Category: Social

environment · play · Social

City-wide public art project invites residents and visitors to talk to Austin’s street furniture | AustinTexas.gov – The Official Website of the City of Austin

Beth Kelley

Austin is a city with a strong arts culture, and is continuing to showcase that:

The hidden life of Austin’s street furniture will come to light next month with the launch of Hello Lamp Post, an international art project created by London-based designers Pan Studio which invites people to strike up conversations with familiar objects around the city using text messaging.

Hello Lamp Post is a city-wide platform for play that allows participants to talk to the city’s infrastructure and share stories using the text messaging function on any mobile phone – no smart phones required. People can interact with any object they choose, in any part of the city, because the project utilizes the thousands of pre-existing identifier codes that label items of street furniture, including (but not limited to) lamp posts, mail boxes, moontowers, utility boxes, manholes, or telephone poles

more via City-wide public art project invites residents and visitors to talk to Austin’s street furniture | AustinTexas.gov – The Official Website of the City of Austin.

If you are in or near Austin, the public is invited to a free kick-off event, complete with drinks and bites, February 12, 4-6 p.m. at Republic Square Park, 422 Guadalupe Street.

A short video about the project, starring the streets of Austin, is available now at http://www.hellolamppostaustin.com.

behavior · community · happiness · hugs · play · Social

McDonald’s will be accepting hugs, calls to mom, and dance moves as payment

Beth Kelley

OK, so YES it is being sponsored by a huge megacorporation. YES it is a total gimmick. But it is such a COOL gimmick.

“That will be five hugs, please.”

Randomly selected McDonald’s customers will have the opportunity to pay for their meals with various tasks — such as doing a dance or calling their mom — between Feb. 2 and Feb. 14. The deal is outlined in a Super Bowl ad from the company, above, which will air on Sunday but is already posted on its YouTube page.

So, for example, breakfast might cost a fist bump to a McDonald’s crew member; lunch could be paid for with a call to a loved one; and dinner could go for a hug to a family member. But there will only be 100 winners at each store.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCmh8cBjUeM

more via McDonald’s will be accepting hugs and dance moves as payment. (Mashable)

Last week I also posted about a major paint company that promoted their paint via enabling the handicapped in China to blow up paint balloons onto a canvas.

While to some it may feel “icky” to have mega-sized companies counting this kind of self-congratulating promotion as “spreading the love” or even “charity work,” frankly I am just happy that anyone, either an individual or a giant corporation, is taking steps to making their spaces a little bit happier and more enriching. Companies spend millions of dollars to make their customers happy, so why not spend a little bit of that on a smile?

When has a corporation made your day better, either through a promotion or just because an employee took some time to acknowledge you? Leave it in the comments below.

creativity · play · Social · writing

Play ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ On Twitter

Beth Kelley

My coworkers and I were just talking about Choose Your Own Adventure books the other day. I hated them, but most people liked them a lot. Now, someone has created a version of CYOA on Twitter.

As  one author points out,

“I am pleased to see interesting uses of Twitter to tell a narrative in a way I might actually consume.”

These are a little more dark than the kid’s versions, but still interesting.

Eden notes that he’s not by any means the first person to try and conduct a CYOA story via Twitter, but he’s the first person we’ve seen try and do it in a fully self-contained way – most use tweets to link to external URLs to continue the story or make choices. The downside of this is that each link cuts down on the amount of the story that can be told in a single tweet. It also ends up with users being redirected all over the place, so the chances of finishing it are probably slimmer.

We’re not going to ruin the story for you, but if you have a few minutes to spare and fancy trying to get through the story without meeting a grisly ending, then you can do so at the starting point above.

try it out via Play ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ On Twitter.

I agree this is a great use of the platform to tell stories in an interactive, fun way, and play of people’s nostalgia for the book series.

creativity · play · Social · writing

A Videogame That Teaches You to Write Poetry, Even if It Intimidates You | WIRED

Beth Kelley

I don’t know if I would find this inspiring or not… thoughts?

Videogames and poetry haven’t always gone hand in hand.

We’re still a long way from Master Chief breaking into a Coleridge soliloquy. But game developers Ichiro Lambe and Ziba Scott have edged us a bit closer to that day with Elegy for a Dead World, a game they Kickstarted in October and released on Steam last month.

Elegy lets players write prose and poetry as they explore distant planets and dead civilizations. The player faces 27 challenges in three worlds, each riffing on a specific British Romance-era poem: “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley, “When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be” by John Keats, and “Darkness” by Lord Byron.

The different challenges find the player in various roles: an emperor rallying his troops before a doomed battle, for example, or a schoolgirl evacuating a city being bombed. Players travel through beautifully designed backgrounds, while on-screen text narrates the story. But much of the text is left blank—that’s when players tap their inner Wordsworths, finishing the tale with their own imaginations.

Throughout their adventure, players are tasked with using several writing styles: Plugging in blanks in prompts like serious Mad Libs, writing poems in rhyming couplets, or going totally freeform.

via A Videogame That Teaches You to Write Poetry, Even if It Intimidates You | WIRED.

architecture · community · creativity · culture · environment · Social

We Asked 10 of Our Favorite Artists to Create Love Letters to Their Cities. Here’s What They Came Up With | GOOD Magazine 

Beth Kelley

Good Magazine Asked 10 of Their Favorite Artists to Create Love Letters to Their Cities. Here’s What They Came Up With… (click either the link below or the picture to see them all.)

via GOOD Magazine Cities Project .

behavior · brain · culture · health · play · Social

Play Doesn’t End With Childhood: Why Adults Need Recess Too | NPR

Beth Kelley

I’ve already shared this article via Twitter, but it is so important that I just had to re-share via my blog. If there was one mantra I would want to be known for it’s that adults need play. Humans need downtime. Humans need breathing room. Humans need play at any age!

