Ep. 227: Designer Cas Holman is Giving Us All Permission to Play
Cas Holman grew up playing make-believe in the woods and helping her mechanic step-dad fix cars and dune buggies. Always knowing that she didn’t check the stereotypical gender boxes, she never gave any of the other arbitrary “boxes” much credit either, instead preferring to focus on the outside-the-box possibilities that could be accessed through play, curiosity, and exploration. While getting her MFA, she began working on Geemo, a building toy, which kicked-off her life’s mission of designing for play. Since then, she’s established herself as a champion of open-ended play, designing notable play systems like Rigamajig. She’s worked with global business leaders to incorporate play into company culture, leading to more innovative outcomes, greater trust and safety, and improved resilience. With her upcoming book, Playful, she is on a campaign to help adults reconnect with play throughout their lives because she knows, and has the research and science to prove it, that with play we ALL become more creative, joyful, and productive. Ain’t that good news!
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Cas Holman: If you’re moving toward a specific outcome and you’re overly preoccupied with getting there in the way that’s acceptable or known, you won’t get anywhere new, right?
Amy Devers: Hi everyone, I’m Amy Devers and this is Clever. And today I’m talking to Cas Holman who is an acclaimed designer for play, educator, and author of the upcoming book - Playful: How Play Shifts Our Thinking, Inspires Connection, and Sparks Creativity. She’s known for designing Rigamajig, a system for interdependent open-ended play - which is now a part of NYC’s High Line - along with other playthings like Geemo. She also works with organizations to rethink approaches to team dynamics, creativity, and workplace culture - And has worked with Google, Nike, Disney Imagineering, and LEGO Foundation, among others. Cas was featured in an episode of Netflix's Abstract: The Art of Design - and if you haven’t seen it yet, I encourage you to watch it - it’s a powerful portrait of Cas and her work, and a compelling endorsement of the power of play. This episode is full of good news! As you’ll hear, she makes quite a case for why we all need more play in our lives, why it’s a critical leadership tool, and essential for innovation, trust, health, productivity and of course.. Joy…. so, after listening I want you to promise me, and Cas, that you’ll make some time to play! Here’s Cas…
Cas: I’m Cas Holman, I’m in Brooklyn, New York. I design for play because I believe that it is incredibly powerful. It makes us the best version of the human selves that we are and it’s what I’m drawn to do.
Amy: Well, it is a powerful thing to make humans the best versions that they can possibly be. (Laughter) Let’s start by unpacking play. I know that you’re not talking about playing with prescriptive toys that have a set outcome or a story built into them already. You’re kind of talking about a concept of free play. Can you describe that so that we have an accurate working definition as we move forward?
Cas: Yeah, free play is… and this is a definition that was taught to me by a play worker named Penny Wilson and free play is play which is freely chosen, personally directed and intrinsically motivated. I could unpack each of those a little bit, intrinsic motivation describes when you’re driven to do something that doesn’t necessarily have a reward that’s coming from the outside. Right now in most of our lives things are extrinsically motivated, meaning you’re running fast in order to kind of get a good score, or you’re walking in order to get your steps in or you’re studying really hard, not because you’re intrinsically motivated by curiosity or by the desire to know more and the excitement of understanding. Rather the extrinsic motivation is to get a grade, right? Or maybe at work we work really hard so that we get a promotion. The promotion is an extrinsic motivation.
Amy: Yes!
Cas: Whereas an intrinsic motivation is, I want to do it because I’m curious, because I’m driven, because I’m thirsty for knowledge. Or I enjoy doing the thing, right?
Amy: Yes.
Cas: That’s kind of the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. And it’s interesting because in play, like video games are extrinsically motivated, right? You want to level up. You play to get to the next level or you play to get a score, or you play to make your way through the story, to get to the next chapter, right?
Amy: Yeah.
Cas: Whereas free play, you’re playing because it feels good and because you’re curious and because you want to see what’s on the other side of that river. So you’re going to figure out how to rearrange the rocks in order to get across without getting your new shoes wet, right?
Amy: Yeah.
Cas: So then in that, that’s also the personally directed, there’s nobody telling you what to do next. You’re kind of figuring out or deciding through trial and error, which also means that in free play you wind up with a really different relationship to failure. And I think that relates a lot to the creative process and the design process in general because when you’re following your nose, it’s all exploring, it’s all like what if this, what if that and none of it is wrong or necessarily even not working, right?
Amy: Right, so even if you try a few things that don’t help you get across the river, because you’re curious to see what’s on the other side, it’s not like you did it wrong because you didn’t pass the test, or you didn’t… there’s nobody grading you on how you’re figuring this out.
Cas: Yeah, and it’s likely that in the process of rearranging the rocks you realize you’ve kind of created a waterfall and then you may forget entirely about getting to the other side…
Amy: Yeah, right. (Laughs)
Cas: And just start making a whirlpool or like, whoa, hey, under that rock was a salamander, can I find more of those? Or hey, that was a cool sound, what’s the difference between a kerplunk and a splash, right?
Amy: Right. So even the outcome is self-directed and can changed based on your curiosity.
Cas: Absolutely.
Amy: Okay, and discovery.
Cas: Yeah, that’s free play, it’s like you’re playing for the sake of play, it feels good, there’s flow, you’re immersed, and you’re kind of like unattached to outcomes because there’s no specific goal or judge involved.
