Week 1 PPC Agenda

The Prioritizing Play Conference is almost upon us an I can't wait to share all of our amazing speakers and their topics! Check out what we've cooked up for week 1:

Relating to Play as Radical Self- Expression:

Case Study with Kelsey Langley of KOOP Adventure Play:

Using my love language of story sharing, I'll open each week's content with a short story of play from my playwork experience that highlights the work we're about to dive into and sets the tone for where we're headed during the week.

Jill Wood of Adventure Play at the Parish School & Bayou City Play:

Jill walks us through the personal ways our own play and professions come with us into the play space. She reminds us of how children show us what they need through play and shares how playwork answers that with patience, care and a professional framework where play is the priority.

Morgan Leichter- Saxby of Pop- Up Adventure Play

What are the requirements and benefits of brave, curious, experimental play? How do children navigate and manifest complex ways of being? We'll examine key theory on play's own processes (play cycle) to discuss the practices, skills and liberatory possibilities of self-directed play, with particular reference to gender creativity.

Erica Larsen- Dockray of SCV Adventure Play & Calibraska Arts Initiative:

Intersections of Art, Play and Identity will take a look at how deeply playwork, play, creative expression, artmaking and process vs. product blend into each other yet are so often isolated in the public eye. We will take a peek at a few artists who tap into the play flow and play ques through their work, utilize play in the outcome and push back on systems of the art world aiming to categorize and define them. This is the springboard into cracking open those connections to adventure play and how like an artist, when young people have access to permission, time, space, and resources their formation of identity receives validation on their own terms.J

Rick Erwin of The City Museum in St. Louis, MO:

We're so excited to welcome Rick, the Executive Director of the amazing City Museum in St. Louis which is unlike any other place on earth! Radical self-expression led to the creation of this space in an old shoe factory which includes giant whales, slides, "underground" caves, a ferris wheel and a million other amazing things. Personally I'd recommend getting knee pads and preparing to spend an entire day at this wonderful play space that was born out of Bob Cassilly's own artistic expression.