Science
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.
Philosophy
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.
Education
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.
Art and Design
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.
Business
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
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
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
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.
Playfulness
Trying to understand the fundamental nature of our drive to play. Playfulness can expresses itself as an approach to a situation, or the big picture (life). What is it that makes us playful?
Toys, Tools and Craft
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?
Therapy
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.
Not Play
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.