Amy: So with children, I think that’s maybe a little bit more obvious for us all to perceive what that might look like. And even the example you gave is a great one for both children and adults, like moving rocks around to get across a river or discover salamanders, or make a waterfall. I think what strikes me is, I don’t think adults really are that attuned to their own sense of play anymore and we tend to think of it as like, I’m going to learn an instrument, but that’s very outcome oriented often, or I’m going to play on the local soccer team. But what does adult play really look like?
Cas: I want to say, both of those things, I’m such a fan of adults picking up anything new, learning an instrument as an adult, you’re probably not doing it to become a professional musician. You’re probably doing it…
Amy: Right, (laughs) the ship sailed on that.
Cas: (Laughs) Right, which with children often we’re like, oh, you’re bad at soccer, let’s stop playing and the kid might be like, I love it, why do I have to stop just because I’m not going to be the star, can’t I keep playing? Who cares if I’m bad? But yeah, in terms of free play, I agree, it’s hard for us in part because we’re very attached to productivity. (Laughs)
Amy: Yes!
Cas: Myself included. I do catch myself on occasion being like, what am I even doing, and then I’m like, well, I don’t know and it feels good, so I’m going to keep doing it, you know? (Laughs) I don’t know, I’m rearranging some crystals on my desk for 10 minutes, it’s fine, I obviously need to do this, right? So yeah, I think one of the things that gets in the way of adults experiencing free play or embracing it when we might accidentally find ourselves doing it, when we tinker, or rearrange a shelf, is the need to be efficient and what we consider productive. I spent a lot of time in the book trying to explain the importance of play. There’s a lot of why, why play matters and why free play matters. And in order to help adults justify (laughs) the urge to play and let themselves play. I think we all know how. I think we’ve been taught to not play and like any muscle, it atrophies, but it’s absolutely still there. We all know how to play. It’s what makes us human, it’s how we become who we are as children. So play is still in us.
Amy: I totally see the lack of permission that we give ourselves, but do you think that we also mislabel play as procrastination and maybe pile some shame and guilt on it?
Cas: Yeah! Yeah, that’s a good point, absolutely. Yeah, because we don’t think it’s productive.
Amy: Right.
Cas: And everybody has a different relationship to their work and their work process and procrastination. I mean writing, for example, I am a designer who writes. (Laughs) I guess now I’m also an author, but writing is not a process that comes naturally to me. I talk to a lot of writers throughout the last six years of writing this book and all of them, they have to clean the kitchen, rearrange the living room, go rake the leaves and then journal for four pages and then they can eke out a paragraph in whatever piece they’re working on, right? And what was brilliant about hearing that from them is that they were saying, that’s part of the process. If you have to allow five hours (laughs) to doddle around doing other stuff in order to warm-up and get into the space to sit down and write, then that’s part of the process.
Amy: That is helpful to frame it like that.
Cas: Yeah and I think for me in my studio, it looks a little bit more like play, like also I have to clean up first and arrange a little bit and then as soon as I dive into anything that involves a decision, I’ll get right back up and go, I need to start prototyping it again, you know? So, maybe it’s procrastination but I think it’s just part of the process for me. I need to play, whether it’s related to the thing I’m working on or not, I’m going to have to play a little bit in order to get into a space where I can work.
Amy: I think that’s a really helpful note for everyone who probably does get a little bit hard on themselves when they’re not just getting right to it in an efficient and productive manner. Because productivity has been drilled into us so hard that we don’t know how to accept all the other ways of being as also being productive
Cas: Right.
Amy: You talk a lot in the book about the why, that play is so important and so I want to get into that ‘why.’ Talk to me about the science of play? I know that there are links to wellbeing, innovation, connection and adaptability?
Cas: Yeah, and I worked with a collaborator, Lydia Denworth, who is a science writer. We kind of went through whatever research that she could find in both neuroscience and psychology and human development. And I was quite familiar with the research about early childhood because of my work designing for children. And it’s interesting how most of the research, of course, was specific to children, but the way the research was done really related to just humans in general. There’s quite a bit about who we are as children, that it’s still the case when we’re adults, right, it’s just that (laughter) somehow it was applied to childhood and then we decided to disregard it after kindergarten, right? But it’s across the board, it shows just huge benefits of play. There was one, a scientist, I want to make sure I get her last name right… a neuroscientist named Marian Diamond. And her research was really interesting, it was in the 1960s and as a woman studying play she actually… she kind of used other words rather than saying ‘play,’ it was ‘enhanced activities.’She did research with rats and gave them some enhanced activities, which was play and then had other groups of rats that did not have that. And the difference in the brains of the rats who had the enhanced activities, who had playful lives, and also companionship, they were smarter, they were more successful, they were healthier, they lived longer and the make-up of their brains just showed that they had developed really differently because they had done it with play.
Amy: Fascinating!
Cas: One psychologist that I am a big fan of is DW Winnicott, and his research was related directly to play and creativity and he, of course, explored the why and researched why it’s important. But in the process of that there’s like some really interesting insights about the how that mostly related to children in his work, but I think relate a lot to adults and as an industrial design professor at RISD, I put these to practice to some extent. And they related to creating a safe space, like the need to feel safe before you can play.
Amy: Yes.
