Women, Visibility and Playful Acts: Using play to empower, educate and act in public spaces.

Abstract

Women Visibility and Playful Acts is an annual event organised by the feminist research group F=, focusing on playful approaches to creative practices in public spaces. Play is used as a core strategy to invite the public/participants to express ideas, opinions and self around themes connected to feminism using International Women’s Day as a public platform for these expressions. In creating spaces of non-hierarchical activity, play, as a method of establishing trust, is used to aid communication, to make new things happen and enable transformation, employing strategies of humour and the spectacle to engage a diverse, intergenerational audience. It is primarily through playful means that we extend an invitation to take part. 

This paper visually documents with a textual commentary the process of the project and the ways we use play to empower, educate and act in public spaces.