MAPL: Making Play

MAPL has been developed by Dr Dieter Declercq and Dr Ambrose Gillick. Dieter is a media scholar working on mental health. Ambrose is a designer, who develops participatory and community-led architecture. Their ongoing collaboration explores how we can use play to foster creativity. Combining their research expertise, they designed an innovative kit of clips and connectors to “make play” (MAPL). Through a series of activities in community, educational and organizational settings, they also finetuned a set of workshop principles.

The Division of Arts and Humanities at the University of Kent has awarded an AHRC Impact Accelerator Award to develop a sustainable enterprise model for MAPL. Together with project manager Sam Holmans Thompson, Ambrose and Dieter are working to make the MAPL kit and workshops commercially available. This project is breaking new ground in harnessing the opportunities of commercialisation to accelerate the social impact of arts and humanities research at Kent. To do so, the MAPL team have been working productively with colleagues in Research and Innovation Services and the ASPIRE start-up labs at Kent Business School.

Vision

At MAPL, we make play for creative action. Our workshops transform environments to inspire spontaneous creativity. We believe that people are inherently creative and that creativity is constructive and prosocial.

Being creative requires courage. It means defying pressures to conform and trusting your own beliefs. People who commit to their authentic creativity are vulnerable to ridicule. Often, creative difference is not nurtured by social and organizational systems.

Play is a means to encourage spontaneous creativity. In our workshops, we build imaginative worlds, invent stories and play around with expectations. We prepare for creative action by exploring unexpected connections and embracing creative vulnerability.

Want to know more?

Just reach out to Dieter (dd324@kent.ac.uk) and Ambrose (a.gillick@kent.ac.uk).