Many people ask: “What is “CounterPlay”? Why should I consider participating?”

Both are indeed good and relevant, if tricky questions. Or, rather, the questions are fairly straightforward, but providing the answers is a tricky business.

I always struggle a bit to come up with an appropriate reply, since it’s neither a simple thing to explain what CounterPlay is, nor why people should come and spend several days with a group of strangers, lovely and generous as they may be.

It’s an international play festival aiming to gather a diverse, vibrant play community every other year in, Denmark. Or maybe it’s not a proper play festival, even though we keep saying that it is. I guess it looks a bit more like a play conference when you see the programme, yet I sincerely hope that it feels more like a festival when you’re actually there. Less formal and stiff, more unpredictable, unruly, playful and alive. A “festiference” or “confestival”, if you like. An amalgam or hybrid, combining the intellectual rigour of a “serious” play conference with the life-affirming vitality of the play festival. We want to take play as seriously as any play conference, anywhere in the world, but without ever losing sight of play. The principles of play described in our manifesto serve as a compass, always guiding us in everything we do, while reminding us that this is a journey we can only take together, as a play community.

My friend and eternal source of inspiration, the late Bernie DeKoven phrased it delightfully:

“CounterPlay is one of the few public events that brings together people from widely divergent disciplines, and yet are united by their devotion to making the world a little more playful. Bringing them together like this, to play and talk and share each other’s vision, creates an unforgettably playful, creative and productive environment and helps all of them to find a larger and more inclusive perspective on their work.”

From the beginning, I intended to create a space where play was not simply the topic of investigation, but where it was woven into the fabric. As Iona Opie so beautifully writes in the wonderful “The People in the Playground”, “I wanted, above all, to call up the sensation of being surrounded by the kaleidoscopic vitality of the eager, laughing, shouting, devil-may-care people in the playground”.

Kaleidoscopic vitality is exactly what we’re aiming for.

CounterPlay is supposed to be a living, breathing play laboratory, dedicated to a collective examination of the nature, principles, values and dynamics of play in all its glorious diversity. This investigation combines theory and practice, it requires serious talk and deep thinking, but it does so with the sensation of play always present in our bodies. Even in the midst of serious conversation, play should be in close proximity, ready to take over and send us in a new, unexpected direction, smiling, laughing and letting go. My friend, Helle Marie Skovbjerg, aptly captured this approach as she was writing about CounterPlay in The International Journal of Play:

“At the festival, the immediate is celebrated with those who are present, celebrated with all that is wanton and wild, unpredictable and silly. The festival invites you to surrender to the movement of play and to place faith in the future, without knowing where play will take you. In this way, the play festival inspires hope for the future of play and incites ‘play courage’ in all, because play is first and foremost with and for its participants.”

We assume that we will never fully understand play, it’s far too complex for any one person to grasp, and we never seem to develop a language gentle and sophisticated enough to properly capture the many nuances. This calls for a delicate combination of humility and perseverance, of accepting the audacity of the task, while pushing on towards a deeper level of collective insight.

Why should I consider participating?

Because you are, I assume, a living, breathing human being, longing for deep fun, joy and human connection.

If that is indeed the case, and you are not a Russian bot or an evil AI, contemplating world domination, then play is in your bones. To the best of my knowledge, any belief that “play is for children” is misguided and problematic. It’s a ruse, a lie we can simply deny. Play is human’ish, not childish. For humans, not (just) for children.

You can refuse to play, that’s your prerogative, but it comes with severe consequences. Can you really live a good, fulfilling life without play? I don’t think so.

Play, real play, sincere play, always becomes personal. When you feel safe enough, when you dare to trust in play and whomever may be there, playing with you, you open up, show who you really are and allow yourself to be vulnerable. This is perhaps my favorite moment at the festival. Whenever people realise that the professional identity they brought, like they do to any other conference, is insufficient. Being professional just won’t cut it. Play is not professional, the distance and the facade of “serious business” disappears, it is deeply personal. One participant left this wonderful comment a few years back:

“What inspired me most was the camaraderie, the ease of conversation and exchange as if we had all known each other for decades, the lack of pretension anywhere.”

