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News & Events
Celebrating Play Professors
May 1st Helle Marie Skovbjerg, along with her Dutch colleague, Tilde Bekker, gave their inaugural lectures at Design School Kolding. Both of them were to be professors of play – amazing! – and I had been invited to bring some play to the party!
Knowledge & Reflection
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Society & Politics
Playfully Subverting Tech Fetishism
We’ve gotten so used to being surrounded by technology that we often seem to not even pay attention to its presence. This is not (just) a good thing. Maybe play can remind us what it means to be human?
About CounterPlay
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.
Recent posts
A Playful Atmosphere
In the two previous posts I have written about "the diversity of play" and "the play community" as two factors to consider when aspiring to create a truly playful play festival. An even less controllable and tangible part of making a playful festival is the...
The Play Community
In the previous post, I reflected on "the diversity of play" as one strategy for "inviting playfulness" by allowing people to approach play in a way that feels meaningful to them. While we can design for diversity in the way we represent play, and we can invite a...
Making a play festival playful
It’s been a while since the third CounterPlay festival ended, but we’re still extremely excited that so many wonderful people came from all around the world to play and we still feel the energy. We’ve been evaluating and reflecting on the event, including question of what actually makes a play festival like CounterPlay truly playful?
Play is Freedom
“It’s funny – a sad kind of funny – that we so often feel that we’re doing something wrong, something illegal, having fun like this, together, in the open. Which is probably why, when we get together, it’s so much more fun” – by Bernie DeKoven
A Playful space – What a nice place to be!
“To give each other permission to play” is one of the main points which have stuck with me after participating in CounterPlay Festival 2016″ – By Heidi Hautopp
The Play Paradigm
Discussions about play are too often blindsided by a lack of common language, a very narrow understanding of play, and a belief that play is only relevant if assimilated into the current paradigm as simple instruments with measurable and predictable outcomes.
What is playful leadership?
“if we want to make it safely and sanely through all the changes coming our way, we’re going to need to come out and play” - Bernie DeKoven Play is, perhaps more than anything, a fundamental source of fun, joy and well-being throughout our lives. It’s not reserved for...
Organising CounterPlay ’16
Working on CounterPlay '16, it's clear that we need to also focus on the way the festival is organised. Even though we want CounterPlay to be deliberately (somewhat) chaotic to support a more relaxed, informal and playful atmosphere, we also strive to make it as...
Playful Libraries – writeup from Next
We've been fortunate enough to be a partner at the international Next Library 2015 conference, which has just taken place in the fantastic DOKK1 building here in Aarhus (where CounterPlay '16 coincidentally also happens to play out next year). I was there on behalf...
The Play Deficit
CounterPlay has always been interested in playfulness all over society and the world; everywhere. https://twitter.com/mathiaspoulsen/status/606762019245682688 We want to go beyond games, beyond play as an activity, also exploring the meaning of being playful. We want...