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In 2021 the BIN network (Børneforskere i Norden - [Children’s Culture Researchers in the Nordic Countries]) invited researchers from all over the world to meet in order to explore potential relationships and bridges between two research areas, childhood studies and design, that share an interest in play as a topic of research.
The conference invited both practitioners and scholars to participate to empower and enrich a landscape for conversation and development in order for the areas to inspire each other. Over 400 people from all over the world participated in sessions during the two-day conference.
Based on the conference, we invited authors to contribute to this special issue of Conjunctions. Transdisciplinary Journal of Cultural Participation with the title <italic>Designing for Play as Cultural Participation in Childhood. Seeking new grounds.</italic>
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Professor, Department of Industrial Design

Professor, Department of Pedagogy, Religion and Social Studies

Western Norway University of Applied Sciences

Editorial introduction to Designing for Play as Cultural Production in Childhood. Seeking new grounds.

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This paper reports results of completed research with primary school children which took place in Athens, Greece. Children engaged in designing the play experience of digital mini-games corresponding to episodes/missions of an entire plot. The games were coded by the school teacher on low-end mobile phones using AppInventor and were then played by children designers and testers. The game plot concerned restoring management rules for a public space (an urban park), along sustainability principles. The results focused on the participation processes of children in critical game narrative design, and decision-making about public space management alternatives to embed in game narrative design.
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Participatory digital gameplay narrative design for public space sustainability management: empirical research with primary school children

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The use of digital tools is becoming increasingly common in early childhood education. One key to using digital tools to enhance learning in children may lie in using them the way children tend to when given the choice: as play. This article examines and evaluates multilingual children’s mathematical engagement with digital apps, focusing specifically on what might be learned from multilingual children’s mathematical and playful participation when interacting with two different apps. Mathematical engagement is here defined by Alan Bishop’s six mathematical activities: counting, measuring, locating, designing, playing and explaining. Helenius et al.’s elaboration of mathematical play is used to connect the mathematical play to the play of children. Multilingual children’s interactions with digital apps have been video recorded in natural settings in a kindergarten. The findings show that playful digital apps do promote the children’s participation in mathematical activities, while apps that aim to provide a formal learning structure seem to promote neither play nor mathematical activities.
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Multilingual Children’s Mathematical Engagement with Apps: What Can Be Learned from Multilingual Children’s Mathematical and Playful Participation when Interacting with Two Different Apps?

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In this study, we test and discuss a Danish communication and entertainment mobile application (app) aimed at children aged 10 to 12 years for use by families and schools. The app, Tidslommen, has been developed by Museum Vestsjælland, a collaboration among natural history museums in Denmark. Tidslommen features audio and video guides and augmented reality with game elements, which become active when users enter specific geographical spots. Adopting a transdisciplinary approach (media study, studies in children’s culture, educational neuroscience, educational anthropology) and using a combination of the walkthrough method and sensory ethnography, we explore the functionalities of the app at four locations. With our field-based user experiences as the point of departure, we analyse and discuss the potential and challenges related to the intersections among bodily and nature-based experiences, mobile technology and participatory practices as part of a didactic setting that aims to encourage children to participate in experiences with nature. Our study suggests that using mobile technology encourages interactions between peers and moving around at a location. The app also allows for an individualised experience characterised by a play-oriented approach to the location.
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Technology, participation and bodily interactions in nature: The potential of mobile technology in situated learning

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This qualitative design research study looks at how children’s participation in the design process influences design students and their decisions when designing for play. The study analyses the experiences and reflections of 16 design students collaborating online with children around the world and identifies challenges and opportunities regarding this way of working. One case example illustrates how a design student (Paula) is able to acquire a better understanding of a child (Pedro) and his everyday life and uncover cultural challenges for the child’s opportunity to play. The article concludes on how a more balanced design process that includes collaboration with children can make design students become more aware of the cultural context they are designing for, leading to the potential of more child relevant play experiences.
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Child-centred design decisions – how children’s participation in the design process influences design students’ decisions when designing for play

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The theoretical paper explores the question how designers and children can interact as peer citizens in participatory design (PD) processes. By discussing and integrating Mouritsen’s (2002) concept of child culture, approaches to child-citizenship and concepts of free play, we discuss how participatory design practices could stimulate child and adult cultures to permeate each other and by doing so, enable democratic interactions. Both children and adults are required to step away from their internalized normative ways of interaction. Adult designers are invited to also play and improvise whereas children are encouraged to play, but also to share responsibility for the process and outcome of PD sessions. The Ambiguity Approach (Vaneycken, 2020) is introduced as a methodological basis for more democratic PD practice with children. Two snapshots of PD processes illustrate the implementation of ambiguity of roles and ambiguity of materials respectively.
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Democratic Design Through Play

AHEAD OF PRINT

Volume 11 (2024): Issue 1 (March 2024)

Volume 10 (2023): Issue 1 (October 2023)

Volume 9 (2022): Issue 2 (October 2022)

Volume 9 (2022): Issue 1 (June 2022)

Volume 8 (2021): Issue 1 (January 2021) Health, Media and Participation

Volume 7 (2020): Issue 2 (October 2020) Failures in Cultural Participation

Volume 7 (2020): Issue 1 (July 2020) Feminism, Gender, Social Movements and Everyday Resistance

Volume 6 (2019): Issue 1 (December 2019) Cultural Participation, Social Media Affect and Art

Volume 5 (2018): Issue 1 (May 2018) Community and Creative Research. Developing Participatory Methodologies

Volume 4 (2017): Issue 1 (December 2017) Playful Participation II

Volume 3 (2016): Issue 1 (June 2016) Playful Participation

Volume 2 (2015): Issue 2 (December 2015) Participation across Institutional and Disciplinary Boundaries

Volume 2 (2015): Issue 1 (October 2015) Mediatized Cultural Activism

Volume 1 (2014): Issue 1 (November 2014) Participatory Cultural Citizenship

Conjunctions

Conjunctions seeks to create an international and transdisciplinary forum for the investigation of user-generated cultural production, user-driven cultural participation and citizen involvement across a variety of social fields, contexts and practices, e.g. urban spaces, (digital) media, social media platforms, education and teaching, the cultural sector and creative industries, aesthetic productions and museums, health institutions, activism and design.  The overall focus of the journal is to explore the socially transformative and democratic potential of cultural participation processes, to qualify the academic understanding of what ‘participation’ is and what it involves, and to discuss the complex relations created between user-generated processes and established institutions and discourses.  We take an interest in critical analyses of participatory practices, rhetoric and involvement strategies, in affirmative investigations of participation, in explorations of explicit or conscious and implicit or non-conscious forms of participation.  Submitted articles can be focused on theoretical development or on empirical analysis (of e.g. case studies). We also welcome work that use innovative or creative methods as well as more traditional methods.  The journal invites submissions from a variety of disciplinary fields such as media and communication studies, cultural studies, interaction and participatory design, cultural geography, education, aesthetics, science and technology studies, health care, health communication, information science, sociology, anthropology, development studies and gender studies.  The journal is published twice every year.  Archiving  Sciendo archives the contents of this journal in Portico - digital long-term preservation service of scholarly books, journals and collections.  Plagiarism Policy  The editorial board is participating in a growing community of Similarity Check System's users in order to ensure that the content published is original and trustworthy. Similarity Check is a medium that allows for comprehensive manuscripts screening, aimed to eliminate plagiarism and provide a high standard and quality peer-review process. 