As Schiller famously put it: “man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays“ (although it doesn’t matter which gender you identify with, of course, play doesn’t care about gender – though some toy companies and marketing agencies still want you to think otherwise). Play simply makes us more human and more in touch with what is shared among all humans, raising our awareness of that which we have in common across national borders, language barriers, culture, tradition, ethnicity, sexuality or religious beliefs.

Thus, any continued attempt to suppress our inner desire to play will inevitably make us less human than we could have otherwise been. In a time where so many are concerned about the spread of AI and robots, our humanity is exactly what we should cherish and nurture, full steam ahead.

Even if you find this talk about play and humanity a bit abstract, you might want to know more about what comes out of play? What is the outcome of play, the results, the promising potential that can be harnessed?

While we insist that play itself is more important than the outcomes of play (or what we tend to view as side effects of play), we acknowledge that these can also be valuable.

Most importantly, perhaps, we believe that playful people, who dare to learn, work and live playfully, are better equipped to deal with the unpredictable, chaotic and complex nature of the world. Or in the words of the eminent, late play scholar Brian Sutton-Smith:

“Play promotes the immediate liveliness of being alive and keeps us emotionally vibrant and capable of joy in an otherwise hostile and scary world”.

In play, the the realm of possibility is vastly increased and all of a sudden, what otherwise might seem silly, risky or downright impossible, takes a new meaning. When you get into that playful mood, you are more open to new ideas, curious how new combinations or experiments might play out; you are more courageous, less inclined to fear uncertainty or ridicule; more generous towards others; more present and sincere; less bound by rules, habits and expectations – all in the name of continuing the play experience, or what Stuart Brown calls “the continuation desire of play”.

Curiosity, creativity, imagination, generosity, empathy, agency, courage, hope; all of that and more will flourish when we play earnestly and openly, as humans. As such, there are endless beneficial “side effects” or “byproducts” of play, but any hope of ever achieving these, albeit, attractive results depends entirely on our willingness and ability to give play space to flourish and air to breathe. We can’t force play to happen.

In short: You might come to CounterPlay because you’re interested in the “usefulness” of play, but you’ll probably want to stay and maybe even come back because you realise, like I did, that it’s deeply, profoundly personal. It’s a life practice.

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The theme of CounterPlay ’19 is “playing at the edge”, and we welcome different forms of proposals that reflect this in one way or another. As always, we are eager to explore play from as many different angles as possible, building on our three pillars: playful learning, playful working and playful living. The theme is open for interpretation and fresh ideas: we invite you to play with the theme and identify your own ways of approaching the edge.

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The edge of certainty

When we’re playing at the edge, we give up on certainty. We can tip-toe, jump, and dance at the edge, and no one knows exactly what will happen. Will we stumble and fall or regain our balance? Playing like this is not without risk, and while that may hold us back, it might be worth it for the thrill alone? Take the Scottish trials cyclist, Danny MacAskill, who made a living out of playing at very literal edges. In his aptly titled biography “At the Edge”, he describes the fear of “facing the unknown”.

The unknown. That’s exactly where play can take us, right to the edge of the unknown, staring into unfamiliar territory. Is it here, right at the edge, that we can see the farthest? Can the edge be a unique vantage point? It takes courage to pursue this distant horizon, leaving the familiar behind, to where you risk exposing yourself, laying bare your vulnerabilities and insecurities. Sometimes, we find ourself playing at the edge of our current capacity. Perhaps it is at the edge that we reach the much desired “flow state” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), but then, as play encourages us to “de-stabilize (our) own understandings and inhabit new circumstances” (Henricks, 2016), we stretch a little more.

This is where playing at the edge might eventually take us to the edge of play, and “noticing where play leaves off also offers a view of where play begins” (Eberle, 2009). The edge can be a very literal, hard edge, a clear delineation between where you can and cannot play. You can play at the playground, but not outside of it. You can play on the sidewalk, but not on the street. You can play at home, but certainly not at work.

