Why I Play: Mathias Poulsen

"Play is a way of making sense of the world, of exploring, of navigating, of interacting with people, strangers even, and, quite simply, of being human".

Welcome to our 'Why I Play' series, the place where we get to meet interesting people in the creative industries and beyond, who use play in their practice, work and life. Here they share their play techniques and their thoughts on why playing is crucial for all humans regardless of age. The third interview of this series features Mathias Poulsen, Play Consultant, Educator, and Founder of the CounterPlay Festival, an international festival of playfulness. Mathias believes that playing helps create a better world, where people engage with each other in creative, caring and respectful ways.

Ready to play?

Photo: Mathias Poulsen

Hi Mathias, please tell us what do you do? I have a background in media studies, and have been self-employed since 2008. I started out exploring and encouraging the use of games in education in various ways. While I still fully support this, I've been drifting more towards play and playfulness. From the beginning, I was interested in games as objects and games as images of another culture of learning, but the former too often overshadowed the latter. Most people prefer things that are concrete, things that provide solutions. I can understand this, but I've realised that games as objects won't make much of a difference if we don't change our attitudes, mindsets and culture. For that to happen, we need to be more playful. It's not just about playing every now and then, it's about being playful in the way we approach the world. It's a sentiment that's been growing over the years, and it's clearly inspired by people smarter than myself. People like Bernie DeKoven and Miguel Sicart: "Games don’t matter. Like in the old fable, we are the fools looking at the finger when someone points at the moon. Games are the finger; play is the moon." Now I'm exploring the role of play and playfulness - in education, in the way we work and in our lives. Among other things, this adventure lead me to organise the CounterPlay festival in Aarhus, Denmark. It's about creating playful communities, and it's inspired by bees: we need to cross-pollinate our thoughts, ideas and experiences. We need to bring diverse groups of people together to experiment with playfulness. When was the last time you played? I play games on a fairly regular basis, and I like it. I try to play all sorts of games, but I fail miserably. So much that I just started playing Mass Effect again. I mean, so many amazing, creative games out there - and I decide to spend +100 hours on a game I've already finished once? A game that, while being great in many ways, is not particularly playful? It makes no sense. In line with my first answer, I don't think playing games is my favourite way of playing. What I love the most is not games, or other planned, structured experiences to make people play. It's the spontaneous things, the moments when you just feel playful and do things for the sake of being playful. One of my favorite recent experiences was at my young cousin's confirmation. We had a walk outside, and all of a sudden I felt an urge to climb trees. We had to get back to the party for songs and speeches and following procedure, but climbing trees was all I could think of, so I started climbing trees. It was entirely without a purpose, it just felt right. How do you incorporate playing in your workplace? While I try to be playful when working, I like to think the most important way I use play in my work is by creating spaces for other people to be playful. With CounterPlay and with several other initiatives, I try to nurture communities, that not only allow play, but inspire and help play to flourish. I'm trying to boil my work and ambitions down to one sentence, and while I'm not quite there yet, it's currently along these lines: "Cultivating playful communities as a catalyst for changing the world". What do you get from playing? Play helps me in lots of ways. Sometimes it's just about relaxing, maybe escaping for a while, not thinking about anything but the act of playing. Playing allows me to see the world in a different light, to consider all the "what ifs" that are usually overlooked or ignored. Through play, we can imagine different worlds. This is not just some theoretical BS, it's something I feel deep inside, and something I rely on regularly. It's also a way for me to reconnect with a part of my life, that can easily get lost in all the (often self-imposed) conventions and expectations of society. "Hey, you're an adult, get a career, make money, acquire status symbols, think about mortgage and serious shit". I didn't sign up for that life, and I don't think it has to be like that. I don't think it's about staying "childish"; I'm an adult and that's ok. I want to be ambitious, I want to make positive changes in the world, but I just want to be an even more playful adult. Why do you think play is important for people in general - and not only children? Let me start by questioning the question: why do we keep framing play as something primarily for children? I know it's what some believe and what others would like us to believe, but I think it's important that we challenge the established link between "play" and "children". There's no reason, really, that we frame it like that - except for the fact that adults are supposed to be productive, while children are allowed not to be (less and less, though, as testing and NPM and KPI and ROI and that sort of crap threatens the space where children play without a purpose). Play is supposed to be, by definition, autotelic, unproductive and therefore only appropriate for children. Obviously, this is nonsense. Even when play is not "used" for specific purposes with measurable outcomes, it's a vital component of life. As Brian Sutton-Smith famously, said: "The opposite of play isn't work. It's depression". Or as primatologist Isabel Behncke says in her lovely TED-talk: “Play is our adaptive wildcard. In order to adapt successfully to a changing world, we need to play”. It's a way of making sense of the world, of exploring, of navigating, of interacting with people, strangers even, and, quite simply, of being human. It's not something you do when everything else is taken care of. It's not at the top of Maslow's hierarchy, but at the very foundation. I tend to become too romantic about these things, but this does not mean I’m not interested in dark/dangerous/subversive play – on the contrary. A big part of my fascination is directly related to play when it gets ugly, when it hurts, when it challenges our moral compass and transgresses the boundaries we thought would confine it. It’s a big problem that we’ve become so obsessed with safety that we believe dangerous play should be eliminated. Luckily, you can’t suppress it and many people are arguing in favour of unsafe play. If you were an imaginary animal what would it be? A big, clumsy furry animal that might secretly aspire to be Aslan, the lion, but is neither strong, smart nor serious enough. A quite silly creature, that would fool around all day if it dared to. Not entirely unlike Baloo.

Follow Mathias: @mathiaspoulsen @counterplayfest

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