Playful Blueprints: Designing Personal and Professional Sandboxes

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This is the latest conversation in our Play Matters series.

I've spoken with a board game designer about the theory of game design, and by extension, play-space design.

I've spoken with a man who goes into prisons, who brings creative exercises into those difficult, stifled places, helping people unlock their hearts.

I've spoken with a woman who brings play into ceremony and alternative education.

I've spoken with an indigenous woman who brings play into her work of decolonization, cultural renewal, and intercultural bridge building.

And now, I'm happy to bring you a conversation with my good friend Tamara Strijack, who works in education and child and adolescent support.

She is a counselor and educator working on Vancouver Island, near where I'm living now, and she specializes in childhood and adolescent development. In the last 25 years, she's worked as a mentor, counselor, youth leader, program director, and group facilitator. And she's now mainly a parent consultant. She also offers workshops and teaches university courses for teachers and counselors in training.

She's a mother of two and the daughter of Gordon Neufeld, and she works in the Neufeld Institute.

In this conversation, we get into why play is so vital for human well-being. How it is such a mistake to consider it something that children do just to pass their time. It's an integral part of what we need to be healthy and grow at every stage in our lives, not just childhood. And it can be a space to practice what we might then do within the greater field of our life.

Play is vital for these reasons and more.

We also speak about how to craft zones of play for children and adults, although for adults, we might not call them play zones, we might call them something more official sounding. These can be physical spaces, but perhaps more importantly, they are emotional spaces.

As you listen to this, I invite you to consider where in your life you have place spaces and where you might want to create or enhance play spaces.

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