On the occasion of Francis Alÿs’s exhibition Ricochets at Barbican Art Gallery (27 Jun–1 Sep 2024), three local schools took part in a year-long art and learning programme inspired by the work of the artist and his series Children’s Games (1999–present). On 15 Nov 2023, Alÿs and his long-time collaborator Rafael Ortega met the children of Prior Weston Primary School, Richard Cloudesley School and St Luke’s CE Primary School in their classrooms. This conversation retraces their first encounter with the artist and records their mutual curiosity around the making of art and the making of games.
Over the course of the school year 2023–24, three classes of 60 primary school students aged between six and eleven were given the opportunity to engage in a series of art and learning workshops, organised by the Barbican and led by Ortega and educator Lucy Pook. Created in response to the exhibition, the sessions included learning how to make your own film and how to use language to write performative prompts, culminating in a programme of activities around and after the opening.
At the start of this collaboration, Alÿs prompted the Barbican team to research what games children play, and how they play them. Our fieldwork identified 49 different games played across the three schools around the Barbican. This investigation led to the children’s participation in newly commissioned Children’s Games films shot locally and presented in the exhibition. The children and teachers from the participating schools – all within walking distance of the gallery – became friends of the project, connecting the immediate Barbican community with the global constellation of voices documented in the Children’s Games.
The games played by children today in and around the Barbican are part of a unique transhistorical legacy of play in this part of the city. The very ground on which the Barbican is built was once an area of devastation following Second World War air raids. These bomb sites became the earliest adventure playgrounds, reclaimed from the rubble and activated by children through play. This history was influential to Alÿs, whose Children’s Games frequently document children’s creative resilience in war zones. Their spirit resonates in the children who have taken part in this project, all of whom embrace with freedom, humour and resourcefulness, the ability to transform the world through play, regardless of circumstance.
Isa: What gave you the idea of being an artist?
Francis: I saw some friends doing it, and I thought, I’ll give it a try. I liked it, so I continued.
Ezel: What year did you start being an artist?
Francis: To take it seriously? I was 35, maybe. How old are your parents?
Ezel: Um, 31.
Francis: You see, I’m older than your parents. I’m very old.
Halah: What was your first film?
Francis: I pushed an ice block along the street, a big ice block nearly the size of that table. I pushed it, pushed it, pushed it, until it melted into a little pebble and then into nothing. It took me a whole day. That was my first film.
Maysa: What is your favourite film ever?
Francis: My favourite film ever is actually a film made for children by someone living in Iran – very far away – and he did videos for kids like you, for schoolkids, explaining to them little, simple things, like a child who goes and gets bread for his family, and on the way back, there’s a dog barking in the middle of the street, and he needs to find a way to distract the dog to cross that part of the street to get to his home. It’s a very simple film, but it’s beautiful.
Hala: Why did you want to become an artist and make films?
Francis: Because I realised that’s what I do best. When you’ve tried many things, sometimes you realise, ‘I’m not so good at this; I’m good at that’, and eventually I found what I’m best at – so that’s what I started doing.
Ritaj: Do you like being an artist?
Francis: I love it.
Pixie: On a scale of one to ten, how excited were you to see us?
Francis: Eleven! (Raises hand above head)
Nancy: Did you travel here with anyone?
Francis: Whenever I can, I take my kids with me. When we can, we travel as a family; it’s much nicer.
Mikhail: How long did the flight take?
Francis: The first flight was about twelve and a half hours, and the next flight was forty minutes – very quick. The first one was really long. You go over the Atlantic, over the sea. There’s a lot of sea.
Khalid: Like, hundreds of minutes later you made it to the country you wanted.
Francis: But I slept on the plane, so I didn’t really notice.
Amin: How many countries have you travelled to?
Francis: Lots. But I always go to places where people invite me. I don’t travel much for pleasure. I mean, it’s always because there’s something to film or because I’m going to show my work, or do something that’s about children playing. I have two very young kids, and it’s very difficult to leave home. I don’t like leaving my kids. But coming to do something with you guys – that’s worth it.
Isa: What’s the furthest place you’ve ever gone to?
Francis: It depends where I’ve travelled from. Yesterday I was in Mexico. Do you have a globe anywhere?
Rafael: Here! (Showing route on a wall map) Yesterday he was here, and then he said goodbye to his kids, and then he took a plane, and he flew over here, and then changed planes and he moved over here, and then from here he walked to the Barbican, and from the Barbican he walked here.
