play well

PhD student Adam James at the Wellcome Collection

Work by PhD student Adam James will be featuring at the Wellcome Collection in London from Thursday 24 October 2019, as part of an exhibition entitled ‘Play Well’.

Why do we play? How important is it for all of us, young or old? What does it mean to play well?

Play Well will explore how play transforms both childhood and society. Using toys, games, artworks and design, this exhibition will investigate how we played as children and how we play now we’re grown up: developing social bonds, emotional resilience and physical wellbeing. By featuring video games, playing blocks, comic strips and images of people at play everywhere from playgrounds to refugee camps.

Adam has been commissioned to devise a play space for visitors to consider the impact of play in their lives. The space was put together with advice and help from the School of Arts’ workshop.

Adam’s PhD project is titled ‘Emancipatory Play: Larp Based Performance and the Redistribution of Power’, supervised by Dr Michael Newall and Dr Shona Illingworth.

The exhibition is free and runs until 8 March 2020. For more details, please see the page here.