In this course, we’ll introduce you to many different play worlds and play lives that people experience across a lifespan. We will travel to the Museum of Childhood in London to see how play has evolved over time. In Sheffield’s Weston Park Museum, we’ll see how children and families engage playfully with past, present and future worlds and understand how every day knowledge informs playfulness and imagination. Without leaving our seats, we’ll immerse ourselves in virtual worlds, where the boundaries between fantasy and reality are increasingly blurred. Our visits to outdoor spaces in cities, parks and a forest school will show people of all ages engaging playfully with their local surroundings.

We’ll consider the ways in which spaces can be designed to facilitate or inhibit play and what happens when players try to bend the rules. Play is also the subject of serious study. We’ll have academics from a wide range of different disciplines at The University of Sheffield take you through some of the definitions of play, and discuss current debates about the changing nature of play. For example, does play help us to learn, to prepare for adulthood and the world of work? Do we learn to abide by rules in play, or do we learn to bend or subvert the rules? Are all forms of play beneficial?

And what about the media panic that children are being exposed to the apparent dangers of digital play? The new knowledge and understanding you will gain from this course might be the inspiration for a career related to play. For example, as a play therapist or play worker. Perhaps you might want to go into the creative industries, as a games designer or developer, as an artist or a designer in the theatre. And of course, being a playful parent or carer is the foundation for bonding, from the very first games of peek-a-boo, to whole families that play in parks and festivals, and in virtual worlds.

We also want to persuade you that playing with ideas and possibilities is fundamental to invention and innovation in the sciences, engineering, architecture, mathematics, medicine, business and technology. So you can see that there are some important questions to ask about play, which will help you to think differently about something that we so often take for granted. So the next time you think that something is child’s play, you will know that actually it is deeply serious and significant. And you will begin to understand why the future is playful.