Play is increasingly recognised as a serious tool for thinking differently, educating and learning, working better together, and sparking joy in the everyday (British Council, 2021; Camic, 2008; Dodgson, 2016; Kurt et al, 2010; Teksoz et al, 2017). It can be a powerful catalyst for creativity, innovation, and wellbeing. However, in many professional environments—especially large, multi-layered organisations like universities—rigid hierarchical structures and risk-averse cultures may limit the flow of ideas, discourage experimentation and stifle change (Laker, 2024; Hazelzet et al., 2022). Play can counteract these patterns by inviting curiosity, lowering the stakes, or opening space for fresh ways of thinking and collaborating. Play is not antithetical to work, but it helps us work differently.
Through these activities, we will better understand the current role and future potential of play in supporting creativity, collaboration, and wellbeing in universities, as a test case for investigating other professional contexts. We will inductively develop a prototype vocabulary and conceptual framework for discussing and examining play-at-work, and disseminate outputs that can be used to facilitate new conversations on this topic and introduce playful actions. At the conclusion of this project, we will have both developed a novel evidence base and laid the foundation for future funded research.
This exploratory research project uses universities as sites to investigate how play already exists and functions—or could function—within multilayered organisations. What are the obvious, subtle, surprising, or even subversive ways people use play in their professional roles? Adopting participatory research methods with university employees, the project has four strands of activity. We will crowdsource examples of playful practice, explore meanings and contributions of play in hands-on “playshops” with university staff, use these data to develop playful and actionable outputs, and begin network-building around this topic in preparation for future work.