Play is a serious business

Attended the HEA-ADM Vital Space conference recently - well not so much a conference, more a creative discursive space (!)which intersected the live event with an ongoing virtual blog... and culminated in a set of 60 sec. YouTube videos. Stephen Heppell of UltraLab (which mainly works in the schools sector) kicked things off with a YouTube talk, proposing key concepts for better learning spaces. David Clews, Director of the HEA-ADM responded in kind; and then at the event itself, groups were allocated a concept to explore.

My group had playful. What was interesting is that all the groups immediately got involved in the complexity and tensions of their concepts, wanting to think harder about what was going on beyond the cliches. Our group all felt there was already a big problem with the concept of playful just meaning brightly coloured beanbags, being 'touch-feely' and having 'fun'. We talked a lot about the serious business of play as taking creative risks and all that that implied. How can students be supported in this? What kinds of spaces do they need? How can it be developed within contexts where resources are short and this kind of play/risk-taking difficult to asssess/challenging to conventional methods?

So our group tried to express this notion of playfulness - click here to see our video.