University research project. Conducted with serious play and playful seriousness.

​

Ludens Lounge began as a Master’s research project exploring how play can be used as a genuine tool for creativity and design within performance.

​

Participants were invited into an interactive space and asked to experiment in two stages. The first was open play — free exploration without instructions. Some people loved it. Others looked briefly terrified. It turns out that “do whatever you want” can be surprisingly stressful.

​

In the second stage, players were given a loose brief and asked to use what they’d discovered through play to create something purposeful. This shift revealed that even a small framework can transform confusion into invention.

The project was influenced and informed by the writings of Huizinga, Caillois, and Sutton-Smith — theorists who treated play as a serious matter, which is reassuring if you’re trying to get funding for it.

​

In the end, the project found that play is an incredibly powerful creative tool for performance however the conditions need to be right for the participants. Some people are very stifled by the aspect of freely playing. However small adjustments to environment or a helpful buzzword or phrase and your off to the races, in a spaceship, made of biscuits.