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Connected Communities
Permission to Play: taking
play seriously in
adulthood
Robert Rogerson, Cathy Treadaway, Hayden
Lorimer, Josie Billington and Hamish Fyfe
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Permission to Play: taking play
seriously in adulthood Robert Rogerson, Cathy Treadaway, Hayden
Lorimer, Josie Billington and Hamish Fyfe
Executive Summary
Playfulness is an innate human trait crucial for making sense of the world, engendering
creativity, and in the development of social skills and positive emotions. It is strongly
encouraged in children and young people in societies; spaces for safe play, time set
aside for play, and playful engagement in sport and art.
In adulthood amidst the pressures and technologies of contemporary patterns of living
and working, such playfulness is increasingly being squeezed out, with play often
viewed as 'juvenile' and an 'unproductive' use of time. Permission for adults to play is
limited to certain circumstances and usually associated with a purpose. Yet playfulness
is celebrated in different forms within some arenas - particularly the creative arts and
sport - where the act of play is viewed as offering positive health and well-being
benefits, actively encouraged as part of community cohesion agendas and providing
spaces for creativity and entrepreneurial thinking.
This project has sought to extend the academic focus on play and playfulness beyond its
current focus on children and young people. By engaging actively with creative arts &
culture and sport in a series of participatory workshops, this Follow on Fund research
has sought to scope out areas for future research around measurement of playfulness,
the nature of playable spaces and the benefits for connecting communities.
Researchers and Project Partners
1 School of Applied Social Sciences, University of Strathclyde; 2 Cardiff School of Art &
Design, Cardiff Metropolitan University; 3 School of Geographical & Earth Sciences,
University of Glasgow; 4 Institute of Psychology, Health & Society, University of
Liverpool; Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries, University of Glamorgan
Project Partners: Culture & Sport Glasgow - Glasgow Life, The Reader Organisation, NVA
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Key words
playfulness, therapy, community connectivity, engagement
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Permission to Play: taking play
seriously in adulthood
Introduction
Playfulness is an innate human trait crucial for making sense of the world, engendering
creativity, and in the development of social skills and positive emotions. It is strongly
encouraged in children and young people in societies; spaces for safe play, time set
aside for play, and playful engagement in sport and art.
In adulthood amidst the pressures and technologies of contemporary patterns of living
and working, such playfulness is increasingly being squeezed out, with play often viewed
as 'juvenile' and an 'unproductive' use of time. Permission for adults to play is limited to
certain circumstances and usually associated with a purpose. Yet playfulness is
celebrated in different forms within some arenas - particularly the creative arts and sport
- where the act of play is viewed as offering positive health and well-being benefits,
actively encouraged as part of community cohesion agendas and providing spaces for
creativity and entrepreneurial thinking.
This project has sought to extend the academic focus on play and playfulness beyond its
current focus on children and young people. By engaging actively with creative arts &
culture and sport in a series of participatory workshops, this Follow on Fund research has
sought to scope out areas for future research around measurement of playfulness, the
nature of playable spaces and the benefits for connecting communities.
It’s child’s play
Research into play and public policy addressing play is dominated by a focus on children
(Woodyer, 2012). For the individual child, play is viewed as being a key element of their
mental and physical well-being and health, and crucial to educational development and
learning benefits. Physical activity in play acts as a natural preventative to childhood
obesity and helps development of spatial abilities and understanding of the world, whilst
play enhances cognitive development and overall emotional health and social functioning
(Rogers et al, 2009). Sociable playing together with others forms a foundation of a
variety of social and societal skills associated with social interaction, communication and
imagination, along with the development of social networks. Many public policy
initiatives have sought to enhance the opportunities for benefits from play through the
provision and design of play spaces, local play strategies and as part of wider cultural
strategies.
