Permission to play: taking play seriously; making sport playful

Playfulness is an innate human trait crucial for making sense of the world, creativity, development of social skills and positive emotions. It is a trait which is strongly encouraged in children and young people but increasingly is being squeezed out in adulthood amidst the pressures and technologies of contemporary western society. It is often viewed as 'juvenile' and 'unproductive' use of time. Yet playfulness is celebrated in different forms within some arenas - particuarly 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.

By engaging actively with these the arenas of creative arts & culture and sport, and drawing on the experiences and practices which encourage and celebrate playfulness, the proposed research will seek, firstly to characterise attributes of playfulness and, secondly to identify new research questions concerning ways in which it might be fostered in adults in order to promote flourishing, resilience, creativity and therefore enhance wellbeing for both individuals and communities. It will thus also explore how playfulness can help to reconnect people and communities, assisting to overcome conflict and dissonance but reducing isolation, stress, and alienation.

Improving the mental and physical health and well-being of the population as a whole, and not just individuals experiencing illness, has become a key objective of central and devolved governments and agencies in the UK, spanning areas of culture, sport, economic activity as well as community regeneration. Well-being and mental resilience is seen as critical to supporting social and economic benefits, and the absence of this has often been associated with and reinforcing social and health inequalities in deprived communities.

Confident and sustainable communities are those who have the strength, safety, resilience and inclusiveness to foster supportive social networks, and who are themselves connected communities. Finding approaches and mechanisms to support improvements in health and well-being within communities has drawn together academic disciplines from across the humanities, social sciences and sciences. It has seen for example community arts projects being based in hospitals, reading groups being used to explore issues of community identity, and sporting and cultural events fostering greater community cohesion.

This research will add to this important area of academic and policy engagement through its focus on how playfulness can enrich these connections. It will have impacts thus not only in key policy areas, supporting the UK government's policy on Confident Communities, the Scottish Government's joint health & wellbeing and sustainable communities initiative, and the Welsh Assembly Government's Communities First partnerships.

Through direct collaboration with partners in London Philosophy Club and Glasgow Life, and with the team's connections with policy makers and practitioners in local areas, the impact of this research will be disseminated into practice within local organisations. These include those involved in directly in connecting arts and health at national and local scales (The Reader Organisation, Merseyside Arts in Health Initiative), organisations such as Centre for Applied Research in Inclusive Arts and Design who are researching wider issues of wellbeing and inclusion, and national community-focused collaborative art charities in the NVA.
Active engagement with these through the workshops will provide mutual learning and sharing.

Beyond these specific groups who have involvement with the project directly, we envisage contribution in both commercial games sector and third sector organisations involved with community involvement. Commercial companies developing and designing products for play, the games industry, and researchers working in the area of Human Computer Interaction e.g. Creativity and Cognition Studios at University of Technology Sydney, Georgia Institute of Technology, and in the arts management and technology (eg Carnegie Mellon) will benefit from the insights on how playfulness can assist with such involvement.