PLAYING UP: A Live Art Game for Kids and Adults
- Project Partners
PLAYING UP has been conceived and created by Sibylle Peters of Theatre of Research (Germany) and designed by David Caines. Produced and published in a collaboration between the Live Art Development Agency (LADA, UK), FUNDUS THEATER / Theatre of Research (Germany), Tate Early Years and Family Programme (UK), Best Biennial (Sweden) and Live Art UK, Goethe-Institut London. PLAYING UP forms part of LADA’s contribution to the Collaborative Arts Partnership Programme (CAPP) supported by Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.
In 2021, the PLAYING UP Gender edition was launched by FUNDUS THEATER | Theatre of Research, in cooperation with the Live Art Development Agency. Read more below, and visit the PLAYING UP Gender website.
PLAYING UP is an artwork by Sibylle Peters, exploring the potential of Live Art to bridge generations. Drawing on key Live Art themes and seminal works, PLAYING UP takes the form of a game played by adults and kids together.
PLAYING UP was launched at Tate Modern, London, with a three day free public ‘play-in’ in the Turbine Hall on 1, 2 and 3 April 2016, followed by a major symposium on 4 April 2016 with leading thinkers and practitioners in the field.
“Kids are explorers of the everyday. For them to light a match can be something extraordinary that needs focus and time and creates an experience. The same is true for everyone who practices Live Art. For us kids are perfect accomplices. And in return Live Art can provide something that is essential to all of us, but especially to kids and their well being: the acknowledgement of their action and their thinking, the reassurance that everything counts, that everything can make a difference, the frame of beauty and reflection and the experience that we can set it up anytime and anywhere we want. PLAYING UP is a playful, hands-on introduction to Live Art for everyone.” Sibylle Peters, Theatre of Research
Read about PLAYING UP. We commissioned writer Mary Paterson to reflect on the PLAYING UP Launch and Symposium (2016)
View the Playing Up dedicated website.
In an article for Arts Professional related to PLAYING UP, Liz O’Neill asks: Is ‘live art’ the perfect medium for intergenerational arts projects?.
Lyn Gardner has written an article about the PLAYING UP launch in the Guardian
“Without a doubt one of the most important resources available for Live Art and young people IN THE WORLD.” Robert Daniels, University of Chichester and Bootworks Theatre, 2017
In 2021, the PLAYING UP Gender edition was launched by FUNDUS THEATER | Theatre of Research, in cooperation with the Live Art Development Agency. Read more below, and visit the PLAYING UP Gender website.
Make clothes out of food, lie on top of cars, dance with animals, try bagism, make a ketchup fight, follow a random passerby through the city, remote control your parents, invent your own Live Art form of sports, search for miracles, walk through London with a map of Paris, invent an alter ego of the opposite gender, deconstruct electrical devices, and build what-happens-next-machines!
Buy PLAYING UP
PLAYING UP is a game played by adults and kids together. Players are presented with a pack of cards, organized using six different categories which cover different strategies of Live Art. Each card references a specific Live Art piece or event followed by an instruction to be carried out by the players. Players randomly select a card and then follow the given instructions. More details
Buy the PLAYING UP game on Unbound for £10
Buy Playing Up
Live Art & Children Playing Up Test Day, Image by Alex Eisenberg
PLAYING UP Public Play Ins
PLAYING UP public Play Ins are an energetic and enjoyable game that involves kids and their accompanying adults working together as a team to complete activities and tasks in order to create their own work of Live Art. Individual activities last between 20 and 60 minutes and players can choose to do one or all of the artworks available throughout the duration of the event.
Please contact Theatre of Research on [email protected] if you would like to collaborate on a public Play In.