(Several children shouting together)
Francis: (Demonstrating on the map) You guys are here; I live there. But the furthest I’ve been is probably here, a long way away (traces route on the wall map from Asia to Mexico, making a whooshing sound). The trick is that this is round, so I go this way, the other way round. (Rafael and Francis chuckle) I’ll bring a globe next time. I lived in London, by the way – twenty years ago. I liked it. It was very, very different from Mexico . . .
Isa: How did you get all this money to travel all around the world? (Giggles from several children)
Francis: (Laughs) I have a trick.
Ritaj: What?! What’s that?
Francis: I do films but I also do paintings. Little paintings – very little. I sell the paintings, and with that money, I travel and I do the films. So, the films I do, I don’t sell. That’s just for the fun, and because I love documenting children playing – those videos are not something I sell.
Zach: What’s your favourite food?
Francis: My favourite food?
Rafael: Bread! (Laughter; Francis wags finger to indicate it’s not)
Francis: Porridge. You call it porridge here in England?
Nancy: Do you like watching children play games?
Rafael: Oh, it’s horrible! It’s horrible watching children play games.
Francis: (Laughs, waves Rafael away) I love it! I love the way children make the games their own. They change them to their own needs and their own stories. They shape the games differently each time.
Mihiret: What was the idea of the Children’s Games?
Francis: I have very young kids – younger than you guys – so I play with them a lot. When I was a child, I played on the streets, in parks, in wastelands – anywhere – and when I see my own kids, they don’t play on the street anymore. They don’t play in what you call public space, anywhere outside of home. We would gather with friends, or on our own, and we’d play. If there was a puddle of water, we’d invent something to make a boat, and we could play just anywhere for hours. That’s disappearing because there are more cars, because parents don’t let their kids outside anymore, for all kinds of reasons. That’s why I’m filming the Children’s Games, because I think it’s important to remember those games. It’s your first moment and space of interacting with other children outside of school.
Rahaf: Did you travel to the countries in the films?
Francis: Several times. You need time to get to know the place, get to know the people, and hopefully then we can do something together.
Amber: What was your favourite country to travel to, to record a video?
Francis: There’s no favourite country, I like all of them. Each of them is very different. Each of them has something to offer – to give me. Each place is a different experience, a personal one, a different story. All of them have got something wonderful, I don’t have one favourite place.
Rahaf: Have you learned any languages from the countries?
Francis: I use drawings a lot. For example, when I did the film of the kids playing the hand stacking game (demonstrating stacking hands). I don’t speak Arabic, so we do drawings, we use gestures, and we communicate that way. There’s always a way to communicate.
Yohanna: How long have you been travelling around the world to see kids play?
Francis: Hmm. Often, I don’t go looking for the kids. I see kids playing, and I ask them if they want to be in a film. A lot of those films just came from chance encounters.
Jairus: What was your favourite game to play when you were younger, and how did you play it?
Francis: I grew up in the countryside, in a place that was very isolated. The opposite from where you live. So I didn’t have that many friends around, and a lot of the games I played were actually more on my own. One game was simply to have a rope with an old magnet on the end, and you’d pull it for hours and collect little scraps of metal. That was the game. It was just a way of tracing a route, grabbing little bits and scraps of metal, and then with all these little bits, maybe trying to do something back at home.
Darrell: What’s your favourite game you ever recorded?
Francis: Oh! From my films? All of them. Maybe it’s going to be the one I shoot with you. They’re all... I guess it’s like asking who your favourite child is. There’s no such thing.
Rafael: Okay. So, have you seen Francis’s films? Which one’s your favourite? Did anybody like the films?
Summayah: I liked them.
Klay: I liked the game where it’s like dodgeball but the children had to flip the bottle caps.
Rafael: Ah, the bottle caps – Estrellas.
Rahaf: I like how they’re creative and they used anything they had.
Sidra: I liked that.
Aidan: Grasshopper.
Rahaf: Marbles.
Alexia: I didn’t like the video where that kid was in that big wheel and rolled down the mountain.
Alivia: I liked it.
Alexia: It looked like the kid would just hurt themselves.
Ray: I don’t like it – naughty!
Francis: Those children are part of a troupe called The Acrobats. They do acrobatics, they do tricks with tyres. They can walk on top of a tyre – they do things much more complicated than what we showed in the film, and they do it along with music and percussion. It’s a group of about fifteen to twenty kids, and they work right next to a mine, so when they invited me to do something with them, the first thing we thought of was going down the big mountain next to the mine with a tyre. Okay, now I have a question for you. How old do you think the little boy was who was in the wheel?
