Abstract
Sustainability problems are complex and overwhelming, with terms like eco-anxiety now commonplace. Sustaining engagement therefore requires attention beyond systemic levers towards relational, social, and emotional dimensions. This paper explores play as a participatory tool to foster wellbeing, maintain engagement and reframe environmental action. Play is known to support healthy development, reduce stress, and connect socially as an antidote to fatiguing emotions. Research has additionally explored play’s transformative potential to disrupt existing structures and imaginaries. This study examines how play can be leveraged to support more inclusive and emotionally sustainable engagement with environmental action. Using a participatory research-through-design process (Situated Play Design), this research contributes: (1) Play potentials - relational spaces where playfulness naturally occurs in environmental action; (2) A co-created speculative interventions catalogue, illustrating how these play potentials might be designed for to reimagine environmental action. These contributions support regenerative, joyful environmentalism, recognising playfulness as a legitimate mode of participation.
Keywords
Play, Sustainability Engagement, Playful Participation, Relational Care
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.608
Citation
Vize, S., Altarriba Bertran, F., and Gaziulusoy, İ. (2026) The environmental citizen’s playbook: A catalogue of playful participation for environmental action, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.608
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
The environmental citizen’s playbook: A catalogue of playful participation for environmental action
Sustainability problems are complex and overwhelming, with terms like eco-anxiety now commonplace. Sustaining engagement therefore requires attention beyond systemic levers towards relational, social, and emotional dimensions. This paper explores play as a participatory tool to foster wellbeing, maintain engagement and reframe environmental action. Play is known to support healthy development, reduce stress, and connect socially as an antidote to fatiguing emotions. Research has additionally explored play’s transformative potential to disrupt existing structures and imaginaries. This study examines how play can be leveraged to support more inclusive and emotionally sustainable engagement with environmental action. Using a participatory research-through-design process (Situated Play Design), this research contributes: (1) Play potentials - relational spaces where playfulness naturally occurs in environmental action; (2) A co-created speculative interventions catalogue, illustrating how these play potentials might be designed for to reimagine environmental action. These contributions support regenerative, joyful environmentalism, recognising playfulness as a legitimate mode of participation.