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gramme each day and then decide what they want to join in with we were based in a fabulous space in the heart of barcelona just down from the stunning sagrada familia with two large rooms and two small breakout spaces play14 also has its own overriding ethos which yann gensollen one of the founders was there to introduce and this merged with the open space approach perfectly to create an open sharing curious and collaborative atmosphere over the three days i collected many ideas for ice breaking team building and reflective activities littered between and in the session programme explored the use of escape games for student training played and discussed the ball point game see it in action for management training used my touch and taste only to explore an alien world and created shoe towers to harness creativity i also playtested a new game i ve designed to test the effectiveness of group sizes from one to 16 working on a common aim tiny epic battles it worked really well with evil triumphing good both times in epic fashion but what was brilliant was having several colleagues there who i could discuss the gameplay and approach with and i ll be following this up with one of them who saw potential for its use in behavioural psychology more news on this in the coming months we became such a close knit team straight away and so headed out together in the evenings for meals and more playful discussions allowing me to get a good taste of the city too and marvel at gaudi s contribution to the landscape all in all it was a really useful and interesting trip and i fulfilled all three of my aims thank you everyone at play14 and particularly esther franc and yann for being such perfect playful hosts leave a comment posted in conferences reports tagged barcelona business education games play play14 training unconference work at play at work posted on april 10 2017 leave a comment the first meeting of the work at play at work society met at counterplay 2017 i ve been thinking a lot about the invitation to play recently what invites people to engage in playful activity is it different for each person and then what allows them to continue playing the description was as follows we might be playful individuals but we work in often distinctly unplayful organisations to consider this problem join me for a board meeting we ll sit around a table we ll have an agenda we ll have slides none of us will have read the papers in advance there may or may not be coffee let s see how far down the agenda we get before someone says what if we did it like this there was a formal agenda as attached here once all members were in the room excluding valerie from admin who forgot to come we began with apologies members were asked to apologise for something distinctly un playful they do regularly at work this slightly playful twist on proceedings produced some surprisingly revealing apologies with people admitting to ignoring what goes on in most meetings avoiding speaking so as not to prolong the meeting etc introductions were next and we went around the table so that all members knew who was represented everyone was given a name card eg luna erik and the person opposite was asked to give them a job title and department to the left of me i had algernon the management financial analyst from the department of financial management analysis to the right of me i had xavier a shadowy figure from up above who cast an acusative eye over the whole meeting members were reminded of their action points from last meeting and asked to report on them later in the meeting i had created a set of secret action cards one for each person over the rest of the meeting it was really interesting to see how they each approached their actions one member winked at another via twitter for example others used the following activity to mask their missions we then found that valerie had mixed up the minutes from the last meeting and they were distributed across the papers in front of each member it took some time to get them back into some sort of order i had taken the first 50 pages of frankenstein from project gutenberg and mixed them up across the 24 paper packs there were some clues the start page end page and some chapter breaks but everyone was soon up trying to match their pages with others lay them out on the side etc by the end of these last two activities everyone knew everyone else in the room which made the following exercises much easier the main section of the meeting was a design exercise members were formed into small groups and asked to design meeting activities together members engaged actively with this exercise i d used different colour paperclips on each set of papers strategically placed around the table so that some groups were near to each other but others had to work across the length of the table their task was to design a playful activity using only materials in the meeting room things got very playful very quickly link from dog grooming fortunately took good minutes in the absence of valerie which you can see here i was particularly impressed with the idea of massages as a reward and the use of the underside of the table for secret meetings members then shared their activity ideas and the meeting attempted each one to test its effectiveness pink paperclip group activity click for video the meeting ended with arranging the date of the next meeting after failing to find a free slot in all 24 diaries within the next year we used the time honoured and always successful method of arranging a doodle poll the meeting closed a simple experiment which started with a few simple playful twists on the traditional meeting took on a life of its own when the participants accepted and ran with the invitation to play i was hugely impressed with the work everyone put in to create such inventive activities and to complete their own secret actions probably more work certainly collectively than any business committee meeting in history this was of course an inherently playful audience but i was struck with how easy it was to set up and subvert a mundane daily activity what if in a meeting apologies were indeed a chance to say sorry for unproductive work or if attendees took on secret roles or actions to engage them during the meeting or if playful constraints were used to create small group activities with a meaningful aim the experiment continues leave a comment posted in conferences reports musings tagged counterplay invitation play work counterplay 17 posted on april 6 2017 leave a comment following my research and teaching trips culminating at the harbour of the increasingly beautiful and cosmopolitan aarhus i arrived in plenty of time for the beginning of counterplay 17 not that i needed to worry as the wonderful mathias poulsen who almost single handedly forms this playful bubble into existence each year opened proceedings by telling us that playful people tend to be late this was followed by a blast of an opening by anthea moys who herself arrived late on the stage climbing and apologising to everyone she trampled over and then proceeded to ask us to do the same to find our actual seats when we found them we had to draw our neighbour s faces without looking down at our paper a great start that set the tone for the whole conference this was just one of anthea s examples of her incredible playful art projects in johannesburg anthea had us climbing apologising and drawing she mastered twelve