We start playing when you enter Dokk1 and challenge you to build your own name tag - as a kaleidoscope!

Play communities of tomorrow must contain the values of play and makes it possible for participation through sharing, caring and daring. Based on a number of empirical examples this talk will focus on courage, openness and trust of the unknown as a foundation for building play communities.

Helle Marie Skovbjerg, Professor, Ph.D., Design for Play. Design School Kolding. Helle Marie´s research focuses on play as a way of being in the word explored in conceptualization of play as a mood practice.

This is an experimental intervention, guiding participants through an exploration of the physical library space to (re)consider their mental models and prior experiences. We will playfully explore ways in which they may experience physical and shared social spaces, with map and instructions, before returning for reflection. We aim to adapt this for new students to help them find a greater sense of belonging in university spaces. It may also be adapted for other social or public spaces.

Andrew is an Academic Librarian, University and National Teaching Fellow, and Fellow of various other important sounding things. He writes books and articles on things (mainly play, teaching, Information Literacy, and libraries), runs playful workshops, and gives talks worldwide. Much more importantly, according to his daughter, he is a librarian who teaches grown-ups how to play.

Jess is Subject Librarian for the School of Education at the University of Huddersfield. She is interested in critical information literacy and making people think about how and why information matters in playful, paradigm shifting ways. Jess has been part of several organisations, and is currently part of the LILAC Conference committee. She is @bookelfleeds on Twitter, and sporadically blogs about her teaching experiences. More information about Jess’ work can be found on her website.

Playable cities appropriate smart cities infrastructure, such as the Physical Web, to engage people with their city and with one another. The strategy takes advantage of the increase in play literacies and the cultural currency of games characteristic of this century. Visitors, residents and workers in playable cities may become part of the conversation around urban design through community and ownership - a form of ‘hacking’ urban space.

This presentation will present initial findings from a one-year study investigating the relationship between playable and smart cities, drawing upon interviews with over thirty artists, designers, producers, architects working with urban environments to develop and present projects. While all of the participants in the study engaged with the concept of play in some way, their strategies for working with data and code are widely divergent.

Play in public space can critique the dominant ways of thinking about smart cities, opening up the city as playground, making it hackable and mutable. These two ideas, the worldview that comes with seeing the ‘smart city’ as a hackable system and the strategies that come with a playful attitude, set the scene for the playful citizen. This way of being builds on the pre-digital history of playable cities and introduces new strategies for playful citizens to engage with multiple points of tension to disrupt the public spaces of the current iteration of the modern city. However, this position is only possible if those working with urban environments understand urban code.

Troy Innocent is an artist, academic, designer and educator. His public art practice combines pervasive game development, augmented reality, and urban design supporting a long-term investigation of relationships between wayfinding and play in the city. Innocent’s visual arts practice explores the language of digital code in works of works of design, sculpture, animation, sound and installation. Innocent is a current Melbourne Knowledge Fellow researching playable cities in the UK and Europe; teaches pervasive game design at Swinburne University; and is represented by Anna Pappas Gallery.

Islands is part game, part conversation, part visualisation of the web of interconnections between strangers. This session will ask you to find things in common with other players privileging obscurity in those commonalities as a central game mechanic. Through conversation, play and reflection this session will examine the friendships and boundaries we create within our societies.

By Jim Thompson & Lynn Parker

Jim Thompson trained as an Industrial Designer and is now a Principal Lecturer in Games Design. He was lucky enough to make a couple of visits to Treasure Trap at Peckforton castle in the 80's and been playing, writing and running larps ever since. He is a director of Curious Pastimes, which is a company who has been running one of the major larp fest level games in the UK since 1996. He is particularly interested in how live games and playful situations can transport people into varying situations that provide different personal experiences and novel experiences!

Lynn Parker is a lecturer in animation and interactive media at Abertay University who, when not teaching, makes strange interactive digitally mediated work that tries to make the world more playful and often makes people feel a bit socially uncomfortable. As part of Abertay Game Lab, she is channeling these playful interventions into academic research and has recently competed her PhD which focussed upon bringing people together through play. When she's not teaching, making game controllers out of tinfoil and kids toys, scribbling with chalk around Dundee or out and about with her Beagle, Snoopy, you can find her random thoughts and adventures on twitter as @toadrick

Is it possible to mourn in a playful way? Playing with grief unpacks this question by looking at the possible connections between grief and play. How have games successfully represented our feelings of love, loss, and commemoration? And what tools have game designers available to work with grievers? This session shows that it's actually possible to harness games as a language to talk about stigmatised feelings, and to explore the grief stories of others through the medium of play.

Sabine Harrer is a cultural games researcher, lecturer, and media artist from Vienna (AUT). She is currently affiliated at the Center of Excellence in Games Culture Research, Tampere (FI), and continues to make experimental projects as a member of the Copenhagen Game Collective (DK). Their work use (video)games as media to express ordinary feelings with. Sabine has worked on games about love and grief, flirtation, group identity, being white, and even the vague memories of lapsed catholic childhood.

I make teambuilding workshops for companies using plasticine characters and by using animation as a creative tool to communicate.

This way of working offers a different way of developing together, from being very academic, analytical and intangible, using only your intellect to basically be thinking with your hands; everything becomes tangible.

Come and try for yourself what building puppets and making films with them can make you reflect on your worklife.

By Tina Klemmensen

New Games are cooperative games for all ages, sizes and abilities. They are about group interactive play, not computer or video games. Everyone can play New Games if they wish to but no-one is forced to join. The games sometimes include competition but winning is not emphasized: rather, including everyone and having fun is. However, many social & developmental skills are learned playing New Games. The games also help reduce obesity and bullying. NG help people look at life in a more playful way.

Dale Le Fevre has presented over 1000 New Games workshops in 34 countries world-wide, all of Europe, US, Canada, and places such as South Africa during apartheid with mixed races, Israel with arabs and Jews, Northern Ireland with Catholics and Protestants during the 'troubles', Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and, most recently, Russia. Dale has authored 3 New Games books and created 5 NG streaming videos/DVDs. He is one of the originators of New Games.

An exhuberant dive into the fool archetype: present, joyful, honest, embodied, real, curious and aware. Enjoy a process where your heart becomes wide open, your body is fully lived in, you can feel energy, emotion and joy moving through you and share an experience of being connected to a curious, spacious way of thinking.

Angela is a clown, singer, storyteller, trainer and consultant with 40 years practice in play/improvisation based work in many countries, in education, health, spirituality, personal development and business. She leads embodied workshops and retreats in play, the fool archetype, clowning, authentic relating and storytelling. She creates improvised tailor made play-performance intuitively with people with dementia and is also a co founder of WePlay, which spreads joy and connection in public spaces.

If you sit down and ask a hand puppet questions - it's definitely play, isn’t it? But if it's your turn, you just might ask something that really occupies you. After all, it really could be that Dr. Snail knows everything. Dr. Snail is direct, outspoken, loves salad and is totally unhurried. Speedcoaching with Dr. Snail is an interactive exploratory performance about how play enables serious and real experience.

Petra Stocker is the manager of the Play Space and Play Culture Programme of a swiss youth organization, Pro Juventute. She initiated various local and national projects with a focus on child and play-friendly urban development. In May 2018 she curated a festival/conference on Playable Cities - Play and Urban development. She has also been acting and performing improvisational theatre for over 10 years and likes to mix improvisation and play techniques into her practice.

Most of us live in a world that takes our senses for granted but the need and right to play are the same for everyone. But what about those who are deprived of one or more senses and those with altered abilities? In this session, the rules may be reversed for those who are ‘different’. We will not just play but also share our experiences from the games in order to make them relevant for everyone. Hopefully this will inspire ideas and action for a more inclusive and playful society.

