Featured posts
News & Events
Materials and Junk-yard Play
Together with our friends Helle Marie Skovbjerg and Ann Charlotte Thorsted, we have formed a small play club and we recently hosted our second event to play with materials and celebrate junk-yard playgrounds.
Knowledge & Reflection
Play as Participation
While it may seem trivial to say that play is about participation, it might not be that straightforward. To truly participate is to have some degree of power, and the same goes for play.
Society & Politics
Can Play Save Democracy?
Can play save democracy? It’s a big question and one that I’m afraid I can’t answer in the affirmative. Not yet, probably never. So what if even the best we can ever do will always fall short of “saving” democracy, if we can only hope to keep it alive, or, better yet, to make it come alive?
About CounterPlay
Making Changes
When you play, things change, the world changes, and you change. Now CounterPlay is changing.
Recent posts
The Playful Society Prototype
Maybe you have heard us talk about the CounterPlay festival as a "prototype" of the playful society. I'd like to dive a little deeper into that idea, since it's basically the most important reason for the festival to exist. It's our BIG dream to contribute to a strong...
#playchallenge17 1: The floor is made of lava
JOIN OUR PLAY CHALLENGE!! The CounterPlay Festival 2017 is only five weeks away! To celebrate this, we have a created a number of small challenges to honour ‘The Power of Play.’ Each week we will post a new challenge for you to participate in. All challenges will...
The Global Play Community
Cultivating a diverse play community where people are actively participating to explore and spread play is probably our best bet to foster a strong movement towards a more playful world.
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...
Playing with Power
I am writing this post in response to the call issued by Mathias in his blog post, to “collect and share bits and pieces that demonstrate the power of play to play with power.” I agree that we live at an interesting moment, when it is worth considering whether...
Playing With Power – an Invitation
Play is powerful as play allows us to play with power, to challenge power, to be subversive and rebellious. This is an invitation to share your insights, experiences and ideas on playing with power.
CounterPlay ’17: Announcements
Having reviewed all the wonderful proposals for CounterPlay ’17, we are immensely happy to present the first big selection of activities and people, who are going to help us make the next festival the best and most playful one yet.
#cplaydk #3: Play in Public Spaces
On Wednesday, December 7, we discussed "play in public spaces", and wow, what an amazing conversation! This is the third chat, and it's been wonderful to see how "new" people keep joining the community. Twitter is particularly good for this because it is so open, and...
#cplaydk #2: Play in the Workplace
On November 28, 2016, we had a great discussion about "play in the workplace". Here are the questions: #cplaydk #2: Play in the Workplace from Mathias Poulsen Here is a collection of tweets from the chat: [<a...
(Don’t do) Playwashing
“Playwashing describes the situation where a company or organization spends more time and money claiming to be “playful” through advertising and marketing than actually implementing strategies and business practices that cultivate a playful culture in said organization”