One World Calendar 2025

Now in its 44th year, the best-selling One World Calendar continues to delight, with 12 powerful photographs to grace your wall throughout the year. And now you also have space for your appointments. The 2025 theme is Play. Children learn through play. From the earliest years they make sense of the world around them by playing with it – not only discovering which experiences give them the most pleasure but also exploring their own relationship with the things and people around them. If they have the chance they will create elaborate environments with bricks, dolls or miniature vehicles that both mimic and depart from the external world as they perceive it, and over which they can exercise some control. The children featured in this One World Calendar tend not to have access to the multifarious toys of consumer culture but are nevertheless still seeking both pleasure and understanding through play. The Nenet boy in the Siberian Arctic is climbing up the reindeer-hide tent that forms his family home, perhaps for the sheer enjoyment and sense of achievement of the climb itself, perhaps to gain a better view of the frozen world all around. The Hmong children in the hills of Vietnam are testing their strength and learning about teamwork in an exuberant tug of war. The South Sudanese children may be heading home to their refugee settlement as the wind announces a storm but they show every sign of enjoying their capacity to run fast and pick their way skilfully through the landscape. Only the Chinese girls have access to the most modern, technological forms of ‘play’ as they cluster eagerly around a smartphone. Yet even they are dressed in elaborate, colourful costumes ready for an operatic performance that both adults and children have delighted in for centuries. As this suggests, leisure pursuits and play are vital parts of life for adults as well as children – and grown-ups continue to learn through and be enriched by their leisure pursuits throughout their lives. How telling is it that, when the impoverished residents of the refugee settlement featured in this Calendar were asked what they most desired, they opted for a leisure centre and performance space? The wheelchair basketball players in Caracas, the pool players in Port Sudan, the card players in Chengdu, the Aymara dancers in La Paz: all are seeking a break from the rigours of their everyday reality, exercising their own particular skills in the process. The street comedians from Italy and the musicians from South Africa, meanwhile, are, along with the girls in the Chinese opera, not only delighting themselves but also entertaining many others. Whatever our age, as 80-year-old Juana from Havana with her boxing gloves proves, we never lose the capacity to delight in play. Chris Brazier Large format, spiral bound, one month to view. Use as an art photography calendar or open up to reveal space for writing.