The Utility of Play

“To start out by ‘playing’ develops courage, leads in a natural manner to an inventive way of building and furthers the... facility of discovery.”
– Josef Albers

Our inventive way of building is to commit to specific shared goals, as the UN SDG's outline.  

As Andrew Hubermann's recent podcast makes clear, play is explorative.

Penny Black seek to make the connection between play and materiality for ESG innovation. Now that sounds like many words in one line that the brand world might call a proposition. But what we're saying is, if you truly believe your company will survive the Anthropocene, show how it is sustainable through action.

There are two ideas at play here. There is the emotion and connection of brands; and the policy-based material issues that are integral to our survival on this planet.

The business world has an undoubted contribution to protect and preserve the world's resources, not because they are evil. It is because the market demands without proof that this is a positive

Perhaps this is the pathway to the gap between 'smart', intelligent people and those with new and original ideas.

We passed through Dover ferry port on our annual family holiday to France one year. I would have never realised that this would be the moment that would change my life forever.

For those that don't know it personally, it's not the prettiest of ports. A labyrinth of docks, stations; fly-overs, import, export, storage, immigration; spread like snakes and ladders between the white cliffs.

On our return home, almost as the car came to a complete stop, I burst out and ran upstairs to reconstruct the layout as best to my imagination: A week's design visualisation of Dover ferry port.

Now, you're probably thinking, why is this important. What relevance is a story from a (circa) seven-year-old boy's memory? Well, it's the importance of play that I want to raise here.

The utility here was to reproduce the port in its entirety, if only in my seven-year-old brain. The action was to reconstruct this memory through the form of Lego blocks.  

The utility of play is to learn: To power your understanding of change.
Let's talk about play.
For children, in their perception, this is constructive work.
Focus, rest, focus, rest
Learn through passive experience

• Exploration in contingencies
• Expand our catalogue of potential outcomes
• Enormously enriching

In this respect, rather than thinking that I've done this job, this contract or this program: I've in fact 'played' with this idea, this concept, this strategy, tinkered with this brand, helped these people to play with this idea etcetera.

Why is play perceived as wrong? When did we make work so severe?
It's for this reason that we stand by Seriously Playful. It's commonly known that you have to relax if you want to run faster. So if you're going to innovate and come up with new ideas, it is undoubtedly the exact requirement.

So is the reason we can't innovate because we're stressed out? Essentially, yes. Or in context: We are resistant to play.

I know from hard-line experience that things go wrong when you tense up and close down. From my back injury to failed projects,  

Any of those who are meditators will have heard of brain plasticity. The ability to learn, to move connections within the brain.

We argue that we need to play more and better together.

What should I play?
Particular forms of play that expand the number of possibilities

• Novel forms of movement (yes, snowboarding is a type of dance)
•

‍