For older children and adults however, in Western society, time for unstructured play is
widely considered a low priority in everyday life. In childhood, specified allowances are
made for play spaces ('playgrounds') and time ('playtime') but in teenage years, playful
and irreverent behaviour is often seen as an incongruous and undesirable incursion into
adult space (Valentine, 1996). In adulthood, expectations in work and economic activity
have created a stressful world in which time is always in short supply and quick decisions
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and speedy thinking processes are constantly required. Technology demands our urgent
attention, is influential in organising our thinking and necessitates rapid responses
(Hannaford 2010). Thrift (2000, 250) even suggests that play “is often regarded as
peripheral to the real business of life, because it is gratuitous, free (if one is forced into
such a practice, it is no longer play), and non-cumulative.” At a societal level too,
reflecting a perspective of playfulness as being time wasting and unproductive, any
emphasis on ‘fun’ and ‘playfulness’ appears incongruous in the current climate of fiscal
austerity and economic anxiety.
Pressures do exist, however, to challenge this perception of playful activities as being the
preserve and right of the young. On the one hand, the nature and location of play by
children is changing. Growing concerns about the safety of the physical environment and
associated health & safety regulation and risk management are limiting places where
adults, especially parents, feel children’s play can occur. Increasingly, play is expected to
take place in designated (and safer) environments and is discouraged in other (less safe)
places. New technologies are reshaping the nature of play, providing children (and
adults) with a different play experience in portable, safely controlled fun-sized servings.
These devices can provide pleasurable and playful fantasy and leisure experiences and
social connection but lack the rich multiple sensory experiences of the physical world
that stimulate the imagination and broaden thinking (Griffith, 2013).
On the other hand, there is a growing recognition of the economic value in play by
adults. Research in education and psychology shows that open ended, unstructured
imaginative play is a vital constituent of creative thinking and thus for invention,
innovation and entrepreneurship (Resnick 2007; Hannaford 2010). At a time when
demand for creativity is unprecedented and new ways of supporting and expanding
creativity need to be found by not giving permission for spontaneous play prominence
within our daily lives, we may lose out on new ideas, inventions and creative potential
which could lead to development of businesses and economic growth. And with greater
access to leisure and sporting activities, there are pressures to increase both numbers
involved,and the level of participation in play within sport activities.
Permitting play
In exploring ‘playfulness’ and wellbeing our starting point has been to bring together
strands where permission to play exists and research has been conducted previously – in
the arts, in sport, and in the measurement of play in adulthood. Each member of the
project team has been working with external partners and organisations delivering
practical solutions involving play– in creative arts and design (Treadaway and the Cardiff
School of Art & Design), literary reading and health (Billington and the Reader
Organisation), public art and communities (Lorimer and NVA Arts Charity), communities
and sport (Rogerson and Glasgow Life),creative and cultural industries (Fyfe).
Play, the Arts and wellbeing
Play within art has been used ‘seriously’ in various therapeutic contexts, including play
therapy, in hospitals as art therapy, and in learning. Research into art and rehabilitation
in prisons, and on the impact of reading groups to enhance social networking and mental
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health, for example, underlines the positive impacts on individual wellbeing and how art
assists to connect with places, people and values (Billington, 2012). Playfulness has also
been used in communities to enable diverse groups of people to reveal and explore
identities through creative construction of objects (eg Lego Serious Play projects) or
through creative writing to connect professionals’ and communities’ visions of
sustainability (Selman et al, 2011). ‘Less serious’ notions of play improve and strengthen
communities through enhancing the creation of social capital (Putnam, 2000) and
revitalising and regenerating neighbourhoods (Walesh and Heaton, 2001).
Playing sport and wellbeing
In the arena of sport, permission to play by all ages is not only granted but actively
encouraged. The recognized and measurable benefits in terms of health, both physical
and mental, and quality of life are driving policy agendas (Galloway et al,2006), but
wider community benefits are also recognised (Schulenkorf et al, 2011). PolicyI
nterventions by sports agencies, by local authorities and by voluntary organizations are
targeted to ensure that sport is taken seriously, addressing inequalities in access and
participation in sport, bringing sport into communities, (eg StreetGames network of
‘doorstep sport’) and enhancing cross-community development in Northern Ireland.
