All art, all mediums, all play welcome.
Accepting until March 17.
✪ Submit Now
Why Play?
We create environments aimed at combating social isolation, repairing social trust, and playful encounters and activities that often fade away after childhood.While play has and will always be vital to a functioning society, it feels especially urgent today. In “Democracy and Truth,” historian Sophia Rosenfeld argues that Americans are living in a post-truth era—not because facts have themselves vanished, but because the collective belief in truth as a necessary concept in of itself is eroding, leaving us without a unifying foundation. At the heart of this crisis is a breakdown of social trust. Trust is the invisible yet vital thread that binds communities, enables democratic dialogue, and shapes our shared reality. Without it, both truth and connection begin to fray.
Play offers a powerful remedy. Play acts as a universal code of human connection that transcends words. When we engage in playful encounters with strangers of all backgrounds and ages, we create low-stakes environments to rebuild trust, foster curiosity, and practice seeing one another with openness and empathy. Through play, we reconnect—not just with others, but with the very essence of what it means to be human.
Our philosophy draws from the ideas of a broad range of scholars, artists, and activists who have deeply explored play's role in human culture and society. Dutch historian Johan Huizinga positions play as the historical cornerstone and predecessor of human cultures, arguing that humans have always crucially engaged in play through playing with sounds until they became language, spontaneous and improvisational conversation, and the performative elements of rituals. This foundational view of play is complemented by contemporary perspectives, such as Belgian videographer Francis Alys's work documenting children's creative resistance to capitalist society - capturing how they transform everyday objects like car tires, marbles, chairs and sticks into sources of long-term entertainment and joy.
Play is free, spontaneous, and intimate. It evokes curiosity and creativity through involving tension, release, risk, complete immersion, challenge, and flexibility. Play acts as a suspension of real life, encouraging worldbuilding, imagination, and complete engagement with the present.
At our core, How Do We Play hopes to recreate the spontaneity of recess, and encourage a joyful reclamation of our shared humanity through play. We hope that you will join us for a playdate!