Cas: And the importance of risk also, that in risk we grow. Both the need to know that you’re safe, either in your friend group or in your classroom or in your own confidence and when you feel that that foundation is safe, you can kind of step out of it into something new or unknown, which would be considered a risk, right? You could take a risk with something new or unknown or maybe I’m going to be bad at this, but I feel kind of confident in myself so it’s okay if I’m bad at something for a second, right? And then try something new and push and grow and then come back to the thing that’s safe and know that it’s there for you. And in doing this, I think we can set this up for our studios, if you’re a creative director or if you’re a professor or just our friends even. I think about this even for myself because it is important occasionally to acknowledge that you’re going to do something risky or new in order to…also I think almost have buy-in in the releasing judgment.
Amy: Oh yeah.
Cas: Part of why it’s hard for us to play as adults, because we fear judgment.
Amy: Yes.
Cas: Of ourselves and of each other. So if we’re going to step into something new and we check in with each other, then we’ve given each other permission and then can kind of release the judgment as we step into something that might be risky and new.
Amy: Okay, so a lot of what you talk about then is in terms of play in the workplace, is how to create those conditions, so that people can feel safe enough to take these risks. To ultimately achieve the benefits of play in the workplace, because your premise is that play is actually really productive and powerful for the workplace because it leads to adaptability, creativity, innovation, connection and all of that.
Cas: Yeah.
Amy: Can you give me some examples of people who have adopted a kind of… or who have started to value the benefit of play and have worked it into their corporate program?
Cas: So there’s a few different ways that I think it can be really helpful for companies or organizations or even any group really. And in one it’s kind of how can our process become more playful? Maybe in the interest of leading to unexpected outcomes and that’s kind of, in my mind, where open-endedness comes in.
Amy: Yeah.
Cas: That if you’re playful and in being playful you’ve embraced possibilities which is the curiosity, you’ve released judgment of yourself and others in whatever the outcome might be, right, and then reframed success and clarified what does success look like? Are we looking to get more patents? Are we looking to bond and have fun? Are we looking to relax and recharge? So there’s a bunch of different ways that they can commit. But the play as a process, I think, has really been powerful across the board because there are very few, regardless of, you can be an accounting firm, and still integrate playfulness into your process. Of course we may not want to get too creative with the numbers. (Laughter) But the process of doing it can still be playful, right? And then of course, if it’s a company that is creative and they’re trying to generate new ideas, it’s absolutely the way, because if you’re moving toward a specific outcome and you’re overly preoccupied with getting there in the way that’s acceptable or known, you won’t get anywhere new, right?
Amy: Right.
Cas: And of course that’s not always easy, it has to be top-down. The leader has to embody… you really won’t get laughed out of the room. (Laughs) There has to be space for this is going to be an hour of terrible ideas, let’s go, right? There has to be a practice of embracing unknowns and that’s part of letting go of the fear of failure, which is something that keeps people from having the weird ideas or the really bold what-ifs, following those, right?
Amy: This sounds a lot like yes/and, the rules of improvisation apply here.
Cas: Yeah, yeah, they absolutely do. And I think improv is such a beautiful form of play.
Amy: Yeah.
Cas: It’s kind of language play, it’s interpersonal play, it’s imaginative play and pretend, of course, because typically you’re on stage pretending. Those are a couple of ways that I’ve worked with groups when they’re trying to integrate play. And a third way is when they do want the outcome to be play, which is interesting. When someone is designing for play. And then also just learning from the play, or learning from the play that’s happening in a new process within an organization. It’s interesting. And I have some ongoing relationships that I’ve gotten to see, in some cases the product outcomes of. And in other cases, I’ve seen the hierarchy within a team really flatten, which in my mind is a huge success. I know that often organizations need a hierarchy because of structure and approvals and things like that. But often the hierarchies are what keep people from feeling safe enough to play. (Laughs)
Amy: Yeah.
Cas: So play as a process is a way of also flattening hierarchy so that everybody is a little more comfortable having the ideas that might lead to something really new.
Amy: It sounds like not just comfortable having the ideas, but also comfortable accepting the ideas from somebody who in a hierarchy might be subordinate to you?
Cas: Yeah.
Amy: And you might feel like oh, my position is threatened if the good idea came from below me.
Cas: Yeah.
Amy: But when it’s flattened it’s like no, we’re all in this together. (Laughs) Good ideas are good ideas, let’s put some energy behind them.
Cas: Exactly, yeah, and I think there’s also a way where the ideas aren’t owned by any one person. In the book, I talk about play testing, and of course I play test my learning materials and playgrounds and toys and things, but I also play test ideas, we’ll play test eating dinner outside, or let’s play test sleeping in the car instead of the tent because we’ve got wet camping, whatever it is. And by framing it as play testing, everyone is kind of buying in to… we’re all going to give it our best, try it together, maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t, we’ll talk about it afterward, what worked and didn’t work, because it was a play test. But just going in with that frame kind of makes everybody invested in at least trying to make it work rather than it being one person’s idea who says, “Hey, let’s try this.” And then what I find with a lot of teams is that person is then responsible for it working or not. And there’s always somebody who doesn’t want it to work, you know?
Amy: Yes.
Cas: Whether or not they meant to be doing that.
Amy: Yeah. (Laughs)
Cas: They like their idea better, whatnot, but I think it’s really important that ideas… they belong to everybody. As soon as the idea is out, it’s everybody’s idea, so everybody is kind of crafting it and shaping it and it has a life of its own.
Amy: And that is very clear in, well, Rigamajig, in terms of… in the interdependence of people building something together, it is no single idea that’s being executed to a recipe. It’s like this is coming together with all of our input. And like we were talking about with improvisation, the outcome of improvisation is also this whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts, that no single person owns, but only works with interdependence.
