From Workplace to Playspace is about visionary, courageous, innovative, and persistent organizations that challenge long-held preconceptions about the incompatibility of workplace and playspace. Each day organizations across industries and with wide-ranging missions are discovering that playspace is the space they can and must create every day at work if they are to think creatively, question old assumptions, respond effectively to the unexpected, and engage all to work at the top of their talent. Filled with case examples from such organizations as Learning Curve International, Google, Chicago Public Schools, Umpqua Bank, and Threadless, the author provides both the conceptual framework and the principles to guide practitioners to create playspace for innovating, learning and changing in their organizations.

Change is hard but does it need to be painful? What if there was a more intrinsically motivating and nourishing way to drive change? Play to Transform is a book that challenges the traditional mindset of business leaders and encourages them to tap into their inner child to accelerate transformation with purpose. The book argues that we are all born creative geniuses with an innate ability to empathize deeply with others, but somewhere along the way, we have lost touch with these qualities. In the postpandemic world, leaders need to be more empathetic and agile than ever before, and a conscious shift in mindset is required to achieve this. Drawing on reallife examples, contemporary shift strategies and key implications for organizations, the book demonstrates how play can be used as a catalyst for transformation and innovation. By providing a psychologically safe and cocreative environment that normalizes failure, the book shows how organizations can encourage their employees to express themselves more freely and make the necessary shifts to embrace change and find harmony in chaos. The book challenges the myth that play is frivolous and cannot be used for serious work, offering a fresh perspective on how to conduct business with more heart and soul.

Children like to play. They get all sorts of benefits from playing. They get the most benefit from play when they are in control of what they are doing. Yet there are lots of circumstances today that mean children are not able to control their own play and that's where playwork comes in, where the role of the playworker is to create environments that enable children to take control of their playing. This book aims to explore the similarities, differences and tensions that exist between play and playwork including appropriate definitions and the conflict around the role of the adult. Fraser Brown proposes a play to playwork continuum, where playing can be considered a 'developmental and evolutionary' activity and playwork a 'compensatory' activity. Helpfully structured around the aspects considered by the author as most important for playwork, this book uses 101 fascinating stories of children playing to illuminate a range of play and playwork theories. The rich array of powerful stories - drawn from the casebooks of eminent and experienced playworkers - speak for themselves whilst at the same time triggering theoretical explorations that are interwoven with the stories in each chapter. Mesmerizing, absorbing and original, this is essential reading for playwork students and practitioners, as well as for students and practitioners of early years, childhood, children's health and wellbeing, and children’s social care.

Explore the multiple ways adults learn through their bodies. Embodied or somatic learning is a way of learning that relies on the body’s knowledge. Our most basic form of learning in childhood is preverbal; however, traditional schooling forces us to check our bodies at the door, requiring us to sit at a desk and raise our hands, focusing primarily on cognition to the exclusion of other ways of knowing. By the time we reach adulthood, “being in our bodies” is a foreign concept and a source of discomfort for many of us. This volume challenges the dominant paradigm of how knowledge is constructed and shared. Embodied learning is examined through a variety of practice contexts, including higher education, community education, health care, and the workplace, and through multiple methods, including dance, theater, and outdoor experiential education. This is 134th volume of the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education. Noted for its depth of coverage, it explores issues of common interest to instructors, administrators, counselors, and policymakers in a broad range of adult and continuing education settings, such as colleges and universities, extension programs, businesses, libraries, and museums.

Compared to its ‘cousin’ innovation, academic research on creativity has been less well covered in journals and books. This is despite the fact that creativity has a profound role in many different subject disciplines. This book is a unique collection of some of the latest research from a range of leading creativity researchers. Providing a clear understanding of the main concepts, this book: Introduces creativity from an inter-disciplinary perspective Discusses the environmental determinants of creativity development Explores creativity research in the differing disciplines of business, music and education Creativity Research will be of interest and importance to researchers across a variety of subject disciplines, as well as students and practitioners of creativity, innovation and organizational behaviour, amongst others.

How to Grow a Playspace takes you through a global perspective of the different stages of child development and the environments that engage children in play around the world. From the urbanity of Mumbai; to rainbow nets in Japan; nature play in Denmark; recycling waste in Peru; community building in Uganda; play streets in London; and gardens of peace in Palestine, it proves that no matter where play occurs, it is ubiquitous in its resourcefulness, imagination and effect. Written by international leaders in the field of play including academics, designers and playworkers, How to Grow A Playspace discusses contemporary issues around children and play, such as risk benefit in play, creativity and technology, insights into children’s thinking, social inclusion and what makes a city child-friendly. With its own ‘Potting Shed’, this text is also a practical guide to support playspace projects with advice on teams, budgets, community engagement, maintenance and standards. How to Grow a Playspace is a comprehensive ‘go-to’ guide for anyone interested or involved in children’s play and playspaces.