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Blurring the Edge

The edge of play can also be a more blurry, intangible one, resulting from conflicting notions of what it means to play. Whereas some forms of play enjoy widespread awareness, much play takes place at the edge of sight, almost invisible to most of us as it might fall between established categories, and is thus deemed as irrelevant or unacceptable. To some, play is not supposed to contain “conflict, noise and the unpredictable” (Skovbjerg, 2017), and there is often a preference for orderly rather than disorderly play (Henricks, 2009). Others are playing with ideas on the edge of what is currently accepted:

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Sometimes, the blurring means we’re not sure when we’re playing and when we’re not: many pervasive/street/community games draw on this confusion (Montola, 2009). Maybe we can even use that to our advantage: to flit into play when times are too serious. We ‘game the system’ or perform acts of minor subversion – a form of “critical play”? (Flanagan, 2009).

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Crossing the edge

At one point, we arrive upon that complex, often somewhat obscure situation, where play ceases to be play and mutates into something else. Maybe we run out of energy, falling flat on the ground, maybe it’s just not fun any longer. Or maybe we experience an undesirable shift in power, like the “false play” (Huizinga,1955 ), “that perversion of human creativity that occurs when organizations take over and manage play for their own ends” (Henricks, 2006). Then, all of a sudden, you’re playing someone else’s game, and are expected to follow someone else’s rules. Not everyone in society has been granted the privilege to play freely, (Henricks, 2015) and there are several forms of control and regulation put in place, including a kind of affective governance (Reestorff, 2017), where even happiness and who is allowed to experience it is dictated by forces outside our control (Ahmed, 2010). Another kind of regulation takes place through representation in toys and games, since “representation provides evidence for what forms of existence are possible” (Shaw, 2014), and the common forms of representation only represent a narrow subset of possible identities. What is the message to all those people, who can’t find anything or anyone to identify with in common ways of framing play? What are the barriers that prevent us from making playful experiences more accessible and inclusive?

As Hannah Arendt argued, happiness can’t be relegated to the private realm only, but hinges also on being “participator in public affairs” (Arendt, “On Revolution”). Playing in public is exactly to be a “participator in public affairs”, sparking our imagination to see new forms of social possibility, opening up the realm of civic participation through play. Cultivating play communities by demonstrating our willingness to play could also be a way of building trust (Svendsen, 2018) and deepening social connections:

“As the world becomes an ever lonelier place, it is sustaining relationships, in whatever form they take, which must become ever more important. An act of defiance, even.” (Segal, 2017)

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Creative friction at the edge

According to the so-called “edge effect” in ecology, there is potential for increased diversity where the edges of two adjacent ecosystems overlap. The edge provides an interface to another edge, bridging the gap between two (or more) ecosystems, cultivating a sphere where new forms of life can emerge (assumed that there is still sufficient “interior habitat” for the species that need it). We like to think there is a similar “play edge effect”, when “ecosystems of play” collide, where new ways of playing, and, consequently, new ways of being are possible.

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The edge of our grasp

Perhaps play is always situated right there at the edge of all the many disciplines required to understand it, and of understanding itself. Play remains at the edge of our grasp, “as an embodied, affective experience that cannot be fully conveyed using conventional language” (Shields, 2015). What happens at the edge of what we know about play, and how do we push that edge together, making our collective understanding deeper and richer?

“the continued advancement of play studies depends on the recognition of varieties of disciplinary contributions and on strategies to integrate these” (Henricks, 2016)

What we call for is exactly that – bridges to be built between the different disciplines and domains, bringing people together from across the edges, to talk, think and play together. There are edges between research and practice, between public institutions and private companies, between children and adults.

Let’s tear down the barriers and insist that edges are interfaces rather than boundaries, allowing us to create new connections, foster new ideas and cultivate new possibilities.

