Permission to play: the life-changing power of having aimless fun

Why we all need to play more

Credit: Getty

Health


Permission to play: the life-changing power of having aimless fun

By Hannah Keegan

2 years ago

10 min read

Feeling overworked but underwhelmed? Stylist reports on the very real benefits of channelling your inner child and carving out some playtime.

Emma Worrollo, a play consultant based in Bournemouth, is watching a group of adults get their hands dirty. Play-Doh is being pushed and pulled and moulded, the sticky substance forming shapes and figurines. One woman is making a sculpture of herself up a tree as a child. Another is creating a model of how she sees her life right now. “That’s when more straight lines and enclosed spaces occur,” Worrollo says. “When that happens, I ask: ‘What would the kid-you change? How do you get that sense of fun back in your life?’”

Worrollo runs these workshops virtually for her Patreon community, The Playful Den, and its accompanying Instagram (find its fans under #liveplayfully). She has a background in children’s research and began the project as a way to help mothers engage with their children as they played, but she soon realised adults were wildly in need of relearning the joy of play for themselves, too. “It then surged in popularity during lockdown,” she says. “It was mostly because I was talking about the positive ways this impacts mental health, and people needed that relief hugely.”

She isn’t wrong. In 2023, many of us are square-eyed and exhausted – in a February of this year a survey of 10,243 global workers by US think-tank Future Forum saw 42% report feeling burnout, the highest this figure has been since May 2021. Which is why, more than ever, we desperately need to reclaim ‘play’ as unadulterated us time. Think of it like this: if you had access to a release valve that helps you switch off entirely, and then allows you to come back to whatever you’re working on afresh, why wouldn’t you use it?

And play is having a moment. Last year, British artist Emily Forgot installed a series of colourful climbing-frame-like structures to “inspire optimism and playfulness after lockdown” in London. Sadiq Khan also appointed five children as Mayors of Play, in an effort to encourage people to explore the city through the guides they create – with fun being the whole point. Meanwhile Coralie Sleap, founder of the play-obsessed London store and events space Drink, Shop & Do, which Covid sadly forced to close for good, has written Get Your Play On, a book packed with kid-like activities adults are encouraged to embrace. Play-Doh now sells adult kits with scents such as Overpriced Latte and Spa Day, while elsewhere, bars are encouraging a game-like atmosphere. Think Shoreditch’s Ballie Ballerson, which has a literal ballpit, and Monopoly Lifesized, the IRL version of the boardgame, now open in London’s Tottenham Court Road.

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