Designing Playful Society Prototypes
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Mathias Poulsen gives a presentation about his work with CounterPlay, a play festival he started in 2013 to explore play for adults. He discusses CounterPlay as a prototype for a more playful society where people can encounter each other freely through play. Poulsen also talks about how play can contribute to democracy by moving beyond rational discourse and sparking interest and imagination through communal experiences. He emphasizes the importance of cultivating play communities with safe spaces, role models, trust, care, and inspiration to allow open-ended exploration of issues through materials and play.
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Designing Playful Society Prototypes
- 1. Play about Place, Melbourne October 3, 2022 Mathias Poulsen – mp@dskd.dk Design School Kolding, Denmark Designing playful society prototypes
- 2. Thank you so much for inviting me!
- 3. My presentation will roughly fall into three parts: One where I share the journey of CounterPlay, One where I introduce my recent work on play and democracy And one part where we play around with some of the questions I will be unable to answer
- 4. I will be talking more about me today than I like, but it is only because I hope it might bring us a little closer as a *we*.
- 5. I’m in a perpetual process of connecting the dots
- 6. And I’m not particularly good at it
- 7. So there will be loose ends
- 8. ”Something about the nature of play itself frustrates fixed meaning” Brian Sutton-Smith (2008): Play Theory - Personal Journey and New Thoughts
- 9. Let’s take a short trip back to 2013. Forever ago. Almost another life.
- 10. ”Maybe we need a play festival - a place to explore play - for adults”?
- 11. We could call it, uhm, ”CounterPlay”?
- 13. I had no clue what I was doing.
- 14. …but then some 150 people came and started playing!
- 15. The most important lesson for me: if you are excited, sincere, open - and dare to ask for help - quite amazing things are possible.
- 29. Maybe this clown gave us the most moving experience at CounterPlay?
- 30. ”What inspired me most was the camaraderie, the ease of conversation and exchange as if we had all known each other for decades, the lack of pretension anywhere”
- 31. ”I actually cite CounterPlay as one of the most meaningful experiences of my life. The last time I was here, I felt like it sort of breathed life back into me” (this is almost too much for me to handle)
- 33. We make each other more courageous, we dare to embrace play and be present – and then interesting (and strange) things happen
- 34. “Playfulness itself, especially when you’re playing in public, is a political act. Because you are demonstrating to people the freedom to play” – Bernie DeKoven
- 35. CounterPlay as a “prototype” of the playful society? We insist that a world where we encounter each other like this can be possible – we make it possible by playing together
- 36. Does this have anything to do with democracy? Early on I even asked ”can play save democracy”? http://www.counterplay.org/can-play-save-democracy/
- 37. What happens when democratic participation and deliberation moves beyond intellectual reasoning and rational discourse?
- 38. ”Democratic playgrounds have a particularly strong capacity to unfold the agentic potential of participants. This is because play goes beyond discursive expression – the pinnacle of participatory modes in democratic innovations” Asenbaum & Hanusch (2021): (De)futuring democracy: Labs, playgrounds and ateliers as democratic innovations
- 39. The junk playground as agora A space for open-ended, material inquiries around matters of mutual concern
- 42. ”I believe experiences that spark our interest and imagination, that provide us with capacities and desires for diverse communal life, contribute to the constant renewal of our democracies, making them more vibrant” Disalvo, Carl (2022) Design as Democratic Inquiry (p. 186)
- 43. We can’t decide too much in advance – we must learn to trust play and the players Very modest observations
- 44. Our bodies can imagine in ways we can’t imagine
- 45. We all need examples, role models and support
- 46. Cultivating play communities allow the magic to happen Safe spaces Role models Trust Care Inspiration Play mates
- 47. THANK YOU!
- 48. Question(s)? Please get in touch! Mathias Poulsen mp@dskd.dk @mathiaspoulsen Design School Kolding
Editor's Notes
- ”Something about the nature of play itself frustrates fixed meaning. And so this account, despite my years in the field, turns out to be more a preliminary inquiry than a final resolution of my thinking, a setting sail again rather than a coming to port.”
- I had been attending some play events, both more academically minded conferences as well as play festivals often dedicated to more experimental play experiences. The conferences were typically somewhat traditional in their setup, engaging with play at a safe distance, as a theoretical concept, rather than making playful inquiries through play. This distance seemed (and still seems) unfortunate to me. The festivals, on the other hand, were all about playful interaction, inviting participants to play in creative ways, but they were less inclined to set aside time for critical reflection, engaging with the research and more abstract questions.
- ”CounterPlay is a tribute to and an exploration of the many ways, in which a more playful approach can help us live better lives. We focus on the excitement, intense engagement and rich experiences of people involved in all kinds of playing experiences. This sparks an investigation of how play can be transformative, change our thinking, push our boundaries and lead us places, we never imagined”
- When I founded CounterPlay, I did so because I wanted to cultivate an international play community, who, together, could explore and fight for play. We can only have real and lasting impact if we connect our individual and local efforts with the global play community.
- When we play with others, we create and administer a publicly acknowledged reality () When people agree on the terms of their engagement with one another and collectively bring those little worlds into being, they effectively create models for living.” –
- Rooted in constructive design research, I have co-designed prototypes of the junk playground, which I propose as an agora for open-ended democratic inquiries. I use the tradition of the playgrounds for concrete inspiration and as a metaphor in my attempts to co-design spaces where we can make bodily, material inquiries around matters of mutual concern. I bring a collection of discarded materials, and I tell a short story to foster a sense of “estrangement” and to encourage participants to move “out of their heads and into their bodies”, as one person put it.
- I am following the trends in design research that engages directly with the democratic, from the tradition of Participatory Design to Binder, Brandt, Ehn and Halse’s idea of “democratic design experiments” (Binder et al., 2015) as well as DiSalvos recent book, “Design as Democratic Inquiry: Putting Experimental Civics into Practice” (DiSalvo, 2022). While my approach is different, I share with DiSalvo the intention to design “experiences that spark our interest and imagination, that provide us with capacities and desires for diverse communal life” and I share his belief that such experiences may “contribute to the constant renewal of our democracies, making them more vibrant”.
- Trust is risky, intimidating, even. What if your trust is misguided? If those you trust will let you down? …but there is no other way to make play thrive, or to cultivate healthy societies.