Eliana Perifanou is a graduate of the department of Theatre Studies at the University of Patras in Greece and holds a Master of Arts in Applied Theatre: Drama in Educational, Community and Social Context from the Goldsmiths University of London. She is also a qualified actress, having graduated from the School of Dramatic Arts “Modern Times”, in Athens, Greece. As a drama teacher and practitioner, she has wide experience in facilitating teaching programmes for both mainstream and special education, with a specialty in applying experiential learning practices. As a theatre director and actress, she has directed and currently performing in the children’s play “Narcissus and Echo” with a cast that includes actors with mental and physical disabilities. She is also a member of the theatre company “THEAMA”, a theatre group for disabled and non-disabled actors. Her purpose is to contribute towards establishing an inclusive society, one that provides equal opportunities for everyone.

Mariagni Ellina has a Marketing and Communication background, coupled with studies and working experience in humanitarian action and refugee response in Greece and the UK. Over the last 10 years she has been seeking meaningful connections and movement through dance, contact improvisation, parkour and other activities in the physical and play sphere. By continuously acquiring knowledge and exploring a variety of frameworks, concepts and mindsets (including Non-Violent Communication, Partnership Brokering and Art of Hosting workshops), she hopes to bring together various elements of the intellectual and physical world to create spaces for connection, creativity and sustainably living communities.

This project explores the idea: “What are the conditions under which adults play?” Often, play is framed to be ‘nice’ and avoids the darker elements of our psyche: conflict, opposition, power, etc. These are however integral parts of us, and our argument is that incorporating these into play gives adults a more nuanced engagement. We wish to present previous examples of our work and play an ‘oppositional’ game about ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ at Dokk1 in Aarhus to explore these ideas.

Nina Luostarinen (Master of Culture and Arts) has a background in puppetry, performing arts and in new media content creation. She has been either producer or scenographer for various culture events. She has also been a designer and animator for interactive games and webpages, and an animator for the national TV broadcaster in Finland. In recent years, she has been working with several EU-funded projects seeking to network different forms of art and culture and combing these with other fields of life. She is fascinated by visual things in general and especially by the power of photography. A common thread in her life has been believing in serendipity, existence of the invisible worlds and enabling illusions. She is aDoctoral Candidate at the University of Lapland where she studies the possibilities of the art based play in place attachment.

Anthony Schrag (PhD) is a lecturer in Cultural Management at Queen Margaret University. He is an associate member of the Centre for Communication, Cultural and Media Studies as well as the Centre for Person Centred Care. Anthony Schrag is a lecturer in Cultural Management at Queen Margaret University. His practice-based PhD - completed in 2016 - explored the relationship between artists, institutions and the public, looking specifically at a productive nature of conflict within institutionally supported participatory/public art projects. Schrag is a practising artist and researcher who has worked nationally and internationally, including residencies in Iceland, USA, Canada, Pakistan, Finland, The Netherlands and South Africa, among others. He works in participatory manner, and central to his practice is a discussion about the place of art in a social context. Lecturing interests include the ethics of artists ‘working with people’, critical pedagogies and practice-based research.

Discover the world around you using all your senses to explore “the edge”. In a playful, interactive series of games, in a safe environment, test your understanding of the senses: how they interact and how they give you your experience of life. Test the edge of your comfort zone, of your sensory knowledge and of your creative boundaries. #toucantoo join a play pirate, sensory scientist, happiness facilitator and wellbeing coach, and give yourself permission to go back to being a five year old.

Natasha Blok, Play Pirate and Wellbeing Coach with toucantoo, on a mission to help all ages become more playful, creative and light-hearted - #toucantoo live with flying colours. Using a background in sensory science, she has moved from designing sweets, leading Mad Science slime sessions and scavenger hunt ice cream tours to adult den building hibernation, kind-fulness and happiness tours. She is looking forward to taking the sensory playful creative fun to Counterplay.

YouTube is an example of a social media platform that has come to play a significant role as inspiration for play for children. In this presentation, I will draw on examples from a recent study of child-youtubers as producers of playful - and playable - content. The presentation will be followed by a shared research session, where we will search for examples of playful social media content in order to build a shared vocabulary or catalogue of playful, online practices.

Stine Liv Johansen, Associate Professor, Ph.D., Center for Children's Literature and Media, Department of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University. Stine’s research field is related to children’s media use, especially in relation to playful practices.

This paper presents the process of a 15-day workshop on the design theme of “public play spaces”. The workshop took place in the Yahşibey Design Workshops which was organized in Dikili (an Aegean village in Turkey) between 15-30 July 2018. 10 design students and 4 facilitators from around the world worked together with local children and adults on designing opportunities for social play in the stimulating village environment. The workshop had a triple aim: (1) To map out current play practices in the public space, identify design challenges and develop solutions; (2) to examine the potential of play in the public space for strengthening social relationships within the local community; (3) to enable the local community to (re)consider the potential of the public space and take action.

To this end, we used various methods ranging from interviews to demarcation of the local areas with opportunities for play. We also used co-design methods with children such as diary keeping, storyboarding, and brainstorming via sketching. By doing so, we identified and mainly focused on working on children’s relations between their peers and adults as well as the physical environment of play in the village and childrens’ current play activities in the village. Based on our in-depth observations in the field and experiences with the local people, we mapped out the social and individual play activities with different levels of rules. Combining the activity mapping with the local people’s views of play, we came up with a design solution named “Call For Play” that brings together local people’s highlights and stories about the village and a physical-digital navigation system that tracks through the village to invite and inspire play.

Gökçe Elif Baykal is a postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus University. She works in child-computer interaction field. Her current research focuses on collaborative learning technologies in special education context. She previously worked as a freelance screenwriter for television series for children.

Eva Liisa Kubinyi is a master student at HDK, the School of Design and Crafts at the University of Gothenburg studying Child Culture Design. In her master thesis project she is concentrating on finding playful meanings for existing materials in the preschool context. Previously, she studied textile design and entrepreneurship.

Bryce Duyvewaardt is an Industrial Designer studying at the Kolding School of Design where he is completing a Masters' Degree in Design for Play. Having completed a Playful Processes Coordinator position at LEGO Group and Bachelor's degree for Industrial Design from the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Canada, Bryce's projects almost always centre on functional fun. His skills include 3D CAD software, storytelling, rapid prototyping and woodworking to bring his design concepts to life.

Maarten Van Mechelen is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Computational Thinking an Design at Aarhus University, specialised in the domain of Child-Computer Interaction. His goal is to enable children to shape their future in a technology-mediated world by involving them as active participants in a reflective research and design process. He thereby draws from the Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities.

Playful Nature started with two fathers, two daughters, some sticks, sharp knives and string. Our first installation, William Don't Tell, was a bow and arrow workshop for children and their parents. The overwhelming playful response led to a number of other play installations made for a growing and engaged community in Berlin.

We use simple, recyclable materials, often repurposing everyday items for our temporary play-based installations, to teach sustainability and the art of creating without consuming.

We will create a in-situ installation for the conference inspired by the context and space, using whatever meaningful material we find on hand, that would invite participants, the general public, passer byes to engage in a playful creative process. Rather than defining any specific outcome, this idea can and will evolve with the evolving input from you the conference organizers, the space, and participants.

We are especially interested in playing with the edge of ... if you are interested to play with us.

Benjamin Lee Martin is a French American living in Berlin with his Partner and 2 children. During his short time on planet earth he has attempted to play as much and in as many ways possible in his daily life. He especially likes to play with his body and voice, simple things like strings, balls and sticks, his kids and other small creatures, and of course with his food.

Andrew Amonson is an American American living in Berlin with his partner and 2 children. During his slightly longer time on planet earth he has been inventing inventive inventions to play inventively. He especially likes to make things and throw things, rocks, balls sticks, twigs and also his kids.

Andrew and Benjamin met in 2013 in Berlin and have since been combining thier love of play to play and invite other big and small beings to play along with them as Playful Nature. You can discover more here: www.playfulnature.me

The “office playground” will be a participatory installation where participants explore the areas of overlap between ‘play’ & ‘work’, using office aesthetics (such as Venn Diagrams, office furniture, meeting points, charts, etc).

Wasp&Orchid is a ‘Serious Play Studio’ based in Scotland, comprised of Drs Alexia Mellor & Anthony Schrag. Applying play methodologies, we use artistic & creative methods to help businesses thrive in the face of Wicked Problems.