However, the conceptual links between sport and play have been much debated. Even
where ‘play’ is present, the nature of such play is more purposeful and deliberate and
open playfulness is often constrained. The existence of rules, competition and goal
oriented objectives arguably make sport more self-focussed and suppressing of more
free-flowing and inclusive aspects of play. Within sporting leisure time, activities are
often goal driven, time pressured (such as ‘fitting in time to get to the gym’) and rule
bound; there is often little opportunity for ‘fun’ in which the process of training or getting
fit as an end result is the desired outcome. Indeed, the introduction of scientific
approaches and skills acquisition in sport (eg work-like repetitions) has transformed it
from play into work.
Measuring plan and playfulness
Play has in many respects eluded a single and simple definition, with distinctions often
made between different types of play, and attempts variously emphasising play as
creative process, action rather than activity, and belonging to the culture of childhood
but with some agreement that play involves five essential characteristics – intrinsically
motivated, freely chosen, pleasurable, nonliteral, and actively engaged in (Rubin et al,
1983; Henricks, 1999).
Whilst play is the focus of child-based studies, research into adult ‘play’ has emphasised
playfulness; “a variable which enables people to transform a situation or an environment
in a way to allow for enjoyment or entertainment” (Proyer, 2012,1). This distinction has
relevance as it acknowledges that outward expressions of playfulness as behaviour
(play) is likely with children, but for adults is assumed to be based on individual
characteristics. To date research of assessing and measuring playfulness has
concentrated on self-reporting using designed scales, the most commonly cited being the
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Adult Playfulness Scale (APS, Glynn and Webster (1992) and the Short Measure of Adult
Playfulness (SMAP, Proyer (2012).
Theoretical work and empirical evidence on adult playfulness underlines its contribution
to individual wellbeing and to enhancing social connectedness - enhanced group
cohesion, creativity and spontaneity, intrinsic motivation, quality of life, positive
attitudes towards the workplace, job satisfaction and performance, and innovative
behavior.
Creating play; revealing playfulness
At the heart of this project has been a set of four workshops where playfulness has been
encouraged to be released, either as part of current research projects or as activity
participated in by the project team for this research. The focus is on how approaches and
practices which encourage 'play' in a variety of social and community contexts can reveal
the defining attributes of playfulness.
In Cardiff, technologies used by the CARIAD research team to examine playful sensory
experiences with autistic children were used by the research team to experience playful
activity. The resultant film and findings from Dr Wendy Keay-Bright’s s research were
used to explore issues around the measurement of playfulness, the therapeutic aspects
of the research and the spaces in which play occurred. The social therapeutic aspects of
play were followed up at Liverpool, in a workshop conducted by Professor Philip Davis
from the Centre for Research into Reading, Information and Linguistic Systems (CRILS)
at the University of Liverpool. CRILS, in partnership with The Reader Organisation, has
been developing ways to assess the impact of reading within health, community and
securesettings, for people with dementia, depression and other mental health issues.
Through transcript analysis, the workshop examined how people connect through
literature and the act of shared reading, and how such engagement depends on the
distinctive playfulness of literary thinking.
The remaining two workshops were held in and around Glasgow. Participating in a public
arts project led by NVA at Cardross, members of the project team participated in a day’s
activity at the ruins of St Peter’s Seminary where families and local community
representatives undertook a journey to and within the building. This workshop focussed
on spaces for safe play and the role of play in connecting with the community. The final
workshop, led by Glasgow Life the public agency responsible in the city for bringing
together culture, art and sport, examined how spaces and facilities can be shared to
foster stronger community wellbeing.
Through these workshops, the project has explored how playfulness is expressed in
‘play’ and in turn how such playfulness can be measured and assessed; the nature and
impact of ‘spaces’ in which such innate playfulness can be developed and expressed; and
ways in which permission to play (be playful) can assist in the wider connected
communities and health & wellbeing programme.
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Research findings
Expressing playfulness
In focussing on play, past research has emphasised the visible, movement-based
expression of playfulness involved with such activity. Our live experiments, using the
technologies and stimuli developed by the CARIAD research team to reveal playfulness in
children with autism, highlighted that only some playful activity was clearly visible (eg
through rhythmic movement, interaction with others, expressive facial and body
movement). It was also clear that there were times when participants were passive,
unmoving but engaged in mind both with the play activity and with the others in the
spaces around about; and times of disengagement with the active play, equally
associated with immobility. This was also evident in the reading group workshop, when
the transcripts revealed not only those actively speaking but also how in their ‘silences’
some (but not all) other participants in the group were engaged with the reading and the
group as a whole.
