Guidelines for contributors

CounterPlay is about cross-pollinating playfulness – by mixing ideas, perspectives, concepts, approaches and ways of seeing the world. To achieve this, we welcome a multitude of playful contributions to the CounterPlay festival. As we are always aiming to break traditional boundaries and challenge perceptions of how, where and when we can be playful, we have very few rigid rules. There are, however, a few things we would like you to reflect upon when contributing to CounterPlay.

First and foremost, please consider: How is your contribution playful?

A talk can obviously be about playful things, but we would like you to take it a step further, making the talk itself playful. The same goes for workshops and any other contribution you might make – try to design it as a playful experience. It doesn’t have to be a big game or advanced set up and much can be achieved with simple methods and tools. If you have simply asked yourself the above question, reflected upon it, and come up with something, we’re happy.

In relation to that: How do you intend to engage your participants?

More traditional conference talks can be absolutely great, but we prefer slightly more interactive experiences. Again, we don’t want to define or limit what you can and cannot do – we simply urge you to think about what kind of playful engagement could make sense for what you’re hoping to achieve. If you’re stuck, think about how you might engage a crowd on the street to join you in an adventure…