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References:

Ahmed, Sara (2010): The Promise of Happiness
Arendt, Hannah (1963): On Revolution
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1990): Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Eberle, Scott G. (2009): Exploring the Uncanny Valley to Find the Edge of Play
Flanagan, Mary (2009): Critical Play – Radical Game Design
Henricks, Thomas S. (2006): Play Reconsidered – Sociological Perspectives on Human Expression
Henricks, Thomas S. (2015): Play and the Human Condition
Henricks, Thomas S. (2016): Playing into the Future – in “Celebrating 40 Years of Play Research Connecting Our Past, Present, and Future“
Huizinga, Johan (1955): Homo Ludens – a Study of the Play-Element in Human Culture
Reestorff, Camilla (2017): Culture War: Affective Cultural Politics, Tepid Nationalism and Art Activism
Segal, Lynne (2017): Radical Happiness: Moments of Collective Joy
Shaw, Adrienne (2014): Gaming at the Edge Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture
Shields, Rachel (2015): Ludic Ontology – Play’s Relationship to Language, Cultural Forms, and Transformative Politics
Skovbjerg, Helle Marie (2017): Play revolts and breaks in the service of time and conflict
Svendsen, Gert Tinggaard (2018): Trust

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When you play, things change, the world changes, and you change.

The same goes, obviously, for CounterPlay.

Over the course of four festivals, we have changed immensely. We have gotten further than I could ever have hoped for, and I believe we have made important contributions to the play community. From a modest beginning, CounterPlay has evolved into what in my (heavily biased, yes) opinion is one of the most ambitious play festivals of its kind with at least a handful of unique traits:

1. We insist on play: our main focus is always on play, not the perceived side effects. The side effects can be important, but if we start focusing too much on them, we lose sight of play.
2. We invite play, conversation & reflection: to understand play, you have to play, but it’s also not enough to just play, you need to talk and think about it. That balance is a delicate one, but essential to keep experimenting with.
3. We encourage participation: play invites openness and participation, and we maintain that everybody must be able to really participate in shaping the festival at all times.
4. We see play as being meaningful and important for anyone, everywhere: our approach to play is holistic and emcompasses all of society and all of life (“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing”).
5. We embrace the ambiguity of play: the old adage “the more you know, the more you know you don’t know” really holds true with play, as it’s an immensely ambiguous phenomenon, and we need to embrace the fact that none of us truly understands play.

None of these are unique for play events, but I believe that the combination of them are. It seems that this particular approach has been successful in cultivating a very special atmosphere:

We have been surprised time and again by the tremendous courage of our participants, who overcome whatever initial reservations and anxiety they may have had. Remember, this is strangers stepping into an unknown space where many unexpected and maybe even intimidating things might happen. In the best moments, the festival cultivates a very special, playful atmosphere, where everyone come together as a community. These situations feel truly magical, as the usual barriers and masks fall away, people open up to each other and the world, showing a remarkable trust in strangers. They are present in ways you rarely see, committed and sincere. In play, it becomes deeply personal.

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I am proud of what we have achieved, and our dedication to continue this work is bigger than ever, but we have realised that to do so, we need to change even more.

Here’s the biggest change:

Effective immediately, we will turn our main event, the CounterPlay festival in Aarhus, Denmark, into a bi-annual event, meaning it will be back in 2019. 

This is by no means a signal that we’re slowing down or lowering our ambitions – on the contrary!

The main reasons for this decision is that we need more time to develop the festival, and this has proven quite challenging when there’s always less than a year to the next event. It is our intention to stay around for a very long time, and for that to happen, we need stronger roots. We also wish to engage in more initiatives that is either borne out of or leads up to the festival, so we can develop new activities and formats together with the play community.

Furthermore, we realise that since part of our community keeps coming back (THANK YOU!), it might be a bit much to go to Aarhus every year, whereas every other year is probably more feasible.

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While we keep improving the festival, we also wish to contribute to the play community in other ways, and we are very eager to create more, smaller events between the festivals for greater continuity.