Cas: Exactly.
Amy: But play testing you’re saying we can all get to that place where we sort of disown or separate an idea or a concept from single person ownership and therefore single person responsibility.
Cas: Yeah…
Amy: But everyone still feels invested.
Cas: Exactly. Hopefully. (Laughter)
Amy: Right! Right!
Cas: We try! We try! But there’s something also about in play testing or in framing it as that again, the kind of reflection phase, where afterward you kind of sit back and say, okay, how did that go? What worked and didn’t work? How would we do it differently? So there’s also this assumption that nothing is ever really done, or complete or right.If there’s not a specific outcome that you’re shooting for, then everything gets to adapt and evolve and change as it needs to, and everybody gets to continuously participate in what it looks like as it changes and shifts. So I think that’s another element of play testing that’s really powerful, is that it becomes its own adventure really. (Laughter)
Amy: I know this new book, Playful, is directed for us to reconsider as adults the power of play and some of your really iconic work that you’ve done so far, Rigamajig and Geemo and some of the installations that you’ve built, like Wobbly World, have been geared towards children. And this idea of play being good for us and play ultimately underscoring creative agency and productivity, and being a powerful component of those, is universal and hard-wired. But we condition it out as we grow, like we teach ourselves to not be playful. How do we get it back? (Laughs)
Cas: Yeah, so I mentioned three elements earlier that relate quite a bit and they are ‘embrace possibility…’‘release judgment’ and ‘reframe success.’ And those are three things that we can remind ourselves or think about or notice when we’re trying to either prioritize play or let ourselves play or I call it a ‘play voice.’ I think we have a play voice, there’s this instinct that says, you know, oh hey, go throw that ball over the… or hey, go and roll down that hill over there. So there’s the play voice that’s like…
Amy: I want to press all the buttons! Whenever I…
Cas: Yeah, always the hazards…
Amy: If it says ‘alarm will sound,’ I’m like, oh, I want to pull that so bad! (Laughs)
Cas: Tie your friends too to the chair, the play voice that does that. And then we have the adult voice that says, ‘no, you’ll look silly,’ or, ‘you can’t do that, your shirt will get dirty,’ or, ‘you can’t lay on the park bench in the sun even though it’s beautiful and perfect and you want to look up at the leaves and daydream for a minute.’ And the adult voice is trying to protect us. It doesn’t want you to be scorned, it’s very aware of the judgment. So yeah, when your play voice is like ‘hey, what if you go try that, let’s skip some rocks, follow that bird, talk to the squirrel,’ whatever it is. So thinking about embracing possibility, releasing judgment and reframing success will help you get there. Embracing possibilities is curiosity really, be open to what might come up. The example of maybe you’re on a hike and you have to cross a river, but in the process of rearranging the rocks you realize that, like I was describing, the kerplunk versus the splash. So the possibility of what might come up and then letting that be the thing. Being present or attentive enough to say, actually this is really interesting and I’m going to spend five minutes, as long as I feel like, doing this thing instead. And then the release judgment is really obvious. Release the judgment of yourself, it is worth your time, don’t judge yourself for not being productive. And trust that the people around you aren’t going to judge you, and/or if they do, that’s their problem, not yours. (Laughs) That’s about them. And remember to not judge each other, of course, when we act silly or behave in a way that might be considered childish. This is also a thing. All through school we are learning to not play, hold still, stay inside, don’t speak out of turn, passing notes, all of the ways that we are trying to still play in school are really shut down. And of course the social contract is so strong in puberty that all we want is to be accepted and we’re told that in order to be accepted you have to behave in this way that is more like an adult than a child and children play and adults don’t, therefore no more play, right?
Amy: Yeah, that’s tragic.
Cas: It’s hard, yeah.
Amy: What a major disservice we’re doing to our evolution.
Cas: Yeah, I totally agree. I hear from people mostly since the Abstract on Netflix, it’s a docu series and there’s an episode about me and people have reached out and are just so deeply moved because they either didn’t realize or they want to share their story about how they were shut down when they played and how much they miss it. It’s really… I mean the stories are heartbreaking at times because it’s part of who we are and we are really told to not do it and therefore kind of… but the third element, to your question how…
Amy: Thank you for bringing it back. (Laughs)
Cas: Reframing success is one of my favorites because I think we often assume that we’re meant to be doing something specific, like the hike for example. And in a hike you get to the top and you say, ‘yay, we got there,’ take a picture, do whatever and then come back. But if along the way something else comes up and you’re frustrated because your friend or your 10 year old hiking companion, or your play voice is like, let’s go poke that moss, oh, why is that log over there and what happens if we move it like this? And we’ll often be like, no, that’s not what we’re doing, we’ve got to get to the top. And it’s like, well, okay, wait hold on, what is our goal? Is our goal to get to the top of this mountain and not talk to each other in the process or is our goal to hang out and have quality time out in nature? Does it matter if we’re moving forward on this path? Why can’t we just sit here and play with the moss?
Amy: Right, you don’t have to adhere to the outcome that you started with…
Cas: Yeah.
Amy: If it’s not really the goal. If the ultimate goal is to be together, have quality time…
Cas: Rght. And similarly when you brought up being productive and procrastinating, so you could ask yourself, so if you were rearranging a bookshelf for doing the dishes or something, as procrastination, you could ask yourself, wait, what is the goal of today is my goal that I make myself miserable and send these emails in the next 20 minutes or is my goal to have a day where I feel all right and can be present and communicate in a way that feels good? So maybe I need to let myself do this for a while and then I can get back to things.
