Playing with the Trouble

A travelling library for transformative play

What is this project about?

A critical challenge for addressing urgent broad societal issues is to navigate multiple worldviews and perspectives, both within academic research contexts and at the interface of science and society. Spaces that cultivate playfulness can open up participants to express, share, question, and transform how they experience and act in the world. Our interdisciplinary team of ten researchers has been co-designing card decks and other playful materials and activities that can support transdisciplinary collaborations. Our goal is to consolidate these learnings into a “travelling library for transformative play” to circulate widely and enable collaborations to address important societal challenges.

The Playing with the Trouble team recently received a UCo grant for 2024 to continue their unusual teamwork!

Working on this project are:

Jet Vervoort, Dan Lockton, Raimon Ripoll-Bosch, Jessica Duncan, Maikel Waardenburg, Josephine Chambers, Joost Vervoort, Joyce Browne

This project was also funded through an Unusual Collaborations grant in 2022 and 2023

Playing with the Trouble Year 2 reportDownload

“Games—especially multiplayer games—offer unique possibilities for building strong interdisciplinary connections.”

The sketchnotes below are courtesy of Elvia Vasconcelos de Gouveia.

How we see the case studies learning from each other—a visualisation of the process
Graphic illustration of how we came up with different types of games that support collaboration and project development.

UCo Projects Feed

Get into contact

If you want to know more about this project or come into contact with the researchers working on this, you can e-mail Dr. Dan Lockton. Interested in who is working on this project? You can find all CUCo fellows on our fellow page.

Contact info

Mail: d.j.g.lockton@tue.nl