To name a few things we’re working on:

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• We have take the initiative to establish a national Danish “play think tank”, which will surely inform much of our work going forward.
• CounterPlay is slowly spreading to other cities and countries, beginning with an event in Leeds (together with Playful Anywhere) at the end of October.
• We are working with Aalborg University and other organizations in Denmark to bring the atmosphere from CounterPlay to new contexts.
• We have rebooted the #cplaychat, a bi-weekly Twitter based chat about play.
• We seek to experiment with more materials about play, encouraging play, including more consistent blogging, playful initiatives on social media, books and more.

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In short, we’re getting ready to do more to help play thrive.

In addition to this, we are always open to suggestions, ideas, conversations and partnerships. If you share our ambition to fight for play, don’t hesitate to comment or get in touch.

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Wow.

Just…wow.

CounterPlay ‘17 is over, it’s been several days, and I’m only slowly catching my breath. It was a wild and crazy ride, and all the impressions still need more time to settle. We considered this to be the most ambitious festival yet, and we expected it to be playful and chaotic, but we honestly had no idea how it would be received. I mean, how could we? It’s all so dependant on the community and the willingness to participate. We insist that we must organise the festival in ways that mirrors the openness of play, which inevitably also leads to unpredictable results, or what Gwen Gordon so brilliantly labelled “magnificent mayhem” (a new tagline, maybe?):

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In the situation above, I honestly didn’t have a clue what was going on, but it was glorious. I loved it and it captured so much of what we could ever hope to achieve.

At this point, the community clearly felt like a safe space, where everyone could participate and contribute, where all kinds of thoughts, ideas and experiments would be welcomed and elaborated upon, where the silly had been completely intertwined with the serious, the personal, the deeply emotional. It was hilarious, sure, but it was much more than that, and it seemed to resonate profoundly.

I experienced many more of these situations, and I believe that we have shown how play and a playful mindset enables new ways of being and living together. When a group of people join each other in a playful atmosphere, the realm of the possible expands drastically. More things can happen, simply because people are more open, say yes to more, unleash their imagination, show a greater sense of empathy, are more courageous and willing to take risks – or in other words: people play along.

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Throughout all this, it felt like more people than ever were eager to contribute to the continued expansion of the global play community. This is truly encouraging and heartwarming, as the purpose of CounterPlay has always been closely tied to the community. There was this one person, who said that she was deeply moved by realizing that we have agency and power to change the world simply by fighting for play together. This beautifully captures the essence of our ambitions, and perhaps the strongest sentiment I carry with me after the festival: the change we can cause together is significant:

Seeing the play community as a whole is relevant, as it transcends the limitations of any one person or organization, who can only do so much to improve the conditions for play to thrive in society. As a global community, on the other hand, we have the potential and power to utterly transform the role of play in the world.

My dizzy head is spinning with ideas, so many experiments I’d like to make, and adventures I want to embark upon with this community. It will take some time to fully crystallize, but a few things stand out already. They’re all revolving around the general suggestion that we need more activities throughout the year.

• Local meetups & interventions – someone mentioned a sort of CounterPlayX (inspired by TEDx), where local “charters” build on what we have learned from the festival (I personally love the idea about CounterPlay as some sort of travelling circus).
• Podcast – as a way to capture and share some longer conversations with people in the play community.
• Online play forum – as a space for ongoing conversations about play in the community.
• Publications – after making “The Power of Play – Voices from the Play Community”, I’d love to create more publications of all kinds.

It’s important to stress that these things can obviously only happen, if some of you are keen to play along (and most of it also requires us to secure additional funding).

For now, consider what you would like to do to create more opportunities for yourself and others to live a more playful life. If you have ideas, let me know in the comments.

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We insist that the process of organizing CounterPlay must be as open, inclusive and explorative as (we hope) the festival is. This also makes it slightly more unpredictable and chaotic, and just like when we’re playing, we don’t know exactly where we end up. This is not a bug, but a feature; it is entirely by design (also when we sometimes lose control, how can we make anything playful if we control everything?).