Selected Past Play Ins:
Norfolk & Norwich Festival 2019
Saturday 18 & Sunday 19 May 2019
Norwich, UK
OFFTA 2019
Friday 24 May to Sunday 2 June 2019
Peace Square
Montreal Quebec, Canada
Copenhagen Contemporary
Wednesday 17 – Sunday 21 April 2019
Copenhagen, Denmark
The Substation and Melbourne Fringe
Wednesday 26 to Friday 28 September 2018
Melbourne, Australia
Arsenal of Ideas 2018
Wednesday 26 to Sunday 30 September 2018
Kyiv, Ukraine
ANTI Festival 2018
Tuesday 25 to Sunday 30 September 2018
Kuopio, Finland
Fierce Play
Saturday 11 August 2018
12 – 6pm
Turbine Hall, Tate Modern,
London, UK
Playing Up Art Trolley
Holiday activity for kids and adults to play together
Ongoing
Level 3 concourse of the Blavatnik Building, Tate Modern,
London, UK
Practice and Power
Venue: The LAB Gallery & Liberty Park
Saturday 23 June 2018
11am – 4pm
Dublin
Experimentica 2018
Venue: Chapter
Sunday 15 April 2018
11am
Cardiff, UK
Tate Britain
Saturday 14 – Sunday 15 April 2018
12pm – 5pm
London, UK
Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Museums At Night
Saturday 20 May 2017
5.30pm – 10pm
Coventry, UK
In Between Time 2017
Saturday 11 – Sunday 12 February 2017
Venue: Arnolfini
11am to 5pm
Bristol, UK
PLAYING UP was featured at Beta Public 6, an event exploring the intersections of games and performance at Camden People’s Theatre, London between the 8 and 10 November.
Compass Festival
Saturday 19 November 2016
Venue: Leeds City Museum
11am to 4pm
Leeds, UK
SPILL Festival of Performance
Friday 28 and Saturday 29 October 2016
Venue: SPILL Dome
1pm to 5pm
Ipswich, UK
Hijack Children’s Festival
Wednesday 26 October 2016
Venue: Komedia
10am to 4pm
Brighton, UK
Cambridge Junction
Sunday 25 September 2016
Venue: J3
12 to 4pm
Cambridge, UK
Latitude Festival
Saturday 16 July 2016
Venue: Live Art House
11am to 1pm
Suffolk, UK
PLAYING UP Launch
Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London
Friday 1 April 2016, 12-7pm
Saturday 2 April 2016, 12-7pm
Sunday 3 April 2016, 12-6pm
Free – turn up and take part
PLAYING UP was launched with a three day public ‘play-in’, for kids and adults. Participants could take part as a team or on their own and Children Guides were there to welcome arrivals at the PLAYING UP desk. More details
PLAYING UP Symposium
Starr Auditorium, Tate Modern, London
4 April 2016
10am – 5.30pm
£15 (£10 concessions)
Buy now
The launch of PLAYING UP was marked with a major symposium with leading thinkers and practitioners in the field. Contributors include artists, researchers, curators and educators based in the UK and Germany. More details
Further Information
PLAYING UP has been conceived and created by Sibylle Peters of Theatre of Research (Germany) and designed by David Caines. PLAYING UP is produced and published in a collaboration between the Live Art Development Agency (LADA, UK), FUNDUS THEATER / Theatre of Research (Germany), Tate Early Years and Family Programme (UK), Best Biennial (Sweden) and Live Art UK, with the generous support of the Goethe-Institut London. PLAYING UP forms part of LADA’s contribution to the Collaborative Arts Partnership Programme (CAPP) supported by Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. PLAYING UP, the game, has been designed by David Caines (with additional designs by Maja Bechert). Website by Alex Eisenberg. 
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PLAYING UP Gender
2021 marks the launch of the PLAYING UP Gender edition. PLAYING UP Gender is a Live Art game for kids & adults and everybody in between. In allows participants to explore questions of gender by means of Live Art. PLAYING UP Gender consists of 12 cards. Each card references a piece of Live Art and ends with an instruction, that allows players to reenact the piece. The game features pieces of Live Art from recent years and puts them in context with the history of Live Art and gender. The cards are selected and designed for all kinds of starting points within the gender spectrum and strive to open up escape routes from the gender binary by means of Live Art. The cards can be downloaded and played free of charge from the PLAYING UP Gender website.
PLAYING UP GENDER is a production of FUNDUS THEATER I Theatre of Research, in cooperation with the Live Art Development Agency.
It was designed by David Caines and developed by an international research group with Live Art Development Agency-LADA, Lois Keidan, Heike Roms, Finn Love, Jessie McLaughlin, Live Art Denmark, Negar Forough, Kristin Gelb (Green), Maike Gunsilius, Kristin Westphal, Friederike Dunger, Susan Sheddan, David Caines, Sibylle Peters, and Christopher Weymann among others.
Supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
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Other projects in PLAYING UP: A Live Art Game for Kids and Adults
An artwork taking the form of a game, exploring the potential of Live Art to bridge generations
PLAYING UP Public Play-Ins across the UK this Autumn
Where you can find Public ‘Play Ins’ across the UK in Autumn 2016
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