The obstacles & risks we face in a globalised world are more complex than they have ever been: climate change, unsustainable models of consumption & production, social inequalities. These challenges are interconnected, have no ‘right’ answers, & require new perspectives on how businesses & organisations ‘play’ a vital role in creating a better world.

Wasp&Orchid believe this transformation lies in Play: specifically the play that occurs when different realms collide. As Levinas (1989) suggests, as social creatures we can only ever learn about ourselves through others: as such, we encourage a merging of ‘others’ in playful & unexpected ways that can provide new perspectives & systems.

Can we merge the ideas of playful learning with the academic didactic of higher education? This session will present preliminary findings and offer hands on interaction with different kind of playful didactics aimed to be part of the education of teachers and pedagogues in the Danish University colleges. Come join us on testing and discussing how to bring play back to the educational system.

Heidi Stensman Pugh is an Associate professor VIA Pædagoguddannelsen Ikast, Project manager Playful Learning VIA, Educational & Development manager VIA Pædagoguddannelsen Ikast, Master degree in Scandinavian Language and Litterature & Mediascience,

A workshop that combines Dance and Parkour/Art du Deplacement to explore creativity and play through solo, duo and group work; brought to you by Esprit Concrete. We will invite you to learn about yourself and others whilst interacting with others and the environment. Play and creativity combined together can be a very enjoyable and beautiful experience. The challenges that may come from being out of our comfort zone can prompt self-reflection and in turn train your body and mind.

Louiseanne Wong studied Bachelor of Music at The University of Manchester, and MA Choreography at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, London. During her studies she has learnt to understand the importance of research as it is what contributes heavily in pushing the art forms forwards. Her MA Choreography thesis Skinship : Ever-present Memories and The Subconscious Body consisted of facilitated deep-somatic sessions called Authentic Movement in order to access the ‘unconscious body diary’. It was both a performed live event as well as a research thesis supervised by Tony Thatcher, Tom Paine, and Marina Collard. She teaches at the Royal Academy of Dance and Step Into Dance. The students range from ages 4-18. The classes she delivers consist of contemporary dance technique, structured improvisation using different stimuli such as imagery and musicality to spark creativity and individual exploration of their own bodies, partner work, and composition/choreography elements. Towards the end of each school term she prepares the students for either a Parents Watching Day or an evening performance at their school hall.

Her current research on Parkour/ADD and Dance is mentored by Kasturi Torchia, accredited therapist and director of Esprit Concrete, a London based organisation that aims to aid individuals to gain a deeper understanding of their emotional, psychological and physical states through movement and self-reflection based on an Parkour/ADD experience. Her current work with Esprit Concrete and previously with Parkour Dance Company has nurtured her journey as a performing artist, athlete and coach. She finds it very interesting to place a performative art form like dance together with parkour/ADD, a practice that promotes self-development and non-competitive nature.

In this workshop interaction artist Jakob la Cour will share his knowledge and experience with sensory based performance with a specific focus on ASMR. ASMR is an internet phenomenon that has spread wildly over the entire globe. In ASMR the intention is to create a relational and experiential aesthetic that trigger tactile sensory experiences of relaxation and pleasure. A simultaneous perception of multiple stimuli in one overall experience. ASMR plays with an array of sensuous disciplines to induce a relaxed state and tingly sensation.

The workshop will introduce the field and then we will try various techniques on each other. Participants are welcome to spectate or engage in this activity.

The experience is for sensory explorers and presence seekers. Enhance your ability to listen to the body and inner core.

During the festival it will also be possible to experience a one-on-one encounter with Jakob where he will perform short ‘Playing with the Senses’ sessions.

Biography

Jakob la Cour (b. 1982, Copenhagen, Denmark) independent interaction artist at Studio la Cour (est. 2005). With a Master’s Degree in Game and Interaction Design (2011) from The Royal Danish Academy of Art in Design.

Artist Statement

Mystical forces and energetic transformation are the territories of my art as I embrace and surrender into play-induced euphoria. The majority of the Western world’s population haven’t realized that these mystical states can be achieved. I want to change that – so the focus of my artistic work is to figure out how these enchanted reality transforming moments of euphoric play can be experienced.

For more info about Jakob visit www.jakoblacour.com

What moves and touches you? Do you perceive yourself in your body? What if the next big shit you are about to explore has always been so close to you that you have forgotten it? Let's experience the creativity in our bodies and movements with joy, curiosity and playfulness. We will move, dance and play together to explore unserious movements, playful bodies, touches and interactions through a creative physical workshop. There are no movement experiences necessary.

Susi Rosenbohm works as a dance artist, pedagogue and body therapist after the Pantareiapproach. Actually, she does not believe in the separation of play, art, therapy and life. On this basis, she understands her work as something to unlearn and/or to rediscover in the body what has always been there. She is currently researching this in her project on the interaction of private/public and individual/collective body and space in Master Performing Public Space at Fontys Applied University in Tilburg. Her favorite game from her childhood is chinese hide and seek.

Join us on a playful adventure to the edge, playing with traffic signs, re-imagining the rules and expanding the possibilities of public space!

Can we change our collective attitudes towards a space by giving new meaning to the traffic signs, transforming them from signs of constraint and restriction to beacons of liberation – a license to play?

Typically, when we see a traffic sign, we see limitations, things we can’t do, rules we have to follow and a more or less narrow set of behaviors that are permitted. Do this, do that, turn right here, STOP!

It might be well and good for safety reasons, but it’s not exactly inspiring joy, hope and dreams, is it? When was the last time a traffic sign made you laugh or think about public space as our shared playground? Maybe these signs, put in place to regulate behaviour, can instead become portals to a parallel universe of opportunity and adventure for the courageous player?

Using our phones or cameras (if you remember those) for “photoplay” might be the alibi we need, providing a safer arena for playing in public. Share your photos along with a short description of the context, your thoughts and/or how it felt in the moment. Remember to use the #playsign hashtag!

You can share on:

Twitter

Instagram

Facebook

…or via this form: LINK

Read more about #playsign.

Nina Luostarinen (Master of Culture and Arts) has a background in puppetry, performing arts and in new media content creation. She has been either producer or scenographer for various culture events. She has also been a designer and animator for interactive games and webpages, and an animator for the national TV broadcaster in Finland. In recent years, she has been working with several EU-funded projects seeking to network different forms of arts, culture and creativity and combing these with other fields. She is fascinated by visual things in general and especially the power of photography. A common thread in her life has been believing in serendipity, existence of the invisible worlds and enabling illusions. This play is related to her dissertations studies where she examines the possibilities of the art based play in place attachment.

The festival dinner takes place at the restaurant Hantwerk - you find it HERE

The Backhome Agency takes you on an imaginative trip through another person’s hometown memories. Visit the Agency’s Memory Lab and contribute your own stories for others to explore. Discover and rearrange the memories left by previous players. Expand and manipulate the installation with your stories. Blend fact and fiction and record a tour for future visitors to travel through your hometown stories. Rent a tour at the Memory Desk and go on a journey yourself. The Memory Lab can be visited Thursday through Saturday - just walk in and spent as much time as you want. Tours can be rented at the Desk from Friday afternoon on. Groups welcome!

Martian Gardens is a deeply social game for everyone. As pioneers of the new frontier you are tasked to turn the landscape of Mars fertile. You must choose your strategy in order to make the deserts bloom. Players can be as active or as reflective as they like. A lone outpost of floral innovation or a cooperative with others? Pool your resources to achieve bigger things! An opportunity to express marvellous acts of beauty across the face of a whole planet.

Angie is a freelance illustrator and maker with a background in education. Jim is a designer and maker of games, objects and teaches people how to make games.

Game Jamming at the Edge is a 2-day long game jam transforming the theme of CounterPlay'19 into games. Youngsters, Coding Pirates volunteers and researchers from Aarhus University work together to make their own games and take games to the edge and create a game exhibition for CounterPlay'19

You can build anything with LEGO® bricks. Your imagination is your limit. What would you build if you have a sea of green LEGO® bricks available to you? Come and find out! From Thursday afternoon until Saturday you can build whatever comes to your mind. We also invite you to come and see the creations of other builders and let your imagination go wild in interpreting their meanings.

Democracy….

We all know the word, but what do we understand about it? Demos (people) Kratos (rule) - the people must rule. It sounds simple, as something that should be taken for granted. The people control their own country, their own life, their own destiny. But there are many understandings by the word that sounds so simple. Is democracy just a form of government that points to the constellation between government and the people. Or is it more than the representative democracy we know in the Western world? How does democracy look if you come from somewhere else in the world? And is democracy present in everyday life, in the relationship between each other. Can democracy have a role in the play, or is democracy really just something we play?

In the Elements of Democracy, we will try to set the framework for YOU to bring your expression of democracy and what you understand about it forward. Here we are not looking for the right answers, but for the nuances. See it as a room for reflection and dialouge, or a debate room, where through a number of activities you can donate your view and contribution into a larger picture.

Karina Svendsen, MA in Learning and Innovative Change, from Social Makement has a background of designing frameworks of learning through play and facilitating co-creation and playfulness for all ages.

Cecilia Soque, M.Sc. in Engineering. Urban, Energy and Environmental Planning, and Kristian Ibsen, trained teacher and Educational Concept Specialist, from Soqib are a maker power-couple who through their playful approach are Hacking, Making and Shaping STEAM Learning.

Wayfinder Live is a free-to-play location-based augmented reality game. Scanning urban codes on the street unlock fragments of animation and sound documenting traces of a hidden micronation.

Originally created for Melbourne International Games Week, Wayfinder live is a live game in which you explore cities through play. Wayfinding not to get from a to b but to find a new way to be.

That way to be is in a place called the Micronation of Ludea. If you have played a game then you have been to Ludea. It is that space you go to when you are ‘in-game’, in the zone, immsersed in play.

In Wayfinder Live you use tokens to influence locations and claim them for your faction: will you paint the town orange, green or blue?

Read more about playing the game HERE

Wayfinder Live is created by Troy Innocent, who is an artist, academic, and educator exploring playable cities, particularly their capacity to decode and reimagine the world in playful ways. As a recent Melbourne Knowledge Fellow, Innocent developed the framework for Playable City Melbourne, a three-year project in which Melbourne is transformed into a playable city through an inventive blend of live art, game design and public art.

In my view, designing digital play solutions for open-endedness is a promising design philosophy that allows players to use their imagination in various ways, develop diverse and changing interpretations of the play environment, and negotiate with other players about possible play opportunities and interpretations. It can also contribute to making interaction with the play environment more satisfying for a longer period of time. Over the years, we have designed various digital open-ended play solutions to explore how, mostly children, engage with open-endedness, and how different properties of the environment, such as light or sound feedback, or interaction between the play objects influence the play behavior. The players always surprised us in coming up with even more diverse play scenarios than we had imagined. In my talk, I will explain the design philosophy of open-ended play, and provide concrete examples of digital concepts designed for different forms of play, such as fantasy, social and physical play.

The session will be interspersed with open-ended play activities, where participants can try out how different design decisions, related to digital properties, influence the opportunities for open-ended play. They can explore and experience for themselves the influence of open-endedness on play, and play around with consequences of design decisions related to open-endedness.

Tilde Bekker, Associate Professor, Ph.D., Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands. Tilde’s research focuses on how to design digital (tangible) play solutions for various intentions, such as supporting social interaction, physical activity or inclusive play. She teaches Industrial Design students how to embed playfulness in their designs.

In community schools like ours where students come from different nationalities and most of the parents are struggling with their lives, play seems a luxury , and waste of time and energy.

In this talk, I will discuss how ‘Playing at the edge’ is practiced in our school to bring students and their parents closer and foster critical thinking, openness, creativity, connectedness , cultural inclusiveness for exploring meaning and laughter. I will also discuss how we practice ‘Playing at edge’; to tear down the barriers separating parents from their kids and teachers, separating different subjects they study, separating students among themselves in terms of language, religion, local values, nationalities; to help collaborative understanding of the relationships between poverty and climate change, peace and economic prosperity, justice and human rights; and to instill love in their tender hearts for everything they see around, for ‘others’ and for themselves.

Qazi Abdur Rahman is a citizen of Bangladesh ,working in Oman as a principal in a community school that offers International GCSE and Advance Levels . He graduated with Honours and Master in English Literature from Jahangirnagar University in 1983 and 1985 and Bachelor and Master in Education from National University and Dhaka University respectively. He did a 9-month long course on Social Therapeutics at the East Side Institute in NYC, USA in 2012-13.

A series of short, energetic microtalks sharing experiences, impressions, feelings, thoughts and ideas from the first two days of CounterPlay '19.

Welcome to the Edge of Chaos, a juicy realm of creative fertility and growth. We experience this realm when immersed in play, a pleasant sensation of stretching the imagination. This concept emerges from complexity theory which understands games as living ecosystems. In this session we will explore how this can deepen our understanding of play, sharing a variety of games which exercise our imaginations whilst being physically gentle. Talking games, non-verbal games, finger games and hand-clapping games. We will welcome the possibility of unpredictable and creative outcomes with joyful and curious wonder.

Kevin Davidson a is trans-disciplinary facilitator and performer, blending movement, music and storytelling into a unique tonic of togetherness, creating immersive playful experiences where communities can relax and have fun together. From competitive gymnast to Oxford law graduate to Top 40 songwriter, Kevin's magical mystery tour of life lead him to Steiner-Waldorf education where he found a beautiful world of imagination, storytelling and connection with nature. This central thread is inter-woven with Kevin's other experiences, collaborating in song-writing projects with refugees, hosting folk dance for London's Ceilidh Liberation Front, lecturing in Creativity at Goldsmiths College, and gently beating gongs for Sonic Bloom Sound Baths. Kevin is co-founder of the School of Human Movement, has a Masters degree in Education and can jump remarkably high from a standing position.

Serious Games and playful explorative approaches actively invite participants to explore the edge of their own comfort zone.
Beyond this “low stress and low anxiety”-zone lies the “optimal performance zone” - as Alasdair A. White (2009) calls it - often referred to as “learning zone”. But what happens if our workshop participants reach their “second edge” and enter the danger zone ? And equally important: How can we invite them back into wanting to explore or play more?

Julian Kea creates activating learning environments with hands-on workshop methods! These enable teams to have an authentic exchange, promote mutual understanding and strengthen cooperation. Julian's Mantra is "Rediscover Learning. Work Smarter."
Julian hosts the #LSPmeetup around LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® in Berlin and the unconference #play14 around Serious Games in Berlin/Hamburg.

For decades, we have relegated the weird, the irrational, and the impractical to the margins, allowing the cold, efficient, utilitarian machine of the world to march on. Some of us even hope to find ways to fit our play seamlessly into the system, which only wants it so far as it can be used to control us.

In the margins, though, we have had time to hone our mischief and conjure images of a world where we are liberated, liberated enough to make every moment joyful and unexpected. It is time to break out of that shell.

Deep in the belly, the Inner Goblin grumbles calling to be released, to create absurd and delightful situations in public. Its secret is that this is an undertaking that must be done together. Let us gather to find our inner goblins and release others from their cages of propriety.

During this workshop, we will share ideas for revolutionary play. We will explore local problems through a goblin aesthetic, and we will make masks to march as our inner goblins.

Follow your butt.

Albert Kong is a game maker whose projects bend the social fabric of our daily lives can with playful rules. He explores many disciplines and media, and is currently practicing the art of home building and maintenance.

Before we can even start to play we need to discover what the game is. Once found it we can take it as far as possible... to the edge. Creating a safe and playful atmosphere we will learn that the games are right under our eyes.

Anthony Trahair graduated in Chemistry and later in Physical Theatre and Clown at the Dimitri School in Switzerland. Anthony has a long experience with groups and has a fresh enthusiastic intuitive approach. He is also a passionate juggler and Yoga practitioner has written a beautiful book “Pearls of Juggling”. He lives in the Italian countryside with his wife and three cats.

