We are deeply playful creatures. Play is who we are. Homo Ludens, Playful Human, is what Johan Huizinga called us. Not to replace Homo Sapiens, Wise Human, but to make the point that play is just as fundamental to our nature, equally essential for understanding our past and our future, and just as important for a good life.
It's important to think about, not just interesting. For example, we know our genes shape who we are. We know they have a role to play in our physical and mental health, even our likes and dislikes and idiosyncrasies. So, we have funded genome research and conducted studies, gained insight into who we are through a genetic framework and applied our understanding to our everyday lives. We are better for it.
We have done the same with education. We know education shapes who we are, helps us understand our past and plan wisely for our future, it is important for the good life. So, we have (partially) funded research and schools for teaching, conducted studies and gained insight and understanding that we have (sometimes) applied to our education system. And we are (often) better for it.
Play shapes who we are. It is a slippery concept. When I talk about it, I'm never sure what comes to the mind of the person listening. Are they imaging art and craft? Are they imagining chess? Are they thinking about contact sport or dramatic theatre? Or are they thinking about Bob Hughes sixteen play types and how they intersect with evolutionary biology?
When I talk about Play, I'm never talking about all of it. There are times when looking at play is like studying our genome - it's helps explain who we are most deeply; how we connect, what we're drawn to, what we are scared of or allergic to, and how we understand and see the world.
Other times, looking at play is like looking at education; it's a curriculum for personal insight and growth, a set of activities and ideas we engage with to develop and strengthen ourselves and our communities. Sometimes looking at play is like looking at medicine, it seems to soothe and heal deep personal and interpersonal ruptures, and yet other times play is just beauty and joy in motion.
Play is slippery and multifaceted, and it shows itself everywhere. Below are a few examples of how play shows up around the place, just to give you a sense of how broad and deep this amorphous concept is. But as hard as it is to pin down, we all have some lived sense of play.
Science is discovery and exploration. The history of science is filled with great moments of insight driven by playful experimentation. Scientists love to play - with theories, matter and ideas. More specifically, for many biologists, zoologists and neuroscientists, it seems that play helps brain development, physical coordination, social bonding, survival skills, psychological development, creativity and our ability to learn.
The Philosophy of Play explores how culture and civilisation may be underpinned by a drive to play, how a deeper look at games may help provide insight to our sense of meaning, purpose and existence and other really interesting things you’d love to hear about.
Unsurprisingly, early childhood education dominates the study of play. Playwork Development is a growing area of expertise (particularly in the UK) and focuses on training teachers and child-workers to better understand (and facilitate) how children learn and grow through play. A growing movement of educators are fighting against the trend in mainstream education to fill up learning time with activities rather than time to play freely.
Artist and designers are intimately aware of the role play has in the creative process. The play toolkit offers powerful methods for collaborating around ideas, prototyping and iterating effectively and how to test things in the real world. To some philosophical thinkers, our desire to manipulate matter to either serve a function, manifest beauty or express thoughts and ideas is fuelled and aided by our innate drive to play.
Businesses today need great teams that collaborate well, the capacity to create new value in the market through innovation, decision makers that can adapt and improvise in a chaotic and volatile landscape. There’s a playful way to cultivate all these skills, a way that’s likely to keep us engaged and excited about our work in a deeper way.
Games are perhaps the best-defined aspect of the play world. The study of games and game design offers rich and useful tools for analysing problems and finding solutions. When crafting interactions between people or between people and systems, game design offers conceptual structures that account for the deeper complexity of interaction on a formal, social, emotional and cultural level.
Performance includes the dramatic arts of improvisation, role playing, clowning, various forms of theatre and storytelling. These performance styles offer a pathway to personal growth by developing our imagination, resilience, spontaneity and ability to create social connection. These performance styles are a training ground for navigating life’s social and emotional challenges.
Playspaces are physical environments that invite engaged interaction and meaningful connection. Studying playgrounds and the built environment is a study of how we engage with and behave in space, and the meaning we make in the places we live in and move through.
The connection between the hand and the mind is a special one. Thinking and doing are activities less easily separated than we might appreciate. This area looks at how physical objects help inspire play while they help us to think and learn. How can we use puzzles, balls, LEGO and craft to improve our work and our life?
A growing area of therapy, play therapy draws on methodologies like sand play to help children and adults express complex emotions that aren’t accessible in other forms of therapy. Play requires and fosters trust and a sense of safety, creating the right environment for communicating vulnerability.
This is the grey area, where play goes wrong. Play can get the better of us sometimes, gambling and video game addiction are just some examples. It is important to engage with the limits and the dark side of play.
