Ludic practice: the case for play in university museums

Sarah Campbell

Vol. 4 No. 1 (2019)
'Libraries, Archives and Special Collections' special issue

Provocations

Ludic practice: the case for play in university museums

Published 2019-06-21

Sarah Campbell

Authors who publish in this journal agree to the following terms:

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g. publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g. on their own website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.

Spark: UAL Creative Teaching and Learning Journal has made best effort to ensure accuracy of the contents of this journal, however makes no claims to the authenticity and completeness of the articles published. Authors are responsible for ensuring copyright clearance for any images, tables etc which are supplied from an outside source.

Abstract

This article calls for a greater use of play in university museums and study collections. Play is not new in museums but ‘ludic practice’ calls for a tailored approach, centred on teaching collections and art and design students, and focusing on the object rather than the game or play interaction, as can be the focus in public collections. This article explores the work of Carson & Miller, the development of ludic practice and gives an overview of initial teaching experiments carried out with first year students on the Fine Art 3D pathway at Central Saint Martins (UAL).

Keywords

ludic, play, museums, collections, object-based learning

HTML PDF

Author Biography

Sarah Campbell

Sarah Campbell is a Curator at the Central Saint Martins Museum & Study Collection (UAL). She has 10 years of experience working in museums and collections. Her background is in History of Art, specialising in 20^th Century British Modernism and within the CSM Museum she mainly works with the Contemporary Collection, Painting and Ceramics. Sarah has a research interest in ludic practice (games and play in museums) which developed out of her research on object based learning for her Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education. Her role at CSM includes collections management, exhibition curating and teaching. She works with a variety of courses across CSM.

References

D pathway Fine Art student (2018) Interviewed by Sarah Campbell, 29 October.
Allmer, P. (2018) Interviewed by Sarah Campbell, 26 February 2018.
Brotchie, A. and Gooding, M. (1995) A book of surrealist games. Boston: Shambhala Redstone Editions.
Carson and Miller (2019a) ‘Images’, Carson & Miller. Available at: http://carsonandmiller.co.uk/images/#/the-story-of-things-1/ (Accessed: 1 March 2019).
Carson and Miller (2019b) ‘Game playing’, Carson & Miller. Available at: http://carsonandmiller.co.uk/game-playing/#/a-library-game/ (Accessed: 1 March 2019).
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2008) Finding flow. New York: Basic Books.
Hammond, A., Berry, I., Conkelton, S., Corwin, S., Franks, P., Hart, K., Lynch-McWhite, W., Reeve, C. and Stomberg, J. (2006) ‘The role of the university art museum and gallery’, Art Journal, 65(3), pp.20–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/00043249.2006.10791213.
Prown, J.D. (1982) ‘Mind in matter: an introduction to material culture theory and method’, Winterthur Portfolio, 17(1), pp.1–19. https://doi.org/10.1086/496065.