Aalborg workshop

I had a lovely (though brief) visit to Aalborg to deliver a workshop for FLIP'D today (not in the lovely looking building in the image, but in the very impressive NordKraft). I'm glad I managed a couple of hours wandering around too - I love an "explore" of somewhere new to me :)

I talked a little about play, games, library teaching, permission to play, and we carried out a few activities too - thank you to everyone for taking part! I used more slides, with more text, than normal mainly so I could upload them somewhere for reference - they are now on Slideshare (plus the organisers will share them with attendees directly).

I mentioned the Journal of Play in Adulthood at the start, as someone asked me about it, I'll share a link to that! It's an Open Access peer-reviewed journal (no charges to read or publish in), I'd love anyone using play with adults to consider publishing their work in it :) https://www.journalofplayinadulthood.org.uk/  My article on "Permission to Play" in this journal goes into much more detail around the issues we used the "chatterbox" (flip / flop?) to discuss. 

I also mentioned the fantasic Counterplay Conference / Festival organised by Mathias Poulsen - hopefully he's now organising these every 2 years at Dokk1 in Aarhus. I tend to feel that the short video I tried to share at the end sums it up nicely - the giant cardboard rabbit that hops up to the clown (watch the vid!) is responsible for the most surreal experience I've ever had at a conference. A room full of people sat watching a cardboard rabbit hop to the front to deliver a plenary session and everyone accepted it as a perfectly normal thing to happen :)

Apparantly some of the links in my book for librarians using play are broken, I'll try and check through it over the next few days and add links below if I can find and fix any. The one that was specifically mentioned to me was SEEK! (A simple card game for search skills) - that should be on my institutional repository to download / adapt / print for free.


(Note - I might edit this later to add a few more links.)

First few zines

Chatterbox for Zine #3

I've now sent out the first 3 zines covering some definitions of games and play, plus one on giving "permission to play". They've all had extra materials in the envelopes such as the chatterbox shown in the image above.

I'm putting them on the OneHE website, which is only accessible for members of that organisation, so I'll pop them somewhere else too at some point (and link to them from this blog) as it'll be nice to have them more widely available too. Not sure where it makes sense to stick a bunch of PDFs though!

Next one will go out at some point in October (not sure exactly when) and will probably be on the "benefits of play in HE"... though I may get distracted and do a different topic entirely :)

Permission to play article

I've just had my latest article published in the Journal of Play in Adulthood - "Giving permission for adults to play".

It is (of course!) free to read, hope some of you enjoy it and perhaps find it useful.

https://www.journalofplayinadulthood.org.uk/article/id/565/

Abstract

Play is often seen as inappropriate in adult settings, with social expectations causing adults to frame situations in such a way that we often lack permission to play. Semi-structured interviews with fourteen people who use playful approaches with adults were carried out to explore how they gave this “permission to play” in their contexts. It was seen that they used a range of different ways consistent with the idea of needing to signal a shift in frame, and this range of approaches to giving “permission to play” are grouped and summarized in the article.


More from the journal at: https://www.journalofplayinadulthood.org.uk

Playful Practice in H.E.: The zine

I've just won a small grant from the OneHE Foundation to create a series of zines about playful practice in Higher Education.

Details are below, but more importantly, would anyone like to sign up to get (free) copies in the post?

If so, pop your contact details in here:  (Link deleted as I've now sent out the first 2, so too late for new signups!)
(Details will only be used for this project, will not be shared with anyone, and will be deleted after the project is over)

There will be a series of 10 zines (mainly 8 or 16 pages long) sent out roughly monthly, starting in June. Some will be text heavy, some might be more heavily weighted towards images depending on the subject. They will also be available as PDFs online, but the physical ones will have extra "bonus" playful materials included at least 50% of the time :)

Numbers will be limited depending on postage costs, so exact numbers of people able to receive the physical zine depends on the mix of domestic & international postage... but should be at least 50 people before the money runs out :)

A new journal around play and playfulness in adults?

I've been analysing some data recently and started to think about where I might be able to write it up for. What journal would suit something on adult play? There are plenty of digital games type journals, and a few play journals that concentrate on aspects of play in children, there isn't a great deal of choice if you want to publish research on play in adults. There are options, of course, but adult play seems on the periphery of even the best options out there. Add in my fussiness over things being as open access as possible, and that reduced the field even further.

After a bit of whinge on Twitter, I seem to have agreed to set up a journal specifically for articles on Adult Play.

I've pulled a proposal together and sent it to the University of Huddersfield Press to consider... so in the next few weeks I should know what they think and either go ahead with them or another (uni?) press.

There has been an overwhelmingly positive response from interested people and I have loads of people offering to be on the board / reviewers, as well as interest in writing for it. So (fingers crossed), early in 2019 I should be able to start firming up a new journal and putting out the first call for papers - perhaps with the first papers being published late Spring, early summer 2019?

Whatever happens, my intention is the the journal to be fully open access (including "licence to publish" rather than assigning copyright to the journal, CC-BY licences), no APCs (charges to authors), primarily double blind peer reviewed (but with a section for less traditionally academic material / formats too), and international in scope.

The name of it is still under discussion (might do another post about that), but will probably be something like the "Journal of Play (or playfulness?) in Adulthood" to make it easy to discover and see at a glance what it is about!

Possible Counterplay proposal

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.

LibraryCampCamp has finished

It's Monday as I write this, after the weekend of #LibraryCampCamp, a new library learning festival. Thank you so much to the Information Literacy Group of CILIP for sponsoring it, and the attendees for their engagement and participation that made it work.

We made draft zines (on reading for pleasure and on play (they do need tweaking before they could be printed / distributed!), manually tweeted, chatted about lots of interesting and library related things, tried new teaching ideas out, played games, made fire, and explored the gorgeous site.

At some point soon I'll think about whether we run it again (we collected ideas for future events!) and what that event will look like... but for now I hope people enjoy seeing some of the content we created under the links above.

Look for another iteration of the festival in 2019 if we can manage to organise something...