All play and no work

It’s been rather the other way around: all work and no play. Six very busy months into the Leverhulme post-doc fellowship and we can finally play. After doing some rather intensive fieldwork (food deliveries, interviews, ride alongs), I got to know quite well the struggles of Mancunian food delivery platform workers.

I gathered their most pressing concerns and turned them into a role-playing game which I’ve used during one workshop with a handful of couriers. Together with Jamie Woodcock (Open University and IWGB) and David Perez (Lancaster University), we asked workers:

‘What if we had the power to change something?’

‘What if we were the CEO of Deliveroo, the local council, a worker union?’

It was great to see that many of the riders were not only aware of the exploitative working conditions in the gig economy, but they can also imagine ways to make things better.

We don’t yet have a solid plan for how to take down once and forever platform capitalism, but we hope to contribute somehow to the struggle of these workers.

More to come on the subversive power of play in the next months.