In these respects, play is not constant, and relies on a continuous process of separation
and engagement – both emotionally and physically. Play itself can be enriched by such
separation (eg the thoughtful but apparently distant participant making an occasional
but perceptive comment to the reading group). Interpreting playfulness can thus be
challenging when lack of visible, expressive ‘play’ can be subject to multiple
interpretations, raising questions about what methods and methodologies from across
the humanities and social sciences can be used to help capture and interpret non-
expressive playfulness? And, do such non-expressive forms of playfulness have wellbeing
benefits for individuals and how can they assist in social connectivity?
Playable spaces
In focussing on children’s play, there has been an understandable emphasis in public
policy in on the creation of safe, attractive physical spaces where play is designated and
encouraged through design and planning. Indeed, western societies have to a far greater
extent than in the past now regulated the opportunities for play. Significant investment –
has been made to generate formalised and designated or designed spaces for the
purpose of play (eg football pitch, skating park) or spaces where play is allowed along
with other uses and activities (eg urban parks). Beyond these, other play spaces have
been encouraged, with conscious interventions to make children welcome, provide more
informal and adaptable play infrastructure, and provide a safe environment, although
these other spaces within which play can and does take place are often in conflict or
contestation with others (eg the street, the back alley, urban parks).
By creating alternative ‘playable spaces’ where playfulness was temporarily permitted,
the project has sought to explore the impact of creating territories of and for play. These
included encouraging play within the inherently unsafe and disused spaces of St Peter’s
seminary, the transformation of a laboratory into a group play space, and the creation of
a reading group for playful engagement with text. Our experience in these settings was
contrasted with the aim of bringing more playful activity into the formalised spaces of
museums and sports centres in Glasgow.
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Several key insights emerged which raised research questions. First, the creation of
physically designated play spaces does not in itself generate playfulness and play. The
Glasgow city experience of providing community sports and recreation facilities as play
spaces struggled to overcome associations of these spaces with more regulated, physical
activity than with playfulness. Second, playful behaviour can be engendered in routine
and (apparently) unplayable spaces where the very notions of safe and managed
physical characteristics are absent. The insertion of families into the derelict spaces of St
Peter’s seminary offered imaginative opportunities for play where the very absence of
safety and regulation enhanced the playfulness of the situation.
Third, being playful challenges the existence of bounded territories into which activity
can be harnessed and supported. Play itself seeks to extend such boundaries – at times
consciously occurring elsewhere and challenging designations (eg football in the street
adjacent to the designed football pitch). And fourthly, playable spaces extend beyond
physical spaces, occurring in liminal and emotional spaces which people enter into and
retreat from at different times and in different ways.
Moving on: re-connecting communities and play
In this project it has only been possible to touch on possible ways in which enabling and
permitting playfulness in adulthood can assist in addressing disconnections with
communities. It does however offer some insights into how a deeper understanding of
how play is being used to reconnect people with others and the potential for using
playful activity and engagement as a means of overcoming some of the dissonance
issues of contemporary society associated with isolation, stress, and alienation.
Permitting adults to engage playfully in tasks (eg shared reading) and settings (eg
exploring spaces together) can assist in breaking down barriers and fostering new
connections.
Two main research challenges persist however. First research into playfulness has
concentrated in measurement at the individual scale, focussing on the strengths of
characters which are thought to enhance playfulness. Extending scales such as the Adult
Playfulness Scale beyond individuals and into playful interactions would be desirable to
ensure that measurement of playfulness has more relevance to communities and in
shaping public policy interventions.
Such a focus on reassessing the characteristics of playfulness would also assist in the
second challenge. Although having many similarities to the nature and character of play
observed and researched in children, play in adulthood is potentially more complex.
