About us | PLaY Group

Our Philosophy: Why We Play

Play is a powerful tool that excites, sparks creativity, and helps build empathy across diverse audiences, from students to policymakers. Playful approaches to learning and research already flourish across disciplines and faculties. The PLaY Group exists to bring playful approaches, and playful people, together, in our home at the University of York, across Yorkshire, and beyond.

Our mission is to design and share experiential, game-based and creative learning resources while connecting local playful expertise with external partners, civic bodies, businesses and community organisations. We support educators, researchers, designers and students working with playful methods in higher education, research, and the community. From navigating intellectual property for playful resources to accessing research and industry funding, the PLaY Group offers the infrastructure that individual practitioners often lack. We also act as a broker for sharing and distributing York(shire)-created tools more widely.

Our Playbook

Research
We embed playful participatory methods from problem framing and co-design to data collection, analysis and outreach, strengthening partnerships with research participants and stakeholders

Education
We help staff and students design and share experiential, game-based and creative learning resources, improving engagement, creativity and retention

Knowledge exchange
We connect York's playful expertise with external partners, civic bodies, businesses and community organisations through interactive tools for consultation, co-design and training.

Our Principles/Values

We connect the community. We harness human curiosity and innovation to create new playful ways of learning and working across disciplines and sectors. We build inclusive and compassionate spaces in which people and projects can transform lives.

🌍 connect 🤲 create 🪄 transform 💚

PLaY Leaders

Pen Holland

Professor of Ecology and Education, Co-lead of YESI Play for the Planet network

A game I make everyone play: Red7
On the surface it’s a really simple and colourful card game but because players have to adapt to beat a changing win state, it’s full of complex emergent behaviour and secretly very close to evolutionary biology.

A game that represents me: can I combine Calico with Arboretum?
Cats, patchwork and trees, beautiful artwork, themes of nurture and nature, and the option to indulge my competitive side.

Laura Mitchell

Senior Lecturer in Management

My favourite game: Werewolf (or Mafia, or Blood on the Clocktower)
You never know if you’ll have to be the villain, and it gives everyone permission to be enormous liars while claiming to be absolutely trustworthy.

A game that taught me something useful: Unknown Armies.
The game has magical themes but unlike Dungeons and Dragons’ heroic stats like Strength and Wisdom, characters are built around Passions and Obsessions. It taught me how storytelling games can illustrate relationships and provide a wonderful way for groups to narrate meaningful presents or futures without having to be powerful ‘leaders’ locked in a contest with villains or monsters all the time.

Ella Howes

Yorkshire Policy Collaboration Partnership Manager

A game that completely challenged my idea of fun: Tempo
I expected to hate it – it’s a singing game, and I am decidedly NOT a singer. Each round you’re dealt a new sound to add to your sequence, gradually building into a weird, cacophonous chant. The intense focus it demands makes you forget any self-consciousness. It felt like my brain had been cleared out and reset!

A game I always take with me if I’m going away with friends: Dobble.
It’s portable, accessible, and I love the snatchy chaos!

Prasad Sandbhor

Serious game designer and researcher, PLaY Group Pathfinder

York Steering Group

Colin Poma-Young

Commercialisation Manager, University of York

Hannah Gray

Head of Public Involvement and Participatory Research (PIPR)

Dr Ben Kirman

Reader in Interactive Media, University of York

My favourite game is the moment before the rules have been explained – when you’re guessing what pieces do and what they might mean, to the growing frustration of the person who brought it.

A game that taught me something useful: 1000 Year Old Vampire (and other journaling RPGs)
They taught me how little it takes to spark genuinely rewarding stories. They also taught me to trust myself as a player and to trust the players in my own designs.

Damian Murphy

Professor of Sound and Music Computing; Director XR Stories

Joel Baker

Faculty Impact Coordinator, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of York

A game that brings out my best self: Dungeons & Dragons
Being introduced to it during the 2020 lockdowns got me back in touch with an imaginative side I’d lost, it led me to start writing fiction and drawing fantasy maps.

A game I play to unwind: Harmonies
Beautiful design, unhurried pace, focus on the natural world – it has a meditative quality alongside real strategic depth. Perfect for dark winter evenings.

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