Did you know improv only exists to make actors more relaxed and less trying to control situations? Are you immediately recalling work–related situations to which this fit? Then come along, let’s play Improject. We will improvise, have fun and learn....And maybe even change the way you look at conversations...

Anne is Customer Success Manager with Focus on digitalization at AirPorts. She has been an improv actor for long, believing in games and fun eversince. Her current focus is to get her PhD evaluation which is about improv–based learning in projects settled.

If you sit down and ask a hand puppet questions - it's definitely play, isn’t it? But if it's your turn, you just might ask something that really occupies you. After all, it really could be that Dr. Snail knows everything. Dr. Snail is direct, outspoken, loves salad and is totally unhurried. Speedcoaching with Dr. Snail is an interactive exploratory performance about how play enables serious and real experience.

Petra Stocker is the manager of the Play Space and Play Culture Programme of a swiss youth organization, Pro Juventute. She initiated various local and national projects with a focus on child and play-friendly urban development. In May 2018 she curated a festival/conference on Playable Cities - Play and Urban development. She has also been acting and performing improvisational theatre for over 10 years and likes to mix improvisation and play techniques into her practice.

Edge-ucation in the Chaos Lab: Experience the healthy risk, natural joy, and extreme play featured in a setting full of odd, but simple materials. Novel experiences provide opportunities for adaptation, innovation, and playful learning in this "adventure playground" for adults. Co-create a little chaos in the Chaos Lab.

By Mike Sullivan

The panel explores shifting boundaries between work and play through the concept of “playbor,” which highlights an increasingly normalized system of relations between producers, consumers and industry; corporations prescribe technical and social “rules” which entice and circumscribe activities, ultimately setting forth the conditions for thinking, talking and even knowing when and how to play.

Raul Ferrer-Conill is a lecturer and researcher in media and communications at Karlstad University. His doctoral dissertation focuses on the use of playful approaches to digital news production. Currently, he examines aspects of digital technologies, such as digital labor, media industries, and processes of datafication and gamification. He has published his work in journals such as Television and New Media, Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW), and Digital Journalism.

Sonia Fizek is a digital games, design and media scholar, who currently holds a lectureship position in the School of Informatics and Design at Abertay University in Dundee. Her current research focuses on the relationship between digital games and automation. She looks at self-playing games, automated gameplay, and algorithmic players to understand the essence of and the fascination with self-acting playful systems. Fizek is an associate editor of the Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds, and a board member for the Digital Culture and Society Journal, Digital Games Research Association (British DiGRA), Replay. The Polish Journal of Game Studies, and Journal of the Philosophy of Games, amongst many others.

Maxwell Foxman is an assistant professor of Media Studies at the University of Oregon. His work focuses on Virtual and Augmented Reality, as well as gamification in journalism, politics and other contemporary professions. His work has appeared in Games and Culture, Computational Culture and First Monday, among others. Foxman’s most recent research looks at early adopters of commercial immersive technology and the growing industry surrounding it.

Mathias Fuchs worked as a lecturer and researcher at the University of Applied Arts and the Music Academy in Vienna, at Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and at the University of Salford in Manchester, UK, where he developed and headed three Master’s level programmes. From 2012 to 2015 he held a professorship at Leuphana University, where he directed the research project “Art & Civic Media” and founded the Gamification Lab. He is currently Principal Investigator for a 3-years project on gamification funded by the German Research Council (DFG).

Mark R. Johnson is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta. His work examines the intersections between play and money, such as live streaming, daily fantasy sports, loot boxes, Esports, gamification and gamblification. He has published in The Sociological Review, Games and Culture, Convergence, and Information, Communication and Society, among others.

Playful Nature invites you to discover “BodyLoops” as a tool for exploring playful movement with yourself and others bring comfortable clothes you can move in and an open mind.

Benjamin Lee Martin is a French American living in Berlin with his Partner and 2 children. During his short time on planet earth he has attempted to play as much and in as many ways possible in his daily life. He especially likes to play with his body and voice, simple things like strings, balls and sticks, his kids and other small creatures, and of course with his food.

Andrew Amonson is an American American living in Berlin with his partner and 2 children. During his slightly longer time on planet earth he has been inventing inventive inventions to play inventively. He especially likes to make things and throw things, rocks, balls sticks, twigs and also his kids.

Andrew and Benjamin met in 2013 in Berlin and have since been combining thier love of play to play and invite other big and small beings to play along with them as Playful Nature. You can discover more here: www.playfulnature.me

Recently, the act of eating has started to gather notable attention from play researcher (see Mueller et al 2018). The saying “don’t play with your food” has been turned around, as the playfulness of eating is now being recognized and, occasionally, even celebrated. This presentation provides a cross-cultural study between Korean and North European traditions of eating with a goal to distinguish differences in their play elements and playfulness. In addition to historical references to the traditions in question, the study draws from two three-month long periods of fieldwork in Seoul, thus reflecting on the history with the present. Ultimately, the study argues that both food (ontologically) and eating (pragmatically) in Korea involve various elements of play and playfulness that are generally lacking in Nordic Europe.

Veli-Matti Karhulahti is a Senior Researcher in University of Jyväskylä and works currently for the Centre of Excellence in Games Culture Studies project.

Annette Nielsen is an experienced teacher and an Asian Studies scholar in University of Turku who is currently interested in Korean food culture in particular.

Making zines is a fun way to circulate your stories, ideas, and information on a small scale. In this workshop, we will use the art of zine making to learn and apply a framework for interpreting, thinking critically about, and gaining understanding from visual information. Breaking into groups at tables, there will be materials and directions available for you to tell the story of your experience at CounterPlay ’19, using the framework we discuss. With some new skills and a story to tell, you may start a small press to distribute your zine!

Sarah Huber is an Engineering Technology Information Specialist and Assistant Professor of Library Science at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, USA. Sarah’s areas of research are new systems of organization and retrieval within libraries and the future of library collections. She runs the Maker programming for the Purdue Libraries and sees the activity and creativity used in Making as applicable to the future of library collection organization and discovery.

We will conduct a worldbuilding session, in which we imagine future solutions to real world problems, focusing on problems facing people with invisible disabilities. This approach uses embodiment, our senses of humor, our physical relationships, and our deepest desires to connect; to consider how we can use play to transform the painful edges of our lives into constructive solutions, comedic stories, and playful moments of triumph.

Laura Cechanowicz is Los Angeles based artist and worldbuilder working in animation, film, VR and AR, and play. Her work explores embodiment and memory through identity and neuroscience. Her dissertation is a worldbuilding project documenting problems and building solutions for communities of people with disabilities. Laura earned her BA from the University of Michigan with Film & Video, Psychology and German majors, her MA in Film Studies from the University of Iowa, and her MFA in Animation from the University of Southern California. She is a USC PhD Candidate in interdisciplinary Media Arts and Practice, and she lives with an invisible disability of Rheumatoid Arthritis.

In this workshop we explore the cross-over between social design and improvisation theatre, within the context of an actual societal challenge. Through a series of playful design exercises using body and voice as tools, we will work through the different phases of a design process. This results in a prototype played out for an audience.

The group co-creates tools and generate knowledge that are practically applicable and can be taken home to use. And we’ll gonna have a lot of fun together!

Bjørn van Raaij
Bjørn is founder of Zeewaardig a Dutch social design agency working predominantly in the public sector. With his company he explores how the public and non design professionals can play an active role in the design process. In this way finding innovative solutions to complex challenges in society such as education, energy transition, urban development and inclusivity. As a ‘facilitating designer’ he creates design processes that induce a designers mindset of curiosity, experimentation and creativity.

Awakening the designer in individuals, organizations and communities, he believes, is a necessity to solve the challenges we face in the 21st century.

Henk van der Steen
Henk van der Steen is co-founder of Troje, a company that is all around improvisation in the 21st century. His work is all about the improvement of improvisation skills of people, teams and organisations. He designs and facilitates highly interactive programs around change, creativity and innovation. He delivers workshops and interactive keynotes around the topic of Improvisation in the 21st Century. And –off course- he is also an improviser on stage. In the past 25 years he has been improvising and teaching all over the globe.