Amy: As you’re saying all of this I wonder where escapism fits in? Is escapism sometimes a form of play? I mean I know it depends on how you’re defining success. I mean specifically it comes from me; I love to get immersed in stories.
Cas: Oh, that’s absolutely play.
Amy: I will listen to an audiobook and stay in the story maybe for longer than I think I should because…
Cas: Yeah, but what’s the should, I mean…
Amy: Right, that’s the should that gets in the way.
Cas: Yeah, if you’re lingering there then you probably are getting something from it, you know?
Amy: Yeah.
Cas: The term ‘escapism,’ has different connotations, and I think about… I’ve heard people use it in relationship to when we disengage from the world by going into a rabbit hole on social media or something.
Amy: Yeah, I guess you’re right, that is kind of a loaded term that everybody is going to come to it with a different (laughter) association.
Cas: No, I think daydreaming… it’s interesting. I mentioned play workers and I’m a big fan of play workers and play work in general. And I borrowed from them play types that for the last 20-something years I’ve been using this list of play types, like imaginative play, rough-and-tumble play, fantasy play, pretend play, these different kinds of play types to both observe play and talk about children’s play and also in designing for play, my students and I will assign different things or switch around to figure out, what are we designing for exactly and we’ll talk about play types in that way. And I had always just applied them broadly. As I wrote the book, I realized that they didn’t relate to adults in the same way. One of them is… when I was talking about risk, what’s risky for a child is like jumping off of a ladder or going to the other side of the park from their caregiver, that’s like a risk. Whereas with an adult, just playing is risky, right? Or wearing a bold shirt might be risky for some adults. I realize that the play types for adults were really different than the play types for children, so I kind of propose in the book, I propose some adult play types based a bit on how we play, but also based on just developmentally, of course, we’re different than children, so our play will be different.
Amy: So what are the adult play types?
Cas: Well, there are a few. And one of them you just mentioned, I think, in talking about escapism, which is attention play.
Amy: Oh?
Cas: Bird watching is attention play, I take the subway a lot and I actually don’t look at my phone, I people watch. I just sit there and make eye contact whenever possible with anybody else who is not looking at their phone. Sometimes I get to chat with strangers, but mostly I just kind of like imagine what people are coming from and going to and what’s going on and whether or not those two people are on their first date or their fifth date. So that’s attention play.
Amy: Okay?
Cas: There’s meditative play, which is, I think, largely… a lot of our puzzles. There is possibility play, so that’s the what-if, what if this… there’s problem solving play which is tinkering and getting in something to figure it out. Competitive play, of course, like that one people are pretty… I think most adults are pretty in touch with their competitive play. Embodied play runs the gamut of a number of different things. And then it’s interesting in some of the conversations I’ve been having recently, we’ve been talking about misbehavior play. Behavior play being its own kind of play, maybe that’s like when we go out, get dressed up in an outfit and go out, or maybe we do drag or maybe we act out when we drink a bunch at a club or something. But in the conversations I’ve been having recently, I am kind of starting to think that most adult play is misbehavior play. Because the social construct is don’t play, (laughs) any play is kind of misbehaving.
Amy: Yes. (Laughter)
Cas: Yeah, the behavior or the misbehavior play is interesting. And in the book I give little examples of all of these and I know that people are going to argue with me because of course there’s going to be a lot that I didn’t think of, or people saying ‘no, that should be this play.’ And I can’t wait, I think that’s when it gets good, because I’m like, hmm, what do I know, here’s what I think, you know?
Amy: And when it stimulates that kind of feedback, that’s your gravy, you get to sort through that and that’s all just… you can just add it to your observations and your data collection and your research.
Cas: Absolutely.
Amy: What does it actually look like to bring play into a daily workflow, let’s say in a workplace setting or in a team setting that might be where play could easily get cringey?
Cas: Yeah, there’s definitely a potential to play wash. (Laughter)
Amy: Yeah!
Cas: In the late 90s I worked for a contract furniture company, we did a lot of high-end corporate offices in San Francisco, during the first dot.com boom. And one of the projects that I worked on had a slide in the middle of it and at the time I was like, it’s so cool, these people are awesome. And it was a creative related tech company and I went back four months later to do something else with them and the slide had dust. (Laughter)
Amy: Oh man!
Cas: And I was like, it’s going to take more than a slide. I think that the biggest shift has got to be in the releasing judgment. Before we can even respect or prioritize play, I think that letting ourselves play and letting each other play and knowing that we won’t be judged or fired for being playful. So that’s, I think, the first step. It’s interesting now because with remote work, like what work looks like is so much different for everybody. And I think that the bummer for play in that regard is that when we do interface with each other, it’s very functional.
Amy: Yeah.
Cas: We have a meeting until the decisions are made and then we get off as soon as possible. And so we kind of have missed out on those moments where we linger or get a little bit bored, so that then we need to do something that makes us feel better, right? I think boredom is really a step before you find something to do.
Amy: Right. Boredom is like the palate cleanser you need to go from function or productivity or decision making, you almost need that bubble of nothing.
Cas: I love the idea of palate cleanser. Also we don’t really let ourselves do that, right, the habit is so strong to check our email or go on the thing or read the news or do whatever. And it takes a beat to reset and then say, huh, and back again to attention play, just looking around and realizing, ah, the world that I’m actually in is pretty rich. There’s a lot here and it feels really good to tune into it rather than tuning out of it by looking at our digital worlds. Yeah, I think that play can also help us be more present in all of the spaces we are, in a way that is very necessary.
