Islands in the Stream—A Playshop about Playshops

Tore Gulden, Fred Steier, Pille Bunnell, and Linda Blaasvær

This workshop is a playful workshop about how workshops work. Indeed, part of the claim is that they work because they enable play. Hence, play is the central metaphor for the dynamic that we would like to examine. How can groups explore ideas together in what we usually name workshops but may more appropriately be named playshops? We self-referentially have a playshop to elucidate how playshops can be utilised to stimulate creative relationships and understanding of the paradoxes of assumed shared frames and processes and what they could potentially mean for design (Bateson, 2000; Bateson, 2005). Here, a collaborative and playful setting encourages participants to embrace complexity, offering both insights and tools for navigating the systemic tensions inherent in design and learning processes. The session concludes with a synthesis of ideas and reflections, leaving space for future inquiry.

Building on this foundation, the playshop centres around key themes such as play, complexity, and the tensions that arise in systemic design. These are explored through play probes (Gulden et al., 2021), which are designed to elicit creative agency and dialogue by framing specific design challenges. Through play probes, participants engage in an interactive process that highlights the paradoxes and tacit assumptions embedded in design and learning contexts. Reflexivity is a core principle; we observe how our engagement in the playshop mirrors the complexities we encounter in practice.

Play, in this context, is more than an activity—it is a framework that opens a metacommunicative space. This space allows for a reflective dialogue where framing, context, and interaction come to the forefront, revealing the often hidden assumptions that shape systemic processes. Bateson’s ideas on play and framing form the theoretical backdrop, showing how the act of engaging in play can disrupt conventional modes of thinking and catalyse new forms of understanding in both design and learning systems.

This exploration of play and design further connects to the broader themes in systemic design, where dealing with complexity, emergence, and adaptability is central to tackling multifaceted challenges. Playshops provide environments that mirror these real-world complexities, utilising tools such as gigamapping, which helps participants visualise the relationships between different system levels. Through creative interactions, participants move fluidly between ideas, engaging in jumping conversations (Wettre et al., 2022) and discovering the tensions that emerge from shared assumptions and frames of reference.

By shifting the focus from structured, goal-oriented workshops to more fluid, exploratory playshops, Islands in the Stream challenges the traditional framing of workshops and the assumptions that underpin them. We offer play as an essential aspect of communication, learning, and social interaction. In this space, formal boundaries are loosened, creating room for serendipity, creativity, and the reframing of knowledge. This approach not only highlights the complexity of communication processes but also opens up new possibilities for engaging with the layered and often paradoxical nature of systemic design.

At its core, the playshop creates opportunities for participants to interact in ways that mimic the complexity of the systems they are working within, offering an experiential understanding of how play can shape and redefine design processes. This shift encourages a more open, dynamic mode of engagement that reflects the unpredictability and emergence inherent in systemic challenges.