We have, once again, had an overwhelming response to our call for proposals with so many wonderful people suggesting the most amazing and playful activities for CounterPlay ’17. We strive to design a program that mirrors the diversity of play, cultivating a diverse community in the process. We are also moving towards ever more playful formats to create an atmosphere, where everybody feels safe enough to risk not being taken seriously when they interact playfully with each other.

In addition to the amazing proposals, we are working with many good people to design activities specifically for the festival, not least for our special focus on playful cities / playful citizens“, where we will host a range of workshops, play sessions and open debate. There will also be a big, open creative space (the cardboard area from CounterPlay ’16). We are inspired by things like “Stupid Hackathon” and “Hebocon crappy robot contest”, so here you can make stupid, silly, useless things out of everything from digital technologies over wood and cardboard to broken toys.

While the schedule is not yet ready, the structure will be similar to that of CounterPlay ’16, so take a look at that program. This means that there will be “plenary sessions” where we all get together, many parallel tracks with workshops and play sessions, dinner on Thursday evening, and Saturday, April 1st, will once more be organized like an “unconference” for discussion and contemplation. Apart from the things we schedule, the festival wants to be hacked, so we expect numerous playful interventions we won’t know about.

For now, take a look at this list of all the activities and people we have confirmed for the festival – with (much) more to come in the beginning of 2017!

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Or: thinking about all the beautiful castles for our dreams we are going to build together.

When I started working on the tiny, messy idea that would later become CounterPlay, and when I ran the first festival in an old library in April 2014, I couldn’t possibly anticipate where it would take me. Nonetheless, I had high hopes, for my personal journey, for the festival, and for society at large.

It’s been a beautiful and exciting adventure bringing me into contact with the most wonderful people from all around the world. I have learned that so many people are passionately fighting for play, and my life is better because of it. It truly is. Simply knowing that you are out there is (almost) enough. Yes, it has been tremendously hard work, frustrating at times (I’ve considered throwing in the towel on more than one occasion), but I honestly don’t think I have ever done anything that feels this important (or that makes me this proud).

From the outset, I wanted to cultivate a diverse international community of people from all over society that would allow us to explore games, play and playfulness from as many perspectives as possible. Without this diversity, we can neither say anything coherent about the meaning of a phenomenon as complex as play, nor can we argue about the importance of play for society as a whole.

The profile of the festival has become a bit sharper since then, as we are now more courageous, and dare to be more outspoken about the things we believe are important: play is for everyone, it belongs in all aspects of life, it is highly political, it needs a more prominent place in society, and we should focus on play for the sake of play rather than the perceived side effects (however positive and important these may be).

“societies need to reaffirm the value of a playful spirit in populations of all ages” – Thomas S. Henricks

More than anything, we are interested in playfulness. The main reason why we think play is so important is that a playful mindset and a playful attitude will (probably) enable you to live better lives in this complex, globalised and confusing world. More people should be allowed to play and engage with work and life in more playful ways. To achieve this, we wish to create more opportunities to play, cultivate playful communities across all sorts of borders and boundaries and drive a movement towards a more playful world.

While we have come much, much further than I could have initially imagined, this only means that we are now aiming higher. We can and should do more. We can take on a greater responsibility and we can make ourselves more visible, shaping the public agenda to a greater degree, hopefully contributing to achieving the ambitious goals set by people like Stuart Brown:

“When enough people raise play to the status it deserves in our lives, we will find the world a better place”

In the following, I’ll describe three areas which are important to us, now and in the future. All of them are to be seen as invitations for anyone who want to be part of our journey. I can’t say this often enough: we will remain open, inclusive and seeking conversation with each and every person who can enlighten and/or challenge us.

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A Stronger Foundation

I don’t think of CounterPlay as something with an expiration date. I never did. On the contrary, we aim to stay around for as long as play is not given the attention and space it needs and deserves. As some of you know, I’m the impatient type, and it can be hard to accept that
things take time. Nonetheless, they do. They simply just do. No meaningful change happens overnight, and we can only hope to achieve anything real by maintaining momentum over a longer period of time, taking many small steps in the process. It obviously matters what we do, but it also matters a lot that we do it again and again, year after year, and that we are not deterred by all the things that make it seem impossible at times (this is as much a reminder to myself, because giving up frequently seems like the best choice).

