Showing posts with label Counterplay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Counterplay. Show all posts

Friday, 19 October 2018

Possible Counterplay proposal

Paper Castles hanging from wires
I'm currently pondering ideas for the current call for proposals for Counterplay 2019, but it's all a little in the air at the moment.

I'd welcome comments on the draft proposal below! Basically considering giving people a (non-literal) map that playfully challenges people to reflect on how the library space (the venue) makes them feel as they consider different aspects of their space and their own (and colleagues) experiences.

Draft follows:


Navigating the lines between the mental and physical library spaces.


This is an experimental intervention, guiding participants through a psychogeographic exploration of the physical library space in order to allow them to consider their mental models and prior experience of such a space.
Playfully crossing the edges between physical and mental library spaces, participants will explore different ways in which they may experience physical and shared social spaces such as Dokk1. All participants will be armed with a map and instructions and sent out into the library, before returning to reflect upon their experiences.
Based on Counterplay participants’ feedback, this approach may be adapted to help enable new undergraduate students next year to playfully consider themselves within their new, confusing, scary university environment. It is hoped that this approach will allow them to reflect upon their prior expectations and experiences, and allow them to find new ways of belonging within these new social and physical spaces. It may also be adapted by anyone who wishes to explore how people experience a social space, or who would like to help people reflect upon their own sense of belonging within such a space.

Sunday, 30 April 2017

New book chapter - Reasons to Play in Higher Education

cartoon of a university building
I've a new book chapter available: Reasons to Play in Higher Education*.
It is in a book pulled together by Matthias as part of the Counterplay festival and associated playful goodness :)
I pitched something on why play should be part of HE, including matching what Government and employers wanted out of HE and graduates when the call for papers came out. When I started writing it, I started to feel it all sounded a bit too serious, and not at all playful. So I scrapped everything I wrote, went to Collabhub (where people can pitch collaborative projects with students) and asked if anyone would be up for turning my ideas into a more visual form. Jonny Clementson came on board and I paid him to create a short comic based on my ideas... a bit of bouncing backwards and forwards with ideas and text, and we ended up with a 6 page comic!
So it's now in "The Power of Play", which has been printed, but I don't think it's available to buy yet! I've put my chapter online to download though, so I hope some people like it :)


*Full reference: Walsh, Andrew and Clementson, Jonny (2017) Reasons to play in Higher Education. In: The Power of Play - Voices from the Play Community. CounterPlay, Aarhus, Denmark, pp. 181-187. ISBN 9788799975204

Tuesday, 24 May 2016

A few random thoughts from Counterplay 16

The most terrible things, war, genocide, and slavery, have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.
I haven't written up the Counterplay conference / festival at all, but I've lots of thoughts swirling around my head still from it. I don't think I can write it up like I do some conferences (session x covered y...), so instead I'll just pop down a few "random" thoughts that have stuck with me. I ended up with 3 pages of handwritten short notes / bullet points immediately after the conference, so these aren't everything... and aren't about the conference / festival itself, but a few thoughts about play itself that stuck with me!
I've pulled out 5 from my long list of points I wrote - hopefully they make sense: