Playworlds as Ways of Being, A Chorus of Voices: Why are Playworlds Worth Creating?

Abstract

This paper discusses the playworlds of the Playworld of Creative Research (PWCR) research group. Play¬worlds are created from a relatively new form of play that can be described as a combination of adult forms of creative imagination (art, science, etc.), which require extensive real life experience, and children’s forms of creative imagination (play), which require the embodiment of ideas and emotions in the material world. In playworlds, adults and children (or teenagers or seniors) enter into a common fantasy that is designed to support the development of both adults and children (or teenagers or seniors). The PWCR understands play¬worlds and the study of playworlds as ways of being. In this paper we present unique, individual playworlds that we truly love from the perspective of researchers, artists, teachers, children, administrators, and imagi¬nary characters, who participate in playworlds. We use a master fiction writer’s words on the love of literature to frame our discussion of playworlds, focusing on truth, time, human magic, infinite possibilities, fun, and the enriching and intensifying (and so, creating) of the real in playworlds in Japan, Finland, Sweden and the US.

Keywords

• imagination
• creativity
• emotion
• cognition
• being
• play
• early childhood education and care