Some people see a city as streets, buildings, and infrastructure. Troy Innocent sees it as a playground.
A BMX-riding, LEGO-city-building, world-maker from childhood, Troy never stopped playing. But instead of keeping it to himself, he turned his playful instinct into The Future Play Lab.
At RMIT, Troy is transforming how people interact with public spaces through speculative design, urban play, Indigenous knowledge and augmented reality experiences like 64 Ways of Being.
From risky play in childhood to playful interventions in cityscapes, Troy and The Future Play Lab are proving that play isn’t just fun; it’s how we reimagine the world.
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Hello there!
We’re Dr. Jane Hession and Ronan Healy. We’re a husband and wife team and co-founders of the service design studio How Might We - www.howmightwe.design
We're passionate about Serious Play and provide online, in-house training in the LEGO Serious Play method worldwide. Please say hello, if you would like to bring the LEGO method to your organisation.
We also do in-person training across Ireland and the UK www.howmightwe.design/lego-serious-play-ireland
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Troy who?
Dr Innocent (he/they) is an urban play scholar, artist, game maker and Director of the future play lab at RMIT University in Narrm Melbourne. The lab develops socially engaged and site-responsive urban play connecting experimental game design, public space, posthuman methods, and creative technologies.
Working with the city as a material, their approach to reworlding develops posthuman methods that reimagine, reconfigure and reconnect with the world. This involves transdisciplinary practices across design, sculpture, animation, sound, light and installation using methods of multiplatform storytelling that connect objects with their environment to build speculative worlds that playfully defamiliarise and disrupt urban life.
Troy has 25 years of experience in gallery-based exhibitions, symposia and site-specific projects, developing augmented reality games that blend physical objects with digital interfaces to reimagine everyday urban environments in playful ways, situating his work in Aarhus, Melbourne, Bristol, Barcelona, Istanbul, Ogaki, Sydney, Tampere and Hong Kong. They are the creator of 64 Ways of Being, an urban adventure platform combining audio walks and mixed realities to situate players in new experiences of place.
Contact Details
Email
[email protected]
Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/troy-innocent/
Website
http://futureplaylab.io
Twitter
@playablemelb
Additional Resources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_De_Koven
https://direct.mit.edu/books/monograph/2338/Critical-PlayRadical-Game-Design
https://www.dukeupress.edu/staying-with-the-trouble
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolyn_Briggs
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Making-the-Case-for-Playful-Learning-Ilgaz-Hassinger-Das/142f7fb1e64d444e053eda974860ac7711127de7
Timestamps
(0:00) - Dr. Troy Innocent
(2:15) - Troy’s Childhood and Early Play Experiences
(5:03) - Risky Play: How It Shapes Identity
(6:58) - Advice to Younger Self: Balancing Playfulness and Seriousness
(9:50) - The Role of Intuition in Play and Creativity
(13:19) - Striking a Balance Between Seriousness and Playfulness at Work
(18:04) - Adult Playfulness: Breaking Clichés and Misconceptions
(24:45) - How Urban Play Inspires New Ways of Thinking About the Future
(29:25) - Hopeful Play: A Tool for Social and Ecological Change
(35:01) - Exploring Melbourne’s Hidden Histories Through Play and AR
(39:41) - 64 Ways of Being: Augmented Reality and Storytelling
(42:10) - Lego Build: How Troy’s Work Helps People See the World Differently
(47:00) - Playlabs as a Catalyst for Change in Academia
(50:34) - Entangling People in Creative Ways of Thinking