Henk is an energetic discoverer and a generous finder, curious ‘how it’s made’. Always looking for the best question and an exciting answer. He is also a dad, a husband, a runner and a former HR-consultant.

Oh, and he is (co)-author of several books, such as: ‘Werk in Uitvoering, over Improviseren op de werkvloer’, the first Dutch book about Applied Improvisation in the workplace.

Welcome to the Dream Bureau, part of the Office for Dream Certification and Wish Fulfilment. Please take a seat – one of our Administrators will call you shortly…

This prototype secret role game models the pressures faced by ‘street-level’ or frontline service workers. It is based on primary ethnographic research and secondary analysis of the literature on street-level human service organizations. Simple, fast-paced, and fun, it has been designed to stimulate reflection and discussion of the various dilemmas and pressures involved in frontline service delivery across a variety of ‘street-level’ policy contexts.

Rob Jones is a director and designer of playful theatre, games, sound and video. He graduated in Theatre Studies from the University of Glasgow in 2010. He's interested in creating bold, exuberant projects that find innovative ways to tell stories. His work has been supported by a wide range of Scottish theatre organisations, including The National Theatre of Scotland, The Tron Theatre and Grid Iron. Rob was awarded a Leverhulme Arts Scholarship by the JMK Theatre Trust and the Traverse, won the 2014 Platform 18 Award at The Arches, and was a participant in the National Theatre of Scotland's Emerge Programme 2012.

Performing the Landscape is a participatory spatial and interactive event. We will spend some time using our bodies, actions and movements to explore a new visual language in response to the environment. Working together we will develop certain rules to inform a collective walk, unique to the participants involved and the city scape that we move through. We will finish by performing the collective walk/action together.

(b.1977) Jenny Cashmore is a British contemporary artist currently living on the Welsh/English border. She graduated with a Distinction, Masters of Fine Art from Cardiff Metropolitan University, Wales, UK in 2014. Past residencies include; online residency with East Bristol Contemporary (2018), UNIT(e), g39 (Cardiff, Wales UK. 2016) and Summer Camp, National Theatre Wales, (Wales UK. 2015) Cashmore’s recent projects include a collaborative Earth walk with Celia Johnson (Sidney Nolan Trust, Presteigne, Wales UK, 2018), Descent, performed in the Finnish Museum of Natural History (Helsinki, Finland 2017), and Colours of Llandudno, produced by Culture Action Llandudno (Llandudno, North Wales UK. 2017). She is also a founder of artist collective Shebang who have recently hosted a Women’s Space at the Green Gathering Festival (Chepstow, Wales UK. 2018).

Imagine! will engage participants in a playful approach to learning, inviting everyone to follow their fascinations using a range of drawing materials to create a Forest of Imagination. Creative enquiry and reflection will be central to the workshop.

Penny Hay is an artist and educator, Senior Lecturer in Arts Education, Bath Spa University and Director of Research, 5x5x5=creativity (arts research charity). Signature projects include School Without Walls, House of Imagination and Forest of Imagination. Penny is a member of the Creativity in Education Research Group and Research Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries, Bath Spa University, RSA Innovative Education Network, Crafts Council Learning Advisory Group, Visiting Lecturer at Plymouth College of Art and Co-ordinator of the South West Creative Education Hub. Previously Penny was a primary teacher, arts advisory teacher, lecturer in arts education at Goldsmiths College, the Institute of Education, University of London, Roehampton Institute and University of the West of England. She co-designed the NSEAD Artist Teacher Scheme with Arts Council England and Tate Modern. Penny’s doctoral research focused on how we support children’s identity as artists. Current postdoctoral work focuses on creative pedagogy. Penny is an RSA Fellow and awarded by Action for Children’s Arts for her contribution to arts education.

Ever thought how to introduce people to a forest? We have been making playful journeys for just such a task and more. Using playful objects, quizzical characters and thoughtful games we bring people into a shared world to engage with these things. We’d like to share our approach and methods with you and talk about our work and practice. Following this we will host a workshop where you can bring your own playful thoughts to creating a trail of your own in response to one of our wicked questions.

Angie is a freelance illustrator and maker with a background in education. Jim is a designer and maker of games, objects and teaches people how to make games.

The Social Game is the latest contribution to a series called 'Cultural Protocols' -- a collection of formats that play with and modify everyday situations. Most of all human interactions are guided by social conventions (i.e. shaking hands/bowing/hugging), and a bundle of those conventions is what we call a protocol (i.e. the protocol of a dinner).

In this sense, the Social Game is less a specific protocol on its own but rather a collaborative method to create, shape and re-shape a protocol of being with one another on the go, using a card-game mechanic. By playing out or removing cards participants can alter the very basic rules by which we interact. While a stack of premade cards will be provided by us, participants will also add new cards to the game itself. While the cards may invite to change the rules a lot, the Social Game is more about using the cards as impulses, giving a rule time to be dwelled in.

The session will consist of an introduction to the rules of the game, the game itself, and a debriefing afterwards.

In our own perspective the Social Game is not only fun, but it quite directly questions our assumptions of how one must engage with others. The moment, f.ex., you are invited to have 2m distance to someone while talking to them, you realize how fundamental our conventions are and how oblivious we are to most of them. In a playful way you learn what parts of a conventions feel good to you and which don't. The open "nature" of the game puts the means to create a worthwhile experience into everybody's hands. Furthermore, it highlights a crucial idea: If you want change, start changing things. And at least on a conventional level, the mechanic for the everyday life is similiar to the Social Game -- only that the cards are imaginary.

_:Thibault Schiemann (*1990) describes himself as a cultural hacker, using contexts such as games, theatre, literature, authentic relating and others to put forth alternative ideas of society. He studied Literature and Theatre at the University of Bern and the Freie Universität Berlin, and is currently running a seminar on creative reading at the latter. In 2014 he co-founded both the Social Space Agency and the anti-bank Trade Sachs which he is still an active member of. He has been invited and/or participated in many festivals over Europa, such as Auawirleben (Bern, CH), Frankfurt Book Fair (GER), Transeuropa Festival (Belgrade, Ser), Urban Emptiness (Nikosia, CYP). //ofwastelands.de

_:Nina Lund Westerdahl (*1984) works in the fields of art, games, performance and architecture. Her focus is on the public awareness of urban space by exploring, questioning and sharing the manifold aspects of the everyday.
MA in Architecture from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen; worked as an architect in Denmark, Zurich, Sierra Leone and Palestine; Artist in the urban performance group zURBS since its beginning in 2011; Co-founder of The Hidden Institute in Berlin. Curator of Blackbox Copenhagen 2019. co-curating Oslo Architecture Triennale 2019.
ninawesterdahl.com

In this workshop you will be introduced to two worlds: the world of Raccoon Ranch, location of a murder mystery, and the In Between, a mysterious place that exists in the world’s nooks and crannies. You’ll meet the locals, then become one. We’ll find out together what happens when these two worlds collide.

Audrey Huggett is a librarian at the Ann Arbor District Library and story builder. She is experimenting with creating worlds and stories that dynamically respond to audience input.

Sherlonya Turner manages the Public Experience and Desk Service Department at the Ann Arbor District Library. She focuses on service and creating events for the public. When she’s not doing that, she is working on her own projects like interpreting US Presidents as cupcakes at headofstatecakes.com

Can play help us with our failing democracies, rising inequality, global warming, and an epidemic of stress and anxiety? Quite a lot it turns out! Through improv games, philosophizing, and examples from around the world you will learn the methodology and tools of performance activism and discover just why play is such a powerful tool for changing the world. Are you ready to make history?

Esben Wilstrup is a Danish psychologist, community-builder, and play activist. In 2015 he co-founded the boarding school "Epos" in Denmark - where students ages 15-17 learn the mandatory state curriculum but through play, performance and role-playing games (edularps). When he isn't working to develop the community, staff, pedagogy, and leadership of this school or consulting with with others to help them do the same, he works with the East Side Institute to build an international movement of play activists through the festivals/communities "Performing The World" and "Play Perform Learn Grow".

