror of mass shootings and the like, and it seems that many adults have forgone its inherent optimism, and it’s become an apologist for tragedy. But the thing is, Fred’s mum didn’t say it for adults in the 2020s. She said it to her child in the 1930s. A time not entirely different to today. And it was said to this child when they needed to hear it – at a particular point in his development. That child became a model for emotional intelligence and became a man with a legacy of compassion that few have surpassed. This bloke symbolised tolerance, patience, understanding and unconditional love. In the world of children’s entertainment, the foundation of what we do is to provide the stimuli and opportunity for play. And play is the work of the child. It enables them to understand the world around them and their
place in it. It enables them to socialise and empathise, learn, share, and care. It nurtures tolerance, patience and understanding. Play is the most important part of childhood. Perhaps it is also the most important part of adulthood, too. And this is why we all have a responsibility to make the very best play things we can. They don’t have to be expensive or complicated; they just have to be good. Because it is the things that children choose to play with that enable them to understand their world and become the brighter future of our world. Maybe as parents, carers, aunts, uncles and godparents, when our children are looking at a world that is falling apart, maybe we can remind them to look for the helpers, and in so doing, maybe we might be able to remind ourselves that actually, things are going to turn out just fine because you will always find people that are helping. Always. But even more important than that, it’s worth reminding ourselves that one of the many things that all children have in common is that they want to help, too. n