Cooperation is the keystone of my work. When the word is spelled "co-operation" with a hyphen, it as a bit more obvious that the word means working together in a group, as opposed to competing with or working against each other. When students do cooperative learning, everyone in the group learns the material. When businesses adapt cooperative business models, productivity soars.

    In fact, a lifetime of work (and quite a number of professional studies) have clearly shown to me that when people cooperate, pretty much everything goes better: personal interactions, the project itself, the results, the attached feelings, productivity, the bottom line, the efficiency, the follow-through, the relationships, pretty much everything.
    In my work, I use cooperative games as a tool to subtly promote cooperation among children, teens, adults, and elders. Taking what began so obviously as a recreational style and elevating it to the realm of public entertainment has empowered me to bring the joys of cooperation to a significantly wider audience than just the school playground. As a trained and certifield New games Leader & Cooperative Play Specialist, I've performed at over 5,000 events and have entertained more than 1 million people to date. And since moving back to Massachusetts in 1982, I now make professional appearances at hundreds of public and private events throughout the Northeast each year.

    To be right up front about it, I don't have anything against sports or competition per se. For the record, I competed in volleyball and track & field in grade school and am a three-time collegiate letterman in lacrosse (one of the most violent sports ever). No brag, just fact. However, my current interest in sports is not in the game or the score or the statistics. No, my only real interest in professional athletes is this: I just plain love watching people who are just plain excellent at what they do. So let's leave sports to the professionals.

    For the rest of us, cooperation is a better way on so many levels, and it is my life's work to bring this to the people.

    So exactly how do I influence people towards cooperation? Three ways: by fun, by education, and by example.

    1. By Fun.

    Basically, cooperation is simply more fun than winners and losers.

    Sports requires everyone to hone specific skills, measure them up against others, and keep track of who's better than whom... you know, winners and losers. Absolutely nobody likes being a loser, but it's an inherent part of all sports that after the game is over, most of the participants will simply not feel very good about it. Period.

    Cooperative games, on the other hand, have no losers. Everybody wins. They are played strictly for the recreational and enjoyment factors. Most players can enjoy themselves specifically because they are not vying with others to see who's the best... they are simply interacting for the sheer fun of it. This is particularly empowering to those who do not excel at sports (nearly everyone). Even when I work with athletes, I find that after their initial distrust of something different, absolutely everyone has such a good time that even the most hard-core jocks have to admit the games were really fun and want to play them again.

    Fun is a powerful motivator and ever so subtle. People like to participate in activities that are fun. If the average person enjoys participating in a particular recreational style, that person tends to favor that particular recreational style. So, just the fact that cooperative games are purposely designed to be fun for everyone makes them the obvious chouce for those who have experienced them.

    And that's what I do: help people experience cooperative recreation so that they have a quality alternative. And because cooperative games are such fun, when given the choice thereafter, most people tend to choose cooperation.

    Part of my work involves Cooperative Play staff development trainings and Cooperative Play team-building workshops. I'm called in to schools, day cares, summer camps, and businesses of all types to teach their staff appropriate cooperative games and/or to work on team-building. These workshops are all "hands-on" meaning that the participants actually play the games together. There's nothing like seeing a room full of teachers shrieking with glee during a game of Lemonade, or a group of people in business suits struggling together to extricate themselves from each other in a game of Knots!
    A small but vital part of my trainings is specifically about educating the participants in what Cooperative Play is really all about: working together instead of against each other. For many, particularly in the educational fields, this is a real eye-opener. For most, it is their first experience of any alternative to strictly competitive sports and games. And when they've discovered this new, more appropriate recreational style and tried it out on the job with their young charges, they discover that cooperation fits their objectives far, far better than anything else in the recreation field.

    And for those who won't actually be taking more of the attitude than the content back to work with them, the message of cooperation remains instilled into their consciousness and tends to pop up at appropriate moments.

    In the first sentence of this article, I said that cooperation is the keystone of my work. But actually, cooperation is the keystone of my entire life. I first learned about cooperative games in 1972 and, beginning that very year, have been leading them professionally ever since. I've been deeply involved with food cooperatives since 1975. Began training in leading New Games (a play movement based on fun over competition) in 1977. Became a certified New Games Leader in 1980. Began training others in cooperative play in 1981. Got a regular Monday through Friday part-time job leading cooperative games in 1982. Got my picture in the newspaper for the first time leading cooperative games in 1985. Was using cooperative games on a weekly basis in after school programs in six different elementary schools in 1986. I've been living in cooperative households since 1987. Performed my first cooperative games stage show in 1989. Started a cooperative games newsletter and was interviewed on the radio as a "cooperation expert" for the first time in 1990. Began studying cooperative communication methods in 1991. Began a cooperatively-run professional performers guild in 1993. Had my first cooperative games column published somewhere other than my own newsletter and lead cooperative games on tv for the first time in 1994. Began earning my living full-time from cooperative games in 1995. Discovered that several cooperative games I'd been presenting for the past fifteen years had become schoolyard favorites throughout my stomping grounds in southern New England by 1997. Began doing cooperative games gym classes with homeschooler groups in 2003. And hit my 5,000th professional cooperative play performance in 2006 having entertained well over 1,000,000 people to date.

    Basically, I live and breathe cooperation, so when I'm on stage, I do it automatically without even thinking about it. I realized that the message was getting through when I consistently was getting after-show comments along the lines of: "It's wonderful how you got everyone to cooperate together," and "I love how you got the teens to help out the younger children," and "It's so good to see everybody working together instead of against each other."

    

trevor@trevorthegamesman.com

PO Box 463, Haydenville, MA 01039