Amy: Now that we are in this world where half or three-quarter of our meetings are on Zoom or we’re interfacing with teams that maybe distributed… let’s say as a leader, how would you encourage a playful mindset? Aside from releasing judgment, you almost have to model that by being playful yourself.
Cas: Yeah.
Amy: Maybe we can roleplay what that looks like a little bit? Maybe you’re even a boss and you’re wearing a suit, but (laughs) how do you create a playful culture?
Cas: Yeah, okay, if we were to roleplay and if I’m a boss, I think one of the first things would be to… even in a meeting of some kind, just shifting the environment. So go have the meeting somewhere else, right?
Amy: Ah, that’s so simple.
Cas: Yeah, go in a different room or say like, we’re going to take notes and then pass it to the right every five minutes. Just little things that again, just shifting the space is going to make everybody feel a little different, which is in and of itself going to make them more likely to be more willing to…
Amy: Open up to a less prescriptive meeting format.
Cas: Yeah…just changing habits, I think is part of what I’m getting at. Just saying, okay, I usually run the meeting, but I’m going to have this person run the meeting, or we’re going to do it backwards instead, let’s start with this and end with it. Just change it, just shake it up a little bit. And even in the process of that you’ll kind of wind up having to reframe success, like you’ll have to be clear about, wait, what is our goal of this? Are we actually having these meetings because we need them or do we actually just need to be in the same room and remember that we’re humans and we like each other? Because that’s actually the point of some meetings…
Amy: Yes, that is actually the point. But also in this age of distributed and remote work, so many of the things you just said can be done via remote, like you can suggest that everybody Zoom in from a different location, or you can suggest that… we can do the meeting backwards even if you’re on Zoom.
Cas: Yeah.
Amy: It’s actually way more simple and practical than you might think.
Cas: Yeah. Another thing that I might do, if I were a boss who wanted to make things playful, and slapstick was not my magic, I might… and this is something I borrow from critique. The idea of generative language. And so making a rule in the meeting, okay, everything has to start with what-if… what if this, what would happen if - blank. So everything is about possibility, right? And that’s going to be playful because people are going to start to imagine different things. There will be more spit balling and building on ideas. So just setting some constraints and maybe they’re even arbitrary, like okay, nobody can say the word – blank. If you’re trying to move away from some idea and you’re like, why are we stuck? Okay, don’t use this anymore, if we can’t use that word, then maybe we’ll avoid that concept and maybe we’ll get to a different place. Or maybe in the meantime we’ll just have to pay more attention, right? So there’s just different ways that I think even like setting up some constraints can be really playful. And language is extremely playful. I love playing with language, because it really does change an idea and it changes the way you think about something when you shift words around.
Amy: Shift words around, shift emphasis, use words that have multiple meanings and rearrange them…
Cas: Yeah.
Amy: Yeah. I love word play too.
Cas: Yeah.
Amy: Thank you for sharing all of this science and research and these ideas that you’ve generated. I hope you’re okay if we turn the lens on you personally. I’d love to talk about Cas Holman and your creative path and process.
Cas: Sure.
Amy: How you got to be who you are. I’m sure you have some formative play experiences from your youth and from your adolescence and all throughout your life that have informed you.
Cas: Yeah. My childhood was very rich in play, in part because I was raised in… we kind of lived in the woods. The TV was broken fairly often (laughter) so that wasn’t an option. I had a single mom who worked a lot, so I was home alone a lot and it was great. (Laughs)
Amy: Yeah, left to your own devices.
Cas: Yeah. I just had to make it up all the time. And for a while… my step-dad was a mechanic and so there were always parts and pieces around and I got to help him fix cars and build dune buggies, he built a few dune buggies.
Amy: Oh, cool!
Cas: And he was very playful. So we spent a lot of time together building things and I don’t know how much I was actually helping, but it was part of the process. (Laughter)
Amy: But being exposed to it and being able to participate without judgment, that must have been really formative…
Cas: Yeah. It was wonderful. So yeah, I had a very rich play life as a kid. And then I also really early on, I think, could tell that I was different in that being queer, my gender was a little off, (laughs) according to many. And thankfully I just did not care. (Laughter)
Amy: That is a gift. (Laughs)
Cas: Yeah, I’m really grateful for it because it’s like… it’s not easy … and I see kids who, of course, they care, like kids were hard-wired to care, that’s the social acceptance contract, right?
Amy: Yeah.
Cas: And it’s a tricky path. And what that means is, as I became an adult and people were… there’s this kind of learning not to play culture happening in adolescence, I already kind of knew that I didn’t need to follow the rules. And so I was kind of… I had a short-cut to deciding which of the social contract rules applied and didn’t, or which I was going to listen to or not or use when it was useful and disregard the rest of the time. So I kept playing. I never stopped playing. And then also playing with identity and I was 28, I think, when I first realized I wanted to a designer. And up until then I was a research assistant in the Galapagos Islands, I was a chef, I worked for this furniture company, I had all kinds of jobs.
Amy: Oh fun though, fun to stock your quiver with all those arrows. Yeah.