Perhaps because of society’s association of play with childhood (and the associated
marginalization of play by adults), there has been a tendency in research to focus on
comparable expressions of playfulness in adulthood to those found in childhood. Like
child’s play, visible, vocal and movement-focussed expression - such as is found in
research on the arts and sport for example – are assumed to be indicators of playful
engagement. But playful engagement can exists in other, less visible ways and have
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equally important potential benefits on wellbeing and connectedness. To understand
such playfulness requires the application of different approaches and methods. Textual
and discourse analysis of transcripts from the reading groups revealed some of the
outcomes of playful engagement in the silences. Film and personal accounts of ‘play’
stimulated by visual images revealed insights into forms of engagement (and
disengagement).
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References and external links
Billington, Josie. ‘Reading for Life’: prison reading groups in practice and theory in
Critical Survey, Special Issue, ‘Reading and Writing in Prisons’, 23:3, 67–85, 2012.
Galloway, Susan Quality of life and well-being: measuring the benefits of culture and
sport – a literature review, Edinburgh: Scottish Executive, 2006
Glynn, Mary Ann, and Webster, Jane Refining the nomological net of the Adult
Playfulness Scale: Personality, motivational, and attitudinal correlates for highly
intelligent adults. Psychological Reports, 72, 1023–1026, 1993
Griffith, Jay. Kith: the riddle of the childscape, London: Hamish Hamilton, 2013
Hannaford, Carla. Playing in the unified field : raising and becoming conscious, creative
humanbeings. Salt Lake City, Utah: Great River Books, 2010
Henricks, Thomas Play as ascending meaning: implications for a general model of play,
in Reilfe, S (ed) Play contexts revisited: play & culture studies 2. Stamford CT: Ablex,
1999
Proyer, Rene Development and initial assessment of a short measure for adult
playfulness: the SMAP, Personality and Individual Differences, (online accessed
29/8/12), 2012
Proyer, Rene and Ruch, Willibald The virtuousness of adult playfulness: the relation of
playfulness with strengths of character, Psychology of Well-Being: Theory, Research and
Practice, 1(4), 2011
Putnam, Robert. Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New
York: Simon & Schuster, 2000
Resnick, Mitchell. .All I Really Need to Know (About Creative Thinking) I Learned (By
Studying How Children Learn) in Kindergarten, Washington DC: ACM.Press, 2007
Rogers, Sue, Pelletier, Caroline and Clark, Alison. Play and outcomes for children and
young people, London: Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2009
Rubin, Ken, Fein Greta and Vandenberg, Brian Play in Mussen, P (ed) Handbook of Child
Psychology, New York: Wiley, 1983
Schulenkorf, Nico, Thomson, Alana and K. Schlenker, Katie. Intercommunity sport
events: vehicles and catalysts for social capital in divided societies, Event Management,
15 (2), 105-119, 2011
Selman, Paul, Carter, Claudia, Morgan, Clare and Lawrence, Anna. Raising catchment
consciousness: how imaginative engagement can help sustainable use of rivers, in
Rogerson, R et al (eds) Sustainable Communities, Hertford: University of Hertfordshire
Press, 2011
Thrift, Nigel. (2000) 'Afterwords', Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 18,
213-55
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Valentine, Gill. Angels and Devils: moral landscapes of childhood, Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space, 14, 581-99, 1996
Walesh, Kim. and Henton, Doug. The creative community: leveraging creativity and
cultural particiaption for Silicon Valley’s eocnomic and civic future, San Jose CA:
Collaborative Economics, 2001
Woodyer, Tara. Ludic geographies: not merely child’s play, Geography Compass, 6 (6),
313-26, 2012
1
The Connected Communities
Connected Communities is a cross-Council Programme being led by the AHRC in partnership
with the EPSRC, ESRC, MRC and NERC and a range of external partners. The current vision for
the Programme is:
“to mobilise the potential for increasingly inter-connected, culturally diverse,
communities to enhance participation, prosperity, sustainability, health & well-being by
better connecting research, stakeholders and communities.”
Further details about the Programme can be found on the AHRC’s Connected Communities web
pages at:
www.ahrc.ac.uk/FundingOpportunities/Pages/connectedcommunities.aspx