Introduction to playces: special issue on spaces of play

This special issue explores the intersections between notions of play and space. The notion of play as a space provokes questions about boundaries, and differentiations between spaces of play and not-play. While the notion of the space of play as – in one way or another – delimited is a recurring theme in conceptualisations of play, the contributions to this special issue are united by their consideration of the ambiguities of these boundaries, attending to the ways in which such spaces overlap, extend, can be displaced, or are blurred. Together, the articles offer different takes on what ‘play’ is and the experience of playces in various cultural practices or texts, and in different global contexts. They all posit however that play is not only an important topic to study, but an important concept through which to make sense of how we engage with texts, places and others. In approaching various examples as spaces of play, the articles in this special issue explore such ‘playces’ as spaces of ambiguous possibility.