PerformanceLab is an innovative, playful and artistic workshop, that will contribute to the sense of our mobile selves. Based on Augusto Boal’s research, mainly on his book “Games for Actors and non actors”, the PerformanceLab workshop will provide a space for physical composition, expressivity and musicality of movement, and to dig for the intersections between the proposed exercises and playing.

Gaby David is a Uruguayan/French, visual sociologist and digital ethnographer. She holds a PhD from the “Centre of history and theory of arts” from the EHESS in Paris. Specialized in mobile media and visual cultural studies, Gaby also holds a Masters in Fine Arts from the University Paris 8, and a Teacher of English as a Foreign Language Diploma. With a strong dance-theatre background and ceramist training, her portfolio also includes many art exhibitions and performances. Today she works as a Fellow researcher at La Sorbonne 3 and is a Lecturer at Paris 8.

As part of CounterPlay '19: Playing at the Edge, we're hosting an open play event in The Dome. There will be silly talks, playful performances, stories, dancing and lots of PLAY!

This is a good chance to meet our fabulous, generous international play community, if you can't come to all of CounterPlay!

Follow this event for updates!

The Backhome Agency takes you on an imaginative trip through another person’s hometown memories. Visit the Agency’s Memory Lab and contribute your own stories for others to explore. Discover and rearrange the memories left by previous players. Expand and manipulate the installation with your stories. Blend fact and fiction and record a tour for future visitors to travel through your hometown stories. Rent a tour at the Memory Desk and go on a journey yourself. The Memory Lab can be visited Thursday through Saturday - just walk in and spent as much time as you want. Tours can be rented at the Desk from Friday afternoon on. Groups welcome!

Martian Gardens is a deeply social game for everyone. As pioneers of the new frontier you are tasked to turn the landscape of Mars fertile. You must choose your strategy in order to make the deserts bloom. Players can be as active or as reflective as they like. A lone outpost of floral innovation or a cooperative with others? Pool your resources to achieve bigger things! An opportunity to express marvellous acts of beauty across the face of a whole planet.

Angie is a freelance illustrator and maker with a background in education. Jim is a designer and maker of games, objects and teaches people how to make games.

Game Jamming at the Edge is a 2-day long game jam transforming the theme of CounterPlay'19 into games. Youngsters, Coding Pirates volunteers and researchers from Aarhus University work together to make their own games and take games to the edge and create a game exhibition for CounterPlay'19

You can build anything with LEGO® bricks. Your imagination is your limit. What would you build if you have a sea of green LEGO® bricks available to you? Come and find out! From Thursday afternoon until Saturday you can build whatever comes to your mind. We also invite you to come and see the creations of other builders and let your imagination go wild in interpreting their meanings.

Culture Shift artist Lucy Read invites you into bed to share ideas, thoughts and make connections in a relational art experience that uses the bed as a place to discuss what play at the edge means to you responding to ideas raised throughout the day. Cosy up and reflect, let off steam and jump, bring your lunch for a picnic and using the pillows and bed sheets as your canvas, draw, or write your thoughts to create a collaborative artwork, expressing what it is to play at the edge.

CG characters in film can convey a diverse range of physical behaviours. Animators can choose from a wide variety of animation techniques to create cartoon-like characters that bend, squash and stretch into all manner of shapes and sizes. The real-time performance constraints and the interactive nature of computer games can restrict the range of animations possible. This masterclass will show how modern real-time physics simulations can be combined with animation techniques to create dynamic deformable characters that can interact with their virtual environment and lead to new innovative forms of play and interactive storytelling.

Speaker: Grant Clarke, Abertay University

Target Audience: Animators, game developers and designers. Those interested in exploring how character animation in film can create innovative forms of play in computer games. Students and professionals.

Please be aware that registration for this workshop is required. Even with a CounterPlay ticket signing up through Eventbrite is necessary.

The workshop is free to attend, but there will be a no-show fee of 500 DKK.

LINK TO REGISTRATION

Custom controllers provide an opportunity to closely link player controls and interaction with in-game responses. The combination of a custom controller and a carefully crafted game mechanic can provide a unique gaming or interactive experience. This workshop focuses on how users physically interact with games. We will be discussing the development of custom controllers utilising a range of physical sensors including orientation, pressure and distance. The workshop will showcase a small collection of prototype controllers focusing on each of these sensors.

Leader of the workshop: Paul Robertson, Abertay University

Target Audience: Game developers, designers and programmers. Those interested in exploring how players physically interact with games/digital environments. Students and professionals.

Please be aware that registration for this workshop is required. Even with a CounterPlay ticket signing up through Eventbrite is necessary.

The workshop is free to attend, but there will be a no-show fee of 500 DKK.

LINK TO REGISTRATION

Wayfinder Live is a free-to-play location-based augmented reality game. Scanning urban codes on the street unlock fragments of animation and sound documenting traces of a hidden micronation.

Originally created for Melbourne International Games Week, Wayfinder live is a live game in which you explore cities through play. Wayfinding not to get from a to b but to find a new way to be.

That way to be is in a place called the Micronation of Ludea. If you have played a game then you have been to Ludea. It is that space you go to when you are ‘in-game’, in the zone, immsersed in play.

In Wayfinder Live you use tokens to influence locations and claim them for your faction: will you paint the town orange, green or blue?

Read more about playing the game HERE

Wayfinder Live is created by Troy Innocent, who is an artist, academic, and educator exploring playable cities, particularly their capacity to decode and reimagine the world in playful ways. As a recent Melbourne Knowledge Fellow, Innocent developed the framework for Playable City Melbourne, a three-year project in which Melbourne is transformed into a playable city through an inventive blend of live art, game design and public art.

The Driving Philosopher’ (De Rijdende Filosoof) is a philosophical foodtruck. It offers a moment to catch up on impressions, grab a bite to think and explore thoughts and ideas in the intersecting fields of playfulness and philosophy. The menu offers a variety of playful snacks for what Bernie DeKoven calls ’the inner playground’. The camper van offers a space for conversation and consultation, secluded from the festival terrain, offering a space for contemplation, while still being connected to it as well. Visitors of the campervan can come in for a conversation about philosophy and playfulness.

Last year A secret club installed the world's first distinctly introvert playground, right here in Aarhus. Conventional playgrounds are - possibly without anyone ever giving it much thought - designed for extroverts. They are places of ruckus and risk-taking, designed to cater to as many kids as possible - they are loud, wild and social places.

The quieter, introverted kids often prefer solitary, non-physical play that mostly takes place in the mind. The introvert playground caters to this kind of play. It takes the shape of a small red tree, but if you crawl inside it, you will find wonders and curiosities - carefully and skilfully made objects that hint at stories, raise questions and makes you wonder. As one visiting child put it, : 'It's a playground for your thoughts.'

Introvert and extrovert play can comfortably overlap, co-exist and benefit from each other - throughout the Counterplay festival, a small, secret game has taken place, a game that can be played in an introverted or extroverted way. During the talk, a secret club will invite those who have played it to share their thoughts and experiences.

In the conversation - which you are very welcome to join in on - a secret club will show examples of how craftsmanship itself can help bring about wonder, poetry and storytelling.

During the talk, they will also touch upon the playful ways in which they develop and design their play as well as how they take inspiration from things as diverse as lullabies and secret societies, psychogeography, folklore, fairground attractions, the lost and found, language, 1980's toys (including RC cars) and 17th century cabinets of curiosities.

A secret club was founded by Annabelle Nielsen and Kenn Munk and has developed thoughtful and poetic play projects since 2009, often in the shape of small, alternative realities that participants visit, play in and leave again, effectively turning them into a memory.

Annabelle used to be an illustrator and artist, Kenn used to be a graphic and toy designer. Now they are both explorers, inventors, alchemists and seekers.