There is no law of nature stating that we can survive to keep doing what we do, so we must build a stronger foundation for the festival. We’re a small (tiny, even) NGO with no secure funding (we mostly rely on registration fees), no real platform and no employees. This is often a strength, as we can maneuver freely, make the decisions we feel are right, and generally pursue our dreams and ambitions. Even so, being small and fragile also comes with a number of challenges when you’re aiming for permanence and continuity.

There’s obviously a financial side of this that we must focus on, since it’s quite risky to bet everything on the willingness of people attending the festival. We’ll need to develop a better, more robust “business model” (man, I hate that term) that allows for increased financial sustainability. Money is not my biggest concern, though, since it’s even more important that we get more people involved, spreading the ownership and desire to make this work.

Do you know something about building an organisation and securing the foundation? We would love to hear from you.

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Increase the diversity

Like play, diversity is important in and of itself, and we don’t need any other reason or justification than that. We want CounterPlay to be inclusive and diverse just because. Period.

I was inspired by the variety of people – ages, nationalities, interests, approaches – for whom playfulness and play are so key. There was such a powerful sense of a global community and a growing movement. I brought back renewed energy and enthusiasm and lots of happy memories.

At the same time, cultivating diverse communities is a necessary component in our effort to explore all the different ways people can play and be playful. Play is full of ambiguity (as described so magnificently by Brian Sutton-Smith), such a complex phenomenon in so many shapes and sizes, and our community must mirror this. If we only invite people who are similar to us, we limit our thinking and our understanding of play. Beside the obvious Being John Malkovich’ish implications of having to many people who look like yourself, it simply obstructs our view and gets in the way of our ambitions.

CounterPlay is one of the few public events that brings together people from widely divergent disciplines, and yet are united by their devotion to making the world a little more playful. Bringing them together like this, to play and talk and share each other’s vision, creates an unforgettably playful, creative and productive environment and helps all of them to find a larger and more inclusive perspective on their work.

By bringing different people with different backgrounds and experiences together, we also hope to create better conditions for new things to happen, new ideas to form, new connections to be established and new friendships to develop. None of this is easy, as we, like most people, often default to what we know, feel comfortable with and have tried before. We clearly still have a lot to learn, but we are doing our best.

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Make play unavoidable

This is where it counts, and where we need to really step it up.

We shouldn’t be able to avoid play, just like we (usually) don’t try to avoid things like water, food, education, work, and social relationships.

I dream about a world where play is an essential part of life, and where you don’t have to make excuses or go to great lengths to hide your playful endeavours. In this future utopia, we are not afraid of embracing play, and playing in public is nothing out of the ordinary. Living a playful life doesn’t make people consider you any less serious or ambitious – perhaps rather the contrary. When the world is more playful, you are free to play around with habits, traditions, rules and power structures, challenging them and asking critical questions.

I consider the festival an early prototype of this society, and I believe we have shown that it is possible to create an atmosphere, where play and people thrive – if only on a microscopic scale for three days.

Outside the festival, too many people steer away from play for fear of what their family, friends, colleagues and the wider society might think. While I don’t want to force anyone to play, I believe everybody should have the opportunity to consider going down the playful path (with more than an implicit nod to my inspiring friend Bernie DeKoven). While this may seem like a little thing – asking for people to simply consider play as an ingredient in life – I think it would be a huge step. If we can break down the social and mental barriers, we have come a long way. Even if we can just help a few people reconnect with their playful selves, seeing their eyes light up, that more than justifies our effort.

Have you noticed that, by the way? The light in the eyes of people playing? When they’re just really there in the moment, and their eyes shine? It’s like magic.

It should be possible for all of us to explore how we like to play, what feels good, and how our playful life should look and feel.

That is my dream.

If you have requests, ideas, comments or want to join the adventure, comment below or get in touch!

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