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News & Events
Playful Arts Festival 2018
When I was recently driving back from Playful Arts Festival in Den Bosch, the Netherlands, even the dreadful traffic on the Autobahn was not nearly enough to kill my enthusiasm for this great event!
Knowledge & Reflection
Play to Live
I'm not an expert in brevity, to say the least, but here I'll try to clarify one little thing without too many detours and without going deep into the (important and fascinating) available literature: the purpose of play. Easy, right? There's this constant discussion...
Society & Politics
Recognizing the Other
I recently asked if play can save democracy, marking the first steps on my journey to explore what I already at the outset consider a deep kinship shared by play and democracy. As promised, there is no clear answer in sight, but some patterns and questions are...
About CounterPlay
CounterPlay Manifesto
While retaining a fundamental openness, curiosity and the capacity to always learn more about the nature of play, with this manifesto we wish to put a stake in the ground and make our position on play clearly visible.
Recent posts
The double-edged sword of the modern library
The classic library is a conundrum in and of itself, a building dedicated to the imaginary worlds of fiction, of curious characters from the minds of authors and playwrights, and a space where you are asked not utter a word louder than your breath, and...
Are the Robots coming?
If the robots are here not only to makes things easier, but actually end up taking over our jobs, what are our options? And what is the role of play in this predicament?
CounterPlay Leeds #3 – Action!
When hosting or participating in play events, I always aim to 1) play, 2) think about play and 3) talk about play. As part of the latter, I find it important to have a conversation about the future: where do we go from here? How do we create better conditions for play and the playful society?
CounterPlay Leeds #2 – Themes
Now it’s time to explore the central themes as they emerged through play at the recent CounterPlay Leeds festival!
CounterPlay Leeds #1 – Context
What happens when CounterPlay is brought to a completely different setting in another country? CounterPlay Leeds was our first experiment with “satellite” festivals and it was a BLAST!
Be Provocative!
What can we do to make our cities and urban spaces more playful? Sometimes, we simply need to be provocative and use the power of play to challenge the norms around us.
Making Changes
When you play, things change, the world changes, and you change. Now CounterPlay is changing.
Playful Philly
A while back, I was invited to train a group of instructors, who would be leading six play camps across branches of the Free Library of Philadelphia. "Teach them about play", my friend Joel requested, and of course I immediately said yes. The training week took...
Designing CounterPlay
This post is an attempt to capture the essence of CounterPlay, the principles underlying the festival and the connection to play. Part of it is a description of what we have been doing since the beginning, while part of it remains more of an ideal for our future work.
Loving the Magnificent Mayhem
CounterPlay ‘17 is over, it’s been several days, and I’m only slowly catching my breath. It was a wild and crazy ride, and all the impressions still need more time to settle.