This workshop for adults will explore the edge between play and personal growth, between play and spirituality - to look at how play can be an interface between our public self and our inner worlds. We’ve seen first-hand, through our workshops with adults, how play can be a catalyst for change – a way of reconnecting with a lost or shut off part of ourselves. That reconnection can be hugely transformative, and also challenging. Who am I, as an adult, if I allow myself to play? If I can open up and feel like myself again through play, what else can I do? What changes might it precipitate in my life?

There will be games and playful interactions designed to generate group trust and connection. The aim will be to enable participants to begin to open up and connect with the more “spiritual” part of themselves (whatever that means on an individual level). This would be followed by discussion and reflection on the process.

Playful Being gives adults the space to (re)discover the transformative power of play. Jessica Penrose and Sharon Hodgson of Playful Being are creative facilitators who each have many years' experience of running workshops and groups. They are firm believers in the power of playful creativity as a tool for personal growth and deep connection.

Everyone has his/her own play personality DNA so has every job and activity. The workshop seeks to analyze and combine these to create a play personality DNA library for jobs and activities to help you to choose your path for a healthier and happier life - in career and leisure time.

HiddenCampus: Creating playful spaces for people to grow.

Experience design by Gabi Linde - urban activist for playful public spaces, advocate for play and playful development. Campus, commonly known as a university areal, is translated ‘playground’ from Latin. HiddenCampus creates playful spaces to learn and explore how to lead a happier and healthier life. These spaces can emerge everywhere - sometimes where you least expect it.

Play is a spiritual act.

We don’t do it for efficiency, to make money, or to extend our lifespans – though these can be a result. We do it to contact a part of our being that we can easily lose touch of. Your inner child, your joker, your soul.

Through games, mindful/playful techniques & reflective discussion, we’ll see how play nurtures this vital part of ourselves, enabling us to engage with lived experience at a deeper level. In getting closer to our edge(s), we see our core more clearly.

Ben Ross works with adults, helping them to play. With his organisation, The Flying Raccoon, he concentrates on encouraging conscious play, appropriate to the individuals Play Persona, through workshops and one-on-one coaching.

Make Art Play is an experimental print workshop that is designed to be an interlocutor between ideology and pragmatism. Even this idealisation, can be critiqued and transformed through making. Printmaking specifically, the transfer of an image, can be viewed by some as outdated. However this workshop is aimed to give participants a refreshing view that hopes to encourage DIY printmaking as a mode of resistance. The lines between craft and art are blurred when we use our imagination. You are invited to bring your critical minds to experiment with different interventions of the idea of self & branding as a resistance to being seen as an anonymous consumer walking on earth during the late capitalism era. In urban spaces: our environment and our daily commute is littered with corporate signage. There are so many layers of spam, even our homes seem like an archive to industrialism rather than to ourselves. We hope to encourage and impart some information as to how and why bringing our ideologies and personalities into our personal space could potentially help our creativity and to keep developing our sense of self. Despite these ideas being present, we encourage participants to use the workshop as a way to interrogate ideas and feelings that have surfaced during the Counter Play festival and put it into practice.


About the Facilitator: Having studied Business Science Marketing before switching to Fine Art, was a shock to many of Alessandre's peers. Such a change seems incoherent to most. However understanding from a Business perspective how visual culture is curated has, counter intuitively, helped to understand that art does not only exist to be bought and sold. Art needs to be an expression that is untied from even having to produce an object. Alessandre majored in Printmaking from the University of Cape Town, and has since worked to engage with different mediums of art as a performance work rather than an object making practice, to resist the commodification of art.

This workshop will give us permission to playfully meet & express the slightly messier bits of us that we normally don't let others see - what Carl Jung calls our "shadows".

Taking on the archetype of the Fool, we will use guided meditation, theatre games, embodied exercises and reflective writing to lightly step in and out of our edges, in a safe and held space. This will be an active session, with a strong likelihood of loud, silly noises.

Robbie Foulston is a fool. Or at least he's trying very hard to be. He is interested in playing with all the different sides of ourselves, dissolving the blocks to our true playfulness, and being a permission slip for other people's insanity (don't worry, it's not just you!)

He studied Theatre and Performance at the University of Warwick, and has trained in general silliness with; Holly Stoppit (clown teacher), Daniel Hernandez (Divine Ridiculous), John Wright (theatre director), Jonathan Kay (international fool), and Jamie Catto (1 Giant Leap, Faithless).

Robbie offers workshops, performances and projects under the name State of Play, because we've all got to have a brand nowadays, don't we?

State of Play's mission is to empower individuals, artists and organisations to explore the benefits of a playful way of being.

Find out more at: playstate.co.uk (soon!)

In this play-workshop Bart will invite you to give room to the wisdom of your body in a playful way. After 2 days of playing at the edge we will let our bodies tell us what our brain doesn’t know. The wisdom of our body’s will bring us playfully over the edge of what we think we know and tell us what step to take next. It may be helping us to contribute to make this world more playful!

Bart is a Playful Facilitator and a trainer of creativity and circus-arts and he loves to make big bubbles. In this play-workshop he uses a mix of Social Precensing Theatre, InterPlay, Embodied feedback, Clowning and Improv Theatre.

In the afternoon, we will go play in a nearby forest and make a bonfire, tell stories, drink warm drinks and play some more when it gets dark.

We will prepare soup and bread for everyone.

Bring warm clothes!

Find us HERE

The Backhome Agency takes you on an imaginative trip through another person’s hometown memories. Visit the Agency’s Memory Lab and contribute your own stories for others to explore. Discover and rearrange the memories left by previous players. Expand and manipulate the installation with your stories. Blend fact and fiction and record a tour for future visitors to travel through your hometown stories. Rent a tour at the Memory Desk and go on a journey yourself. The Memory Lab can be visited Thursday through Saturday - just walk in and spent as much time as you want. Tours can be rented at the Desk from Friday afternoon on. Groups welcome!

Martian Gardens is a deeply social game for everyone. As pioneers of the new frontier you are tasked to turn the landscape of Mars fertile. You must choose your strategy in order to make the deserts bloom. Players can be as active or as reflective as they like. A lone outpost of floral innovation or a cooperative with others? Pool your resources to achieve bigger things! An opportunity to express marvellous acts of beauty across the face of a whole planet.

Angie is a freelance illustrator and maker with a background in education. Jim is a designer and maker of games, objects and teaches people how to make games.

You can build anything with LEGO® bricks. Your imagination is your limit. What would you build if you have a sea of green LEGO® bricks available to you? Come and find out! From Thursday afternoon until Saturday you can build whatever comes to your mind. We also invite you to come and see the creations of other builders and let your imagination go wild in interpreting their meanings.

The Driving Philosopher’ (De Rijdende Filosoof) is a philosophical foodtruck. It offers a moment to catch up on impressions, grab a bite to think and explore thoughts and ideas in the intersecting fields of playfulness and philosophy. The menu offers a variety of playful snacks for what Bernie DeKoven calls ’the inner playground’. The camper van offers a space for conversation and consultation, secluded from the festival terrain, offering a space for contemplation, while still being connected to it as well. Visitors of the campervan can come in for a conversation about philosophy and playfulness.

Wayfinder Live is a free-to-play location-based augmented reality game. Scanning urban codes on the street unlock fragments of animation and sound documenting traces of a hidden micronation.

Originally created for Melbourne International Games Week, Wayfinder live is a live game in which you explore cities through play. Wayfinding not to get from a to b but to find a new way to be.

That way to be is in a place called the Micronation of Ludea. If you have played a game then you have been to Ludea. It is that space you go to when you are ‘in-game’, in the zone, immsersed in play.

In Wayfinder Live you use tokens to influence locations and claim them for your faction: will you paint the town orange, green or blue?

Read more about playing the game HERE

Wayfinder Live is created by Troy Innocent, who is an artist, academic, and educator exploring playable cities, particularly their capacity to decode and reimagine the world in playful ways. As a recent Melbourne Knowledge Fellow, Innocent developed the framework for Playable City Melbourne, a three-year project in which Melbourne is transformed into a playable city through an inventive blend of live art, game design and public art.