Emmanuel: I think he’s eight.
Francis: He’s six! Now, can you guys tell me what your favourite game is?
Hala: Freestyle!
Charlyn: Family.
Ethan: Pop-Up Pirate.
Rafael: And yours?
Ezel: Football.
Rafael: Football? Okay. And you?
Aisha: I play with blocks.
Iris: Swinging.
Khalid: Basketball.
Rafael: Basketball. And your favourite game?
Ray: Trampoline.
Maysa: Haunted house and family.
Nancy: Haunted house and school.
Sidra: Games with food and shopping games.
Parker: It.
Rafael: It?
Parker: Yeah, tag.
Rafael: Ah, tag. You?
Khalid: Books and playing with others.
Elianna: The man at the window.
Rafael: The man at the window?
Amin: Among Us.
Ritaj: Roblox! It’s an online game.
Rafael: Imagine you’re on your own, you have no balls, no friends around, and you’re going to play something. What are you going to play?
Marco: 180 radius!
Maysa: Gymnastics.
James: Toy cars.
Halah: Look for a bird.
Rafael: You would look for a bird. You?
Summayah: Dolls and horse-riding. Funny!
Maya: Run around.
Amin: I like playing haunted.
Rafael: One person, playing haunted? Just yourself?
Alexia: Rock paper scissors.
Rafael: You’d play rock paper scissors on your own?
Alexia: Yeah.
Skyla: I’d play tic-tac-toe, probably.
Francis: Tic-tac-toe?
Rafael: Si, gato.
Francis: Ah, gato!
Amber: Skipping.
Francis: What are the games you play when you’re on your own, bored at home or in a garden?
Rafael: And you don’t have a computer or a camera, there’s no internet, no balls.
Francis: No electronic games.
Klay: I play It with my sister.
Hollie: Hopscotch.
Acacia: I play stop the bus.
Rafael: What’s stop the bus? I don’t know it.
Acacia: It’s a game that we made up. When the class teacher says you mustn’t be loud, then you have to come up with a country, an animal and a bird all starting with the same letter, and then you say, ‘Stop the bus’ when you’ve got it.
Hans: Needle. It’s like chess, but you go around...
Acacia: That’s not how it is.
Hans: Yeah, it is.
Pixie: We have these little cups, and then you have a ball, and then you put the ball in, and then you shake it and you try to catch it in the cup.
Rafael: Ah, okay, you shake it. (To Francis:) Balero.
Aidan: I’ll get something, throw it in the air, and watch it come back down.
Rafael: Okay. That’s good. (Mimics the game with something in his hand) Like that? With whatever you have, small or big?
Aidan: Any size.
Francis: Do you know the game where you throw a rock, and you get another rock, and with the second rock, you try to knock or hit the one in
the air?
Acacia: Oh, I play that.
Alexia: I play granny’s footsteps.
Rafael: How do you play granny’s footsteps?
Alexia: It’s basically anything that’s round that has a circle inside, and you step inside it and you have to go back and start again.
Yohanna: Red light, green light.
Francis: Another question: if I give you a little piece of paper, can you draw me the form of your hopscotch?
Alivia: One, two, one, two, one, two, one.
Francis: You can stand with both feet here, right? One, two, turn around, and
go back.
(Francis is talking to a child about her hopscotch drawings)
Lucia: You go one foot . . .
Francis: Two, one, two, one, two, one . . . Turn around and go back.
Lucia: Yeah.
Francis: Okay. Can I keep the drawing?
(Children nod)
Francis: Thank you.
Mihiret: What gave you the idea to come to us?
Francis: I was invited by the Barbican to present these films.
Rafael: They asked us if we could speak to some children who go to school around the Barbican, and we said we want to meet the most boring kids on the planet.
(Children exclaim in outrage and disbelief)
Francis: No, no! We thought it would be nice to come. Like you saw, the kids in the films are from all over – they’re from Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe . . . We thought it would be nice to show kids in London, and if possible kids who go to school near the Barbican, and for them to be in the exhibition, because the games in these films will be presented in an exhibition at the Barbican.
Rafael: We’re going to keep on coming, we’re going to see each other again, and we’re going to work on something together. But for the moment, this is going to be it, because your parents are waiting and I know you’re desperate to go home. So, we want to thank you very much, and give you a big round of applause for the films you made, because we saw them and we loved them!