different sports and then played single handedly against twelve first teams her aim was to accept and stare failure in the face and redefine success as the act of learning and playing rather than failing to win an approach that resonated with many and created ripples of discussion about failure over the rest of the day gwen gordon followed anthea a former muppets puppeteer who now uses play to improve lifestyles my session was next i m currently interested in the invitation to play or what causes people to accept a playful activity or reject it i therefore had an idea about introducing elements of play into a non playful scenario played out in every institution across the world the board committee meeting we started with apologies apologising for something non playful we do within our jobs introductions giving each other fictitious names and roles and the minutes of the last meeting the 50 pages of which happened to be distributed across each attendees pack in random order after that things got very strange as attendees tried to complete secret missions whilst creating their own playful approaches within the meeting room it was really difficult to remain seated and straight faced as i decided the chair should do after lunch and meeting up with old and new friends from across europe i attended luca morini s session on playfully hacking serious systems luca had us exploring the fabulous venue of dokk1 the huge and open public library that counterplay occupies in amongst the daily life of thousands of local students and families in order to find places that were closed to us for some reason he used this as a way to introduce his idea that formal systems are game like they follow rules and states and therefore can be gamed themselves an energetic keynote next from portia tung who shared her approach to introducing play into corporate boardrooms and then it was time to launch the first counterplay book the power of play including articles games and activities from many attendees of last year s conference myself included it s a beautiful thoughtful and creative book which i m still leafing through and finding new interesting things to do and think about in the evenings we all headed to the excellent new aarhus street food area with stalls selling food from around the world and good local craft beer to match it was here that much of the creative thinking and networking went on each evening day two dawned and two of the people i d been talking to at length in the evening were speaking kirsten anderson who had us all blowing bubbles and dom breadmore from coventry university who gave a great talk about the invitation to play and the importance of designing play able experiences rather than play ful ones more agency in the former when they invite interaction i spent the rest of the morning exploring all the activities around dokk1 outside the formal programme including catching up with rikke and claus from coding pirates who were working with children on creating viking themed games after lunch we became future explorers heading out into the city in small teams to help eva a fictional character we created based on the hashtag finding4eva create a map of future elements within the city this was part of an ongoing project by dan barnard and gave us a new way to explore the city s hidden areas as well as thinking about environmental issues and future planning also our team won yay it was then time for the final keynotes lena mech followed the theme from the earlier workshop by using examples of playful work in cities to suggest that the invitation to play is more complex than we might think we shouldn t she suggests be arrogant in thinking that everyone can play and should instead use ludic markers to tempt them in whether human activity or physical attributes in the landscape finally returning four years on after his first excellent keynote at the first counterplay miguel sicart was back to pace the stage again like a prowling tiger miguel added what in my opinion could have been the last chapter of his book a call to arms he used examples of playful creative groups that have worked against dictatorships or regimes to show us that small personal or group actions can start to work against dominant negative forces a fabulous finish to the formal programme as last year there was a further day of creative play following the main conference so about half of us returned on the saturday to consolidate our thinking around this year s emergent themes my group was thinking about setting seeds and growing playful approaches outside of the conference and we came up with the idea to connect different people together with a tangible artefact a package that would be sent between us with something to apply to our own context and then add something else before sending it on see marian s explanatory post in amongst the thinking i also attended a final session by mikel haul who has been researching the origin and development of the chase the goose popular game from the ancient greeks his plan is to create a physical version of the board game including its iconic squares such as death or the well at spaces in middlesborough tokyo and aarhus and so we helped him by mapping out the board over the circular levels of dokk1 and that was it although many played on well into the night and through the flights home it was yet again an incredible experience almost all due to the people who attend from across the world with a common ethos i made many new friends and colleagues who i ll be carrying on the thinking and conversations with as the year progresses huge thanks to everyone who was there and made it such an incredible experience and in particular to mathias and his team of helpers without whom this wonderful event wouldn t occur leave a comment posted in conferences reports uncategorized tagged aarhus counterplay culture denmark education games play denmark research teaching trip posted on april 5 2017 leave a comment over nine days at the end of march i was honoured to be invited over to denmark to work on two projects connected to my research and teaching monumental statues by thomas kadziola on lolland island the first was the histbattles project being developed at the wonderful lolland falster museum in nykøbing falster on one of the two southern most islands of denmark erik kristiansen who i had worked with on the transforming thresholds project is leading a project to create twelve alternate reality games args to teach the local history of the islands to 13 18 year olds a rune stone at a church on lolland island one of the sites for the game each arg will cover a period of danish history and will be connected to one of the sites covered by the museum across the two islands i was there to help scope out a framework for the game and to help local staff start to design the puzzles and meta game no further spoilers but i ll post more details as the project develops the aim is to launch the first game in the summer the second project was a guest teaching role at aarhus university firstly for the centre for teaching development and digital media cudim where i talked about online learning and curriculum design for the digital age and then as a guest speaker for the house of game play and game design masters course i ran a talk workshop around alternate reality and pervasive games both days were really interesting with engaged students and staff entering into some deep discussions around both areas the organisers rik...