The environmental citizen's playbook: A co-design enquiry into the playful potential of environmental action
Loading...
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
School of Arts, Design and Architecture |
Master's thesis
Location:
Unless otherwise stated, all rights belong to the author. You may download, display and print this publication for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Author
Date
2022
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Master's Programme in Creative Sustainability
Language
en
Pages
98 + 14
Series
Abstract
Wicked sustainability problems are distressing and overwhelming. Where social, environmental and political sustainability movements are growing, so is the concern around our individual and collective wellbeing as we navigate the complexity of these issues. Terms like eco-anxiety and climate burnout have become embedded in the lexicon of environmental action, highlighting the debilitating after-effects of engaging with sustainability issues (Pihkala, 2020). Yet the imperative to stay engaged remains, and so we must find new sensitive ways of addressing these critical topics. For this engagement to be sustainable in its own right, it must therefore become sustainable from a social, emotional and experiential perspective. The multifaceted nature of play, from rule-bound games to free and uncontrolled playfulness, presents a potential antidote to these fatiguing emotions. With its long discussed importance in healthy child development (Pellegrini and Smith, 2008), alongside its therapeutic potential to nurture and reduce stress (Schaefer & Greenberg, 1997; Ward-Wimmer, 2003), play and playfulness promote spaces for healing and imagination. More recently, however, research into play has also explored its transformative potential in disrupting existing structures and ways of thinking, and thus its ability to catalyse new modes of creativity (Altarriba Bertran et al., 2020; Gaver, 2015). Through these two dimensions of wellbeing and creativity, this thesis looks to understand where play and playfulness can add value within sustainable behaviour and what that value might look like. Applying a participatory process of Situated Play Design (Altarriba Bertran et al., 2019a), I explore how to then harness the value of play and playfulness within the specific context of environmental action, to centre wellbeing and support long-term engagement with ecological issues. I do this by using participatory design research methods to first observe playfulness within this space, and later recontextualise these forms of play to ambiguate existing environmental practices into more joyful interactions with sustainability. This process is documented and shared through two key outputs: a tangible set of play potentials (Altarriba Bertran et al., 2019a) within environmental action, and a co-created catalogue of interventions for more playful and joyful interactions with everyday environmental sustainability. These outputs - and the discussion which frames them - contribute to a wider conversation around healing and supporting long term interactions with sustainable behaviour. In turn, this thesis speculates on how more playful modes of being might facilitate more inclusive, accessible and scalable engagement with wicked problems (De Lange, 2015), whilst simultaneously touching on the capacity for play to catalyse creativity and solutions building within these critical spaces.Description
Supervisor
Gaziulusoy, İdilThesis advisor
Altarriba Bertran, FerranKeywords
situated play design, play, playfulness, play for environmentalism, play potentials, design for sustainability, joy, participatory design
Other note
Media files notes:
Play Potentials card deck for environmental action; The Environmental Citizen's Playbook catalogue; The Environmental Citizen's Playbook workshop pack
Description:
Included as separate interactive pdfs are the finalised outputs from my thesis, including the full card deck of Play Potentials for environmental action, the full interactive catalogue of speculative interventions for more playful and joyful environmental action (The Environmental Citizen's Playbook), and also the finalised open source workshop pack, including instructions and materials links to independently run The Environmental Citizen's Playbook workshop.
Media rights: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0
