Playfulness is an innate human trait crucial for making sense of the world, creativity, development of social skills and positive emotions. It is a trait which is strongly encouraged in children and young people but increasingly is being squeezed out in adulthood amidst the pressures and technologies of contemporary western society. It is often viewed as 'juvenile' and 'unproductive' use of time. Yet playfulness is celebrated in different forms within some arenas - particuarly the creative arts and sport - where the act of play is viewed as offering positive health and well-being benefits, actively encouraged as part of community cohesion agendas and providing spaces for creativity and entrepreneurial thinking. By engaging actively with these the arenas of creative arts & culture and sport, and drawing on the experiences and practices which encourage and celebrate playfulness, the proposed research will seek, firstly to characterise attributes of playfulness and, secondly to identify new research questions concerning ways in which it might be fostered in adults in order to promote flourishing, resilience, creativity and therefore enhance wellbeing for both individuals and communities. It will thus also explore how playfulness can help to reconnect people and communities, assisting to overcome conflict and dissonance but reducing isolation, stress, and alienation.

The Invisible College is a research initiative proposed for the contested site of St Peter’s Seminary and the Kilmahew estate in the west of Scotland. A partnership of academics and leading public arts organisation NVA will organise a series of workshops to stimulate engagement with the site. These will bring together local residents, architects, artists, writers, academics, public sector and third sector stakeholders. There will be a focus on community collaboration and exploring new methods for engaging with environmental change. St Peter’s Seminary was a training centre for priests built by renowned architects Gillespie, Kidd and Coia. Opened in 1966, it is cited as Scotland’s finest example of modernist architecture, but failures in built structure and changes in the teaching practices of the Catholic church led to its closure in 1980. Since then, there have been profound changes in the site’s environment. The infiltration of weather and vandals has led to rapid decay of the seminary, turning it into an iconic and infamous modern ruin. The surrounding Kilmahew estate, a Victorian designed woodland landscape, has become wild and overgrown, its rich ecosystem slowly invading the seminary. This heritage sets a haunting mood across the site: a concrete ghost ship adrift in an enchanted forest. But the site offers more than a voyeuristic daytrip for architectural pilgrims. It remains a stunning location at the edge of Greater Glasgow between the villages of Cardross and Renton, set in lush rolling countryside with views across the Firth of Clyde. The site’s future is highly contested. Alongside the ever-present threat of demolition, various commercial schemes have been proposed, but all have proved unworkable. The seminary is A-listed, does not easily lend itself to new functions, and reparation costs are substantial. Over the last three years, public arts charity NVA have been working with academics, artists, writers, architects to formulate a more sustainable and environmentally sensitive approach to the site’s regeneration: non-profit, rooted in consultation and collaboration with local communities, aiming to harness the power of the site to stimulate public engagement with the landscape. The Invisible College will build on these activities by: - Drawing out and recording the variety of perceptions, readings and values attributed to the site and its rich environments. - Forging connections and engendering ongoing collaboration between project participants. - Documenting these practices for research and publication. - Feeding into the development of NVA’s long term plans for the site. Three workshops will be held at the site, bringing together local residents from Renton and Cardross and leading international academics, writers and artists from the fields of cultural geography, architecture, landscape architecture, environmental art and anthropology. The workshops will be led by an experienced community facilitator. Creative and artistic methods will be used, chosen in consultation with the local communities. These might include: gathering written and oral memories of the site; compiling local history archives (books, objects, photos, cine film); on-line broadcasts or podcasts; story-telling sessions; designing and mapping paths; plant survey and propagation; hut, shelter and bothy building; preparing new community food growing spaces. Project outputs will include: - Interactive pages on NVA’s website to share documentation from the workshops. - A bi-monthly chapbook (pdf and paper copy) documenting the project’s activities, and including contributions from the local communities. - An audio work to be listened to when walking around the site on MP3 players, or via the web. This will be launched at a field trip to the site as part of the 2012 Royal Geographical Society (RGS) annual conference. It will also be presented via the RGS’s ‘Discovering Places’ website. - Journal articles to share the project’s findings with academic audiences.