A father and daughter try out a public park piano in Seattle, WA
A father and daughter try out a public park piano together in Seattle, WA

Childhood play is essential for brain development. As , time on the playground may be more important than time in the classroom.But playtime doesn’t end when we grow up. Adults need recess too.

The question is, why? To answer this question, Dr. Stuart Brown says we need to clearly define what play is. He’s head of a nonprofit called the National Institute for Play.

“Play is something done for its own sake,” he explains. “It’s voluntary, it’s pleasurable, it offers a sense of engagement, it takes you out of time. And the act itself is more important than the outcome.”

So, let’s take gambling, for instance. A poker player who’s enjoying a competitive card game? That’s play, says Brown. A gambling addict whose only goal is to hit the jackpot? Not play.

Brown says that children have a lot to learn from what he calls this “state of being,” including empathy, how to communicate with others, and how to roll with the punches.

read the whole article, including more insight from Stuart Brown, a long-time play research and advocate, via Play Doesn’t End With Childhood: Why Adults Need Recess Too : NPR Ed : NPR.

I have met and chatted briefly with Dr. Brown and read his work, and he has done some pretty interesting work on play over the years, using both primary and secondary research (I even cited him in my thesis).

I could easily go on a rant here as to why adult play is so important but so undervalued, but for now just read the article and leave any comments either here or on the actual article’s page.

architecture · behavior · community · creativity · culture · environment · family · happiness · health · play · Social

Cities’ Message to Young Families: Play and Stay – WSJ

Beth Kelley

City planners are finally starting to grok that in order to keep residents, they will need to offer the whole package, including playful spaces for everyone, kids and grown-ups alike.

About a decade ago, the so-called creative class of 20somethings fueled the revival of urban centers by settling in downtown areas mixing condos and coffee shops. Now, as millennials and other urbanites have children, their needs are changing. Cities want to hold on to them by becoming more “playable,” for both children and adults.

For decades, cities “relegated kids to the playground and said, ‘We’ve done something for you,’ ” says Darell Hammond, chief executive of Washington, D.C. nonprofit KaBOOM!, which consults with city officials on promoting and preserving play. “The whole city should be a playground, and play should happen everywhere.”

That means not only building more parks and bike paths but also incorporating the ideas of “fun” and “play” throughout a city, whether it is musical swings downtown Montreal, a hopscotch crosswalk in an arts district Baltimore or camp sites on a city lake front Chicago.

more via Cities’ Message to Young Families: Play and Stay – WSJ.

I hope that this attitude shift from city planners and designers makes it more acceptable for grown-ups to go out and play, and I mean actually physically play, not just go to bars and concerts that were traditionally classified as the only acceptable adult “play.” Seattle and Portland, and  are definitely accepting and encouraging of grown-ups playing bike polo in city parks or just going for a run. Creating an environment that welcomes play also helps change the attitude of others

behavior · creativity · culture · happiness · Social

10 Ways to Make Your Life More Playful

Beth Kelley

As we start summer, remember to spend some time playing! Here are 10 tips how.

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” ~George Bernard Shaw

I was 25 and traveling through Ireland by myself. I was in Cong, a rural small town outside of Galway. It was quiet. Very quiet. Even though I had met people on my trip, I was starting to feel lonely.

I was thousands of miles from home. I had nobody around who knew me well or cared for me, and in the days before cell phones or internet cafes, I couldn’t just get in touch with my friends or family at the drop of a hat.I went on a walk in a local park, along a wide stream that emptied into a small, pristine pond. The weather was grey and gloomy, the park was damp and romantic-looking, with its bending trees and dark water.

On a whim, I sat down by the edge of the pond and began to do something I hadn’t done in probably 15 years: I started to build a fairy village out of sticks, pebbles, and leaves.As a child I had practically lived in the backyard, building intricate tiny villages, exploring the spaces in between plants and trees, making tree roots into cottages and lumps of mud into hillsides.

It calmed me down and got me away from sometimes troubling thoughts. In Ireland, I found the same thing happened: My loneliness and anxiety vanished, and an hour or so later when I finished, I felt better: lighter, and less worried.

read all about the 10 Ways to Make Your Life More Playful.

creativity · play · Social · youtube

Man gets stuck in airport overnight, makes spectacular music video – Weird News – News – The Independent

Beth Kelley

Just goes to show you can have fun pretty much anywhere:

Richard Dunn, when stuck overnight in Las Vegas’ McCarran Airport he busied himself making a music video for Celine Dion’s “All By Myself”, complete with improvised dolly tracking shot and bottom of the escalator ‘fall to knees’ for the crescendo.Dunn admitted to having actually had a ‘quite fun’ time the first recorded instance of this in an airport, getting behind the Delta check-in desks, crooning in those massage chairs no-one actually uses and utilising the inherently cinematic horizontal escalators.

read more about Dunn’s experience via Man gets stuck in airport overnight, makes spectacular music video – Weird News – News – The Independent.

anthropology · behavior · brain · children · community · culture · education · environment · happiness · health · learning · play · psychology · Social

Plug for the NGO Right to Play

Beth Kelley

I tweeted about this short film yesterday, but I really feel like this is worth giving some space on the blog for.

The value of play is important for teaching life skills like conflict resolution and collaboration, health lessons, healing from trauma, building community and just overall survival as a child and human being, the work this organization does seems simple but is hugely important.

This short video highlights some of the incredible impact that play can have on a child, or group of children.

You can also visit the organization’s website at Right to Play.

Play matters!