Quite moved by the content of the “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” by Freire where he advocates for a pedagogy of the oppressed, in which education is a collaborative process of dialogue between teachers and students, and I’m finding a strong link between such advocacy and the idea of teaching/learning through play which I hope to successfully be applying in my design teaching, e.g.: by introducing techniques of improv comedy where everyone participates in creating a story and where the most succesful narrative is that of ‘yes, and…’ instead of ‘no…’or ‘why?”

(5 essential rules of improv: https://zapier.com/blog/improv-customer-support/)

Also – in context of the subject I teach which is interior architecture/design, play itself with its simple sense of movement of the body in space: be it during site visits, research walks, field recording which allow to free the mind, the body and body-mind. Thinking of Bauhaus and the interdisciplinary hands-on approach, too, that allows individual’s investiogation into intuitive methodologies that then transform into more aware choice of methods and techniques, independent from imposed by brief, for instance.

There is, or at least I believe so, very little of oppressed or oppressor roles in play as such.  As play itself is aiming for movement of the body, hands fiddling with models, minds thinking of progressive drawings capturing the invisible, or imagining a performative costume, the play’s prinicple is to liberate aiming for pleasure.

Another thought to ponder on is no-one is an empty vessel (as according to “banking model”) as empirical observation lies in the grounds of development from very early moments of human life; and play facilitates that ‘intakes’ of experience.