Cas: Yeah, and it’s interesting, I mean all of them relate to what I do now, in different ways. And I just kind of adventured my way toward design and then realized, oh, that is kind of everything. (Laughter) And also people, right, I like people. And then I went to Cranbrook, so I went back to school to get my MFA at Cranbrook and one of the first projects that I did wound up being Geemo, a building toy. And then in looking at the toy industry and at toys in general I was like, oh, this could really use some good design work. And then I kind of realized, oh it’s not actually about the object, it’s about the behavior and the experience, which is play. And so then kind of opening it up and kind of feeling like I was maybe outcome agnostic, (laughter) I didn’t want it to always be a toy or like medium agnostic maybe. So designing for play let it… sometimes it’s a song, sometimes it’s a curriculum. And I get to work with people who come to me and say, for example, impulse control, children are having… something about devices is making kids have issues with impulse control and of course conflict resolution, kids are really struggling with conflict resolution. And so I work with people who say, “Can, how can we design for conflict resolution?” I’m like, all right, let me design a way that kids can practice this, impulse control. And it might be some kind of game that’s not an object. Or maybe it is, maybe it’s a space and a device that I design. But more often than not it’s like designing a curriculum or an activity or something that’s a little more ephemeral.
Amy: That makes sense because you’re empathizing with the player and designing the system of actions that they might go through that would address the impulse control or remediate whatever is harming the impulse control.
Cas: Yeah, it’s creating the conditions for x to arise. And in the book what I try to do is help adults create the conditions for free play to arise in their own lives. To kind of be their own play worker. So how can an adult create the conditions to have more play in their lives and at best have free play in their lives because the benefits of it are so rich.
Amy: Yes! Okay, recap the benefits that are so rich?
Cas: Well, it makes us human. (Laughter) It’s part of who we are. It’s how we grow, it’s how we connect, it’s how we self-soothe, it’s how we connect with others, but also with ourselves. I think that in particular free play, because it lets us be in touch with, again, our intrinsic motivation, then we remember what we really want. I was up in a tree recently… (Laughs)
Amy: Oh, I love this story, keep going! (Laughs)
Cas: Because I was pruning and I was too lazy to go and get a ladder, but also I was like I can still climb… I’m 51, so I can do it, but I don’t know if I should, right? (Laughs) Also, I loved it. But while I was up there I kind of just was like, I’m going to hang out, right? And there was the bark and then some lichen and I think I was up there for probably 20 minutes before I even realized that I’d just been picking at this one branch that I had intended to cut off, but I don’t know, I just needed to… I was kind of daydreaming, maybe… it was attention play, right? I was just picking at the lichen, and the lichen was beautiful. Apparently that was what I needed, but in the process of doing that, that is a thing I did so much as a child and it wasn’t like I intentionally said, I need to reconnect with myself and who I am, I’m going to go do this activity. I just kind of like found myself up there and then because I wasn’t hell bent on being efficient (laughs) or productive, I let myself kind of linger and then hang out for a while. And I really felt like I just had a moment with myself, and it was really nice. It was a weird kind of reflecting on my life moment while playing with some lichen on the branch of a tree. This is maybe a story I’m going to regret telling. (Laughter)
Amy: No, I love it, because it also just speaks to okay, if I’m going to not listen to the voice that wants me to be productive or efficient right now, that means there’s space for other reflections to come in.
Cas: Yeah, and it reminds you that I think it happens during school, we learn what we’re good at and then we do that to affirm ourselves. It’s hard to do something new because you are bad at it and then you feel like you’re bad at a thing. And we’re not supposed to be bad at things, we’re supposed to do the things we’re good at, right? And as adults I think we do less and less of what we’re bad at, at least not voluntarily. And part of, again, it’s hard for us to play is that we’re afraid… we fear failure, and also social rejection and other things. So when we have a moment to step out of that entirely, we can connect with ourself as it is utterly unrelated to being productive or successful or good at the thing. Like it’s just us, you’re just there with yourself. And I know that that could be terrifying for some people, but it can also be really wonderful.
Amy: And it’s probably… even if it is terrifying, that probably means it’s necessary. (laughs)
Cas: Exactly. Exactly. And sometimes it’s like the big gestures or running and rolling and leaping, that’s play, and also sitting in a tree is play…
Amy: Yeah. That kind of answers a question I had, which is how do you protect your own playfulness against the pressures of life. And that whole story is an example of that, by just giving yourself permission to get lost in poking at a tree branch for…
Cas: Yeah, it’s hard. I similarly have a workload that’s maybe too ambitious at times. (Laughter) And I can tell, I mean my play is quite stubborn and my play voice is like, we’re not, nope, we’re just not. My legs will take me there. I just get up and leave, right? (Laughter) And like I said, I think the talking to writers who said, yeah, I need an eight hour day and I’m going to be sitting at a computer for 20 minutes of that, right, seven hours and 40 minutes of my writing day are doing these other things that make it possible for me to sit down for 20 minutes. I liked that as an approach. You could call it play or you could call it the preparatory actions or maybe that’s them creating the conditions for the writing.
Amy: Right. And it does sound like a simple trick we could all do, is just pad the time that we give any task to allow for those preparatory actions or play, or even for a little daydream in the middle of it. You don’t have to schedule the daydream, but you can just know that if you find yourself daydreaming, you’ve allowed time for it, so you don’t have to let the clock berate you.
Cas: Yeah. And I think the biggest preparatory action for most adults that I know is do you need to look at your phone right now?
Amy: (Laughs) Yes!
