CounterPlay

Tag: Play Community

  • From Biel with love

    From Biel with love

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    When I came home from the Pro Juventute play festival a few weeks ago, my head was full of impressions, thoughts and ideas – as it always happens after participating in lovely play events. While I was certainly somewhat challenged due to my limited language skills (much of the conference was in German and/or French), I took a lot with me and I managed to reach that interesting emotional state, where it feels just right:

    I hosted a workshop on “playing with strangers” together with Robb Mitchell, which was great fun, and I was once again amazed how strangers courageously jump into whichever challenge we threw at them. We used Robb’s design cards (read more here) to inspire the participants to prototype playful solutions for cultivating interaction between strangers in public space, and let us just say they got really creative (you can see my short presentation here).

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    On Saturday, I also hosted a session with two inspiring talks by Jeanette Fich Jespersen from the KOMPAN Play Institute and Ellen Weaver (I found this blog post by Ellen that covers some of the same). Both were talking about “playing outside”, but more than that, they talked about creating a wide range of opportunities for play, allowing those playing to tailor the experience to their taste and needs. Take kids with disabilities, who are usually looking for the same play mood as anyone else, but might need to get there in slightly different ways:

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    One of the essential themes, for me, was “liberating play from the playgrounds”. It was introduced at the opening, and struck a chord with me. We tend to think of creating playgrounds as spaces for play, helping play to thrive, but it often feels more like we confine play to the playground. “Ok, you can play there, but certainly not anywhere else”. I’ve written before about “the problem with playgrounds“, and a big issue is that of player agency. Apart from boxing in the play experience, playgrounds often leave little meaning to be interpreted by the player, no “loose parts” to be used in new and surprising ways.

    I think this was beautifully illustrated by the events taking place outside the conference venue, on the big square, or “Playable Esplanade”, as it was appropriately called. As the festival evolved, so did the esplanada, coming ever more alive with people playing.

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    Now, I found myself quoting and paying tribute to Bernie DeKoven more than once. This has happened a lot, not least since he died earlier this year, and I’ve been thinking so much about his incredible legacy to the play community. I had reread his wonderful “The Well-Played Game” on the trip. If you haven’t read it (at least once) yet, I recommend you do it. It’s so full of deep insight, and there’s so much to appreciate and learn from that book, even now, 40 years on. When he talks about The New Games Movement and not least their The New Games Tournament, I feel like I have missed out on something monumental in the history of play, but at the same time, I feel encouraged and inspired to follow in their playful footsteps:

    One of its activities was called the “New Games Tournament.” A group of people would come together—a group that may number as many as ten thousand people—and they’d play games in what became an actual celebration of the willingness to play.

    The energy, the vitality was everywhere. The potential, actual. In all that strangeness, we discovered that none of us were strangers. We all liked to play. There was nothing—age, ability, profession, language, status, nationality—that could separate us any longer. We had left everything else behind, and we were all just playing.

    This is the sentiment that has really stuck with me, as I had a similar feeling several times during the festival. At the esplanade, especially during the Saturday, lots of people were playing together, engaging in a vast range of activities: water fights, blowing bubbles (with the ever so amazing Bart Durand), exploring the maze (almost getting lost in there), drawing with chalk, building with small blacks and wood, climbing around, driving the small “train” and much more. It was a beautiful, playful mess.

    Playing like that has a certain fluidity, where you can play together, being part of the same, feeling a sense of belonging, even when you seem to be on your own. Maybe you’re suddenly completely immersed in building a huge tower, but you do so surrounded by likeminded players, and the togetherness is palpable. It’s a dance, where everybody knows (or learns) that this only works if you show a degree of openness, empathy, respect and generosity towards the other players. It can never just be about you and your little experience, but we must all pay attention to the play community at large.

    In a world where we more often than not fail to connect with each other, there’s something magical about experiencing this way of being together, where the delicate balance between individual and community feels far more effortless. I have no doubt in my mind that we could live more like this, naive as it may sound.

    I, for one, look forward to staying in touch with the Pro Juventute play community, exploring together the meaning of space(s) and how we can truly liberate play from the playgrounds!

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  • The Global Play Community

    The Global Play Community

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    [This post is taken from the introduction to the book we’re making, “The Power of Play – Voices from the Play Community]

    Our ambitions are high, but we also realize that this book is but a very small contribution to a very big field, where practitioners and scholars have been trying to understand the joyful nature of play for hundreds, thousands of years. This is neither the beginning of the journey, nor the end, but rather somewhere in between. We wish to approach the topic with respect and humility, well aware that we can, at most, help take a small step forward, but small steps are all we can ever take.

    As long as we take them together, they will matter.

    That brings us back to the play community. This is key, really. 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. When we know for certain that we are not alone that other people feel the same urge to be playful, then we can easier muster the courage that is necessary to challenge the non-playful structures around us.

    “But we are a play community, and playing the way we do, for fun, for everyone’s fun, in public – our fun little community becomes something else. “To those who want to be seen as people who embrace life, embrace each other, embrace spontaneity, freedom, laughter; we are an alternative. An invitation. We play as if the game isn’t important. The rules aren’t important. As if the only really important thing is each other” (DeKoven, 2016)

    It is only loosely held together, the ties are invisible, and like the magic circle, there are no rigid borders or boundaries around the play community. Nobody owns it and no one ever can, as it belongs solely to the participants as a shared resource. This play community we’re speaking of here exists on a global scale, but it’s made up of many, many smaller communities.

    It’s fragile, in a way, and it will only thrive, evolve and grow if it is cared for and nurtured. If we leave it alone, without love and attention, it will wither away. This community is not driven by or particularly interested in external rewards or markers, but by finding and creating meaning, challenges, resistance, adventures, smiles and joy. It is exactly like play, fueled by an inner “continuation desire”:

    “We desire to keep doing it, and the pleasure of the experience drives that desire. We find ways to keep it going. If something threatens to stop the fun, we improvise new rules or conditions so that the play doesn’t have to end. And when it is over, we want to do it again” (Brown, 2009)

    The people in the play community play with each other, of course, but it is also a space for reflection and conversation. Conversations between people, sure, but also between ideas, thoughts, things that are written and things that are spoken; Exchanges, interactions, meetings of minds, ambitions and dreams.

    Seeing the play community as a whole is relevant, as it transcends the limitations of any one person or organization, who can only do so much to improve the conditions for play to thrive in society. As a global community, on the other hand, we have the potential and power to utterly transform the role of play in the world.

    Like the people in this book have come together, guided by their passion for play, let us do more to cultivate the global play community. It welcomes researchers and practitioners , people who work with play and people who are merely curious, even people who don’t consider themselves playful. If you think yourself of the latter category beware, play might change your life. It already has for many of us.

    Play is immensely powerful when it creates deep connections between people, even strangers. We have probably all experienced this, and we know the feeling of barriers suddenly falling away. When we play, we share the responsibility, and we need to be present in the moment, right here, right now. You are open to the world, aware, listening, anticipating, embracing what the other person brings. This is rarely more visible than in the eyes of people playing with each other. The way they shine, the pure joy, this is as close to magic as it gets. In this sense, play becomes a demonstration of empathy, an exploration of being together in ways that respect us all. Play is a lesson in humanity, a gentle reminder of all the things we have in common across age groups, nationalities, religions, socio-cultural backgrounds and other differences that usually keep us apart.

    Let’s rise to the occasion, and do what play does best: let’s connect deeply, let’s see across the barriers and differences, let’s step into each other’s lives to join forces in the fight for a more playful world.

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