Want to play with us?

Want to play with us?

First a story from a new sort of playground…

A gaggle of teens—15? 20?—huddled together on a tight island, the sort that usually just divided two fast flowing directions of traffic. The light switched, traffic stopped, and they burst into action. A vociferous game of tug-of-war—“pull! pull! pull!”—and laughter overtook the busy intersection.

The teens were exploring using big urban games to shift the affect in their neighborhood. They wanted to see if they could use a strange approach to decrease the social violence impacting their lives. As you can see, play can be quite serious…

Want to play with us?

We could…

…climb up an idea and look for new ways to try it out

…seesaw between making the normal strange and the strange normal

…bring our sand buckets and shovels to make and remake new public spaces

…slide into a book, a conversation, or a public fiction that shifts how we perceive a social problem

…reimagine the jungle gym in ways that change the rules (of permits, policies, gravity…)

…swing hand-over-hand, stretching to reach the next bar and the next, finally reaching a new terrain of possibilities

Want to play with us?

If you’re curious, reach out and tell us what you’re up to, what you’re wrestling with, who you’re reading… Come to an event, or invite us to one. Tell us about a social intervention or art practice we should know about. Let us know if you’ve shared a paper, tool or intervention idea from our work, and how it went (this is both useful and inspiring to us in our role as a design studio!)

As you probably know, modern adult humans aren’t so good at meeting serendipitously at the playground, so feel free to email us, sign up for our mailing list [link], come to an event, or you can find us on FACEBOOK, TWITTER and YOUTUBE.

And we do play hard, so if we don’t get back to you right away, holler again! In this fledgling, long-distance, virtual game of tag, you’re it!