Cas: Maybe just don’t. Like give it a beat. If you’re at the bus stop or waiting for your food to come, what if you just didn’t, and see what happens? I think that’s the biggest preparatory action that adults could do right now.
Amy: That’s a great one, all right, I’m going to do that. I’m already pretty good at not looking at my phone all the time, but I could be better. I could be better.
Cas: Yeah, I mean humans are also kind of cool when we’re around.
Amy: Humans are amazing. I think this whole podcast is my attention play.
Cas: Yeah, nice! And conversation play, right? You’re like, what if this, but what about this… yeah.
Amy: But I did just sit down one day and I was like, what do I really want to spend my time doing? And it was like, I want to seek out the most fascinating people and have a really great conversation with them. That’s what I do now. (Laughs)
Cas: Amazing, yay!
Amy: It’s pretty great.
Cas: Here’s to that your work is play and then that’s its own interesting path, right? It’s very rare that I can actually play when I’m in my own spaces. In the things I design, I can play with almost anything, but it’s hard for me to play with the things that I design, in a way that’s actually play. I’m really like…Assessing.
Amy: Yeah, you’re obsessing, assessing…
Cas: Yeah, oh, well, I shouldn’t have changed that, that 2mm really made a difference on that… Oh wait, how did that change? That’s not… so…
Amy: I also design and build furniture, or I used to, and I think I really obsessed, not that you’re obsessive, but the assessing was obsessive for me. I think I had this pathological perfectionism that actually kind of traumatized the whole process for me.
Cas: Did you stop?
Amy: I teach furniture design, so I’m still very passionate about furniture and its role in the world and helping people discover their creative agency around it. But it’s been a long time since I’ve actually put boards together to make a piece of furniture.
Cas: What if you framed it as like, just go play with some wood and see what happens. Don’t build a chair, just go play with some wood. Maybe you’ll sit on it afterward, who knows?
Amy: (Laughs) Yeah. What about your life or your work do you wish that people would ask you about, to create a full spectrum picture of your humanity.
Cas: Right now… my primary form of play is working on this property that I am trying to move my studio into. But it’s not on the grid… we had running water for a day and then it’s not anymore. (Laughter)
Amy: Okay?
Cas: The power now does seem consistent; it was solar set-up. But I have a pond and this beautiful, really old, very neglected apple orchard.
Amy: Oh wow!
Cas: I have this land, I’m a steward of some land and we’re trying to get some buildings habitable so I can be there more and my studio will be there. And I love it! And that is my play… like when I’m there, and the birds and all of the animals and there’s an eagle that’s nested near the pond that I get to watch. Yeah, I could talk about that forever. We call it People’s Pond.
Amy: Oh yeah, why? Where does the name come from?
Cas: Well, because it takes a village… I’ve had a few friends’ birthday parties there…And we camped, so it’s kind of summer camp for adults. And its’ a collaborative effort. Everybody already has drawers, so they come and go whenever they want to and the property is oriented around this one really big pond and it came with a bunch of really weird old boats, so we have all these boats out on the pond. It’s wonderful.
Amy: Wow!
Cas: And People’s Pond… I’m from northern California and People’s Park in Berkley of course was a big, beautiful spot.
Amy: I got it.
Cas: This one is on the East Coast, pond version of the park.
Amy: And that sounds like crucial ingredients to this full and playful adult life that you’re creating for yourself.
Cas: Yeah.
Amy: And it has been really fun to talk to you because I can tell how deeply rigorous you are about play. (Laughs) But how your money is where your mouth is too. The play comes from a place that is not only intuitive, but it’s something that you’re practicing every day.
Cas: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Amy: And I want to thank you for the work that you’re doing, both to help children grow up to have full agency over their own creativity and adaptability and identity. But to also remind adults how much better life can be if we remember to play.
Cas: Yeah. Yeah.
Amy: It’s really important work that you’re doing. Thank you for your contribution.
Cas: Yeah, absolutely, and thank you for this conversation and the wonderful questions, that was really fun.
Amy: Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you like Clever, there are a number of ways you can support us: Complete our listener survey at the link in the description. Share Clever with your friends, leave us a 5 star rating, or a kind review, hit the follow or subscribe button in your podcast app so that our new episodes will turn up in your feed. For a transcript of this episode and more about Cas, including links and images of her work, head to our website. Cleverpodcast. com. While you're there, check out our resources page for books, info, and special offers from our guests, partners, and sponsors, and sign up for our free sub stack newsletter, which includes news announcements and a bonus Q and a from our guests. If you like Clever, we could really use your support. You can share Clever with your friends, leave us a five star rating or a kind review, support our sponsors, and definitely hit the follow or subscribe button in your podcast app so that our new episodes will turn up in your feed. We love to hear from you on LinkedIn, Instagram, and X. You can find us Us at Clever Podcast, and you can find me at Amy Devers. Clever is hosted and produced by me, Amy Devers, with editing by Mark Zurowinski, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anoushka Stefan, and music by El Ten Eleven. Clever is a proud member of the Surround Podcast Network. Visit surroundpodcasts. com to discover more of the architecture and design industry's premier shows.
Cas as a kid
Cas on the phone
Rigamajig. Photo by Jason Greene
Rigamajig at Senda de Vida Reynosa in Mexico
Rig Junior. Photo by Thalassa Raasch for Surface Magazine
Wobbly World and Liberty Science Center, Photo by Diego Roque
Clever is produced and hosted by Amy Devers with editing by Mark Zurawinski, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan, and music by El Ten Eleven.
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