PLAYING UP Play-In at Latitude

“Loud, communal screams, free haircuts and the creation of temporary children only zones were just some of the actions created at the PLAYING UP Public Play-In inside the Faraway Forest at the Latitude Festival 2016.

Commitments were made to ‘be vegetarian for a week’, ‘smile at 100 people’ and my personal favourite ‘spend a day in a box’ as the teams of adults and kids (many having just met for the first time) worked together to create fleeting artworks within the festival site. 

Fun was most definitely the order of the day as the kids and the adults discovered their inner live artist.”

– Katy Baird, LADA Coordinator and Latitude PLAYING UP Ambassador

On Saturday 16 July 2016 we hosted a PLAYING UP Play-In at Latitude Festival in Suffolk. This is the third public Play-In following events at Tate Modern (London) and BUZZCUT Festival (Glasgow). 

The gallery above includes images of the activities at Latitude and references to the Live Art works that inspired them.

Anyone can buy their own copy of PLAYING UP, however we are also encouraging museums, galleries, theatres or festivals to engage with PLAYING UP as part of a public family programme. All Play-ins so far have created engaging and entertaining intergenerational public activities.  Here is what Lyn Gardner had to say about PLAYING UP in The Guardian, April 2016:

“In a time of political apathy, particularly among young people squeezed through the sausage machine of education with so much emphasis on league tables and so little on creativity, and when both schools and parents are increasingly risk adverse, PLAYING UP offers the tools to take risks, wrest back agency and question power relationships. All while having fun and making art.” 

You can catch forthcoming Play-Ins this Autumn at Cambridge Junction, Compass Live Art, Leeds and SPILL Festival of Performance, Ipswich.

Alternatively if you are interested in hosting a public Play-In, please contact us to find out more.  We can help you devise a Play-In for your own programme, and we have a small team of trained PLAYING UP Ambassadors to help you run the event.

View the dedicated Playing Up website