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This book explores the leaps and overlaps of play and aesthetic activity, across theories of feminism and posthumanism, neuroscience, ethology, pedagogy and postdevelopmental thinking, sociologies of space, game design and digital play from the very young to artist's practice. It concludes with an entirely original exploration of dark play, and its complexities. As a series of interview or conversation pieces, key thinkers in each area of focus toy with positions around their field's identification of play, proactively countering their Eurocentric demographic by drawing on examples of playful and arts practice/'research acts' from as diverse a global reach as possible. Drawing on an interdisciplinary methodology including phenomenological, materialist, posthumanist and arts practice as a form of research, the book challenges and criticizes over-used or lazy applications of play and bring theories of possibility and thinking into the arena of culture within contemporary conceptual reference. Formulaic and production-led education is critiqued, arguing that to engage more fully with pedagogies of play and its in-built interdisciplinarity and criticality carries risks but with that, transformative practices.
List of contents
1 Introduction: The impossibility of defining play.- Part 1 Play biologies and behaviours.- 2 Play and growth.- 3 Animal play and the Brain.- Part 2 Play sociologies and behaviours.- 4 Play and risk.- 5 Digital play.- 6 Game play.- Part 3 Dark play.- 7 Word play.- 8 Perfomance play.- 9 Material play.- 10 Conclusion: An interview with the great late play theories Dr. Brian Sutton-Smith.
About the author
Dr. Victoria de Rijke is Emerita Professor at Middlesex University, London. She has forty years experience working with Primary school teachers and children, including active engagement with artist residencies, consultancies and research projects in the creative arts, producing teaching and learning resources online. Victoria also writes and presents on the visual or performing arts and children’s literature, and is Co Editor-in-Chief of the international research journal Children’s Literature in Education.
Dr Rebecca Sinker has worked in arts education and museum learning for over three decades, in large national institutions, higher education and small independent arts organisations. For 15 years she worked at the Tate Galleries in London as Senior Research Curator: Digital Learning and before this Head of Young People’s Programmes. Since 2021 Rebecca has been pursuing new projects as an independent curator, researcher and project manager, including producing an annual diverse cultural programme in Hastings, for Refugee Week, consulting on a Children’s Art Prize with the Museum of Art Pudong in China and working as Interim Business Manager at the Institute of International Visual Arts (iniva).
Dr. Victoria de Rijke and Dr. Rebecca Sinker are two co-founding members of ‘4Play’ which works to remind arts, academic and educational audiences of the importance of play, especially when it’s dark. They have co-published on this topic from 1996 to the present, and collaborated on many arts practice and research projects such as ‘Book Burning’ (2003) ‘Dare to DADA’ (2006) ‘DisPlay: Ludic illusions & disillusions’ for Liverpool Tate Ludic Museum and ‘The Empty Box’ for Tate (2015).
Summary
This book explores the leaps and overlaps of play and aesthetic activity, across theories of feminism and posthumanism, neuroscience, ethology, pedagogy and postdevelopmental thinking, sociologies of space, game design and digital play from the very young to artist’s practice. It concludes with an entirely original exploration of dark play, and its complexities. As a series of interview or conversation pieces, key thinkers in each area of focus toy with positions around their field’s identification of play, proactively countering their Eurocentric demographic by drawing on examples of playful and arts practice/’research acts’ from as diverse a global reach as possible. Drawing on an interdisciplinary methodology including phenomenological, materialist, posthumanist and arts practice as a form of research, the book challenges and criticizes over-used or lazy applications of play and bring theories of possibility and thinking into the arena of culture within contemporary conceptual reference. Formulaic and production-led education is critiqued, arguing that to engage more fully with pedagogies of play and its in-built interdisciplinarity and criticality carries risks but with that, transformative practices.
