Chainsaws and the Real World: Reflecting on Four Years of Risky Play

It’s a wrap!

With the Vivo Play Project drawing to its intended close, we caught up with the project’s two leaders and innovation designers—Anthony Bourque and Greg Stein—to hear the impact of the project and their takeaways from the past four years.

Anthony at a conference in Newfoundland

While their roles saw a lot of overlap and co-creation, Anthony led Community Experience, overseeing the frontline community touch points like Play Hubs, Play Kits, and play interventions and strategies. Hired halfway through the project, Greg led Knowledge Experience, running training so the frontline work ran smoothly.

Greg and Cam at a conference in Jasper

Anthony and Greg take us through the early days of the project, juicy takeaways, and what’s next for the both of them. You don’t want to miss this!

All Roads Lead to the Play Project

Greg: We have very different stories. My background is in general biology and I worked at the Telus Spark Science Centre from when they opened in 2011 to 2020. The 2017 International Play Association Conference was hosted here in Calgary, and it was my first deep dive into play and adventure playgrounds and unstructured play. I fell in love with that. I brought back the idea of the adventure playground to Spark and the next summer, with lots of help, we opened up the junkyard playground there.

In 2020, the Play Project was already in place, and Kris Kelly who used to work at Spark with me was the boss here, so I was very game to come and see if I could add value to the team.

Anthony: My story is a bit more convoluted. I was in the trades as an electrician, but I started working on my kinesiology degree and got pulled into this program called Play Around the World. I did my practicum in the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, and I absolutely fell in love with the idea of play.

“We live in such an amazing country, an
amazing province, in amazing cities. Why do we
not have that experience here as well?”

When I came back to Canada, I went out for an early morning walk and there were no kids on the playground, no kids in the field. Nobody was out on the street. In Cambodia, everybody was out first thing in the morning having fun, greeting each other, kids running the streets. We live in such an amazing country, an amazing province, in amazing cities. Why do we not have that experience here?

So I ended up doing my Masters in risky play/unstructured play with the University of Alberta. Vivo was hiring shortly thereafter, and I ended up working on my Masters and leading the team. By working with Vivo, I was able to do my Masters on the Play Project, which I finished in 2021.

The Evolution of Dreaming Big

Anthony: Play ranging, where you just show up with loose parts, was really at the heart of our original contract. And we tried that at the beginning, but we also tried the Play Hubs that are currently there today.

After all of the testing, prototyping, and getting feedback, we wanted to do the Play Hubs. And that was way more work. We built community infrastructure; that's not something that was intended with the project. So the spawn of my ideas ended up being more work (laughs).

“We did fail a lot. We failed forward a ton. But we kept evolving,
we kept growing, we kept trying new things. We always
dreamed big. We explored what's possible.”

We had, and we have, really high expectations for ourselves and the work we do. And you know, we did fail a lot. We failed forward a ton. But we kept evolving, we kept growing, we kept trying new things. We always dreamed big. We explored what's possible. We felt we didn't need to do the same old, same old. Let's test some edge conditions and blow people's minds. And that's really stayed with what we've done in the project.

Team Relationships Create Ripe Play Conditions

Greg: The team we got to be a part of was so awesome. We were more than colleagues. We enjoyed working together. We gave each other grace. I feel our relationship goes beyond the roles we have here. The project brought us all together, so that I will forever be grateful for.

Anthony: One of the first times I really felt at home at Vivo was at the first conference we ran, the Unconference. This was a family-friendly conference, so there were a lot of kids. The play ambassadors were occupying the kids while the parents were in the lobby trying to do the heavy thinking. We had brought up these little dolly carts, and the play ambassadors were letting the kids go down the ramp on them. And all these kids started screaming with joy.

Some customers were like, what is this? Why are these kids running down the ramp? I don't like it, it's chaotic. And I was like, what have I done? The CEO is right here, my boss, all these people—I'm gonna get fired. And the CEO comes up, she grabs a scooter and goes down with the kids.

That gave me permission without even needing to say it. I realized, Oh, they’ve got my back. The people we work with in our ecosystem—above, below, and sideways—all believe in the work that we're doing.

Community Relationships are the Real Hub

Anthony: Throughout the whole project, we have built relationships, built trust with communities—not just community organizations, but families. Because if you go in and say hey, we're going to do this here, you're not really being co-creative. You're just tapping them for their resources. You're not persuading them, you're not helping them. And that's really important if you want to build something sustainable.

“If you want to really make a difference in the lives of
people, you can't just show up and say, ‘We're doing this
in your backyard.’ You have to say, ‘Hey, come out to
my backyard. Let me show you what's possible.’”

If you want to really make a difference in the lives of people, you can't just show up and say, “We're doing this in your backyard.” You have to say, “Hey, come out to my backyard. Let me show you what's possible.” That's why we started with the first Play Hub at Vivo instead of out in the community, because it allowed us to both prototype and to show the community what was possible and what we could bring to them.

Greg: We're still doing a lot of that work right now. We've done all of this prototyping and training of our own staff, and now we're looking to scale it up, essentially. It’s about showing the value of the Play Hubs so that when the project ends, they're still up and running. I think 80% of them are staying on, which is a good number.

Don’t Go Zero to Chainsaw

Anthony: I'm reflecting on a term we have: “Don't go zero to chainsaw.” You don't just say, “There's a four year old, risky play, we're gonna give them a chainsaw.” You have to take the baby steps. How can you take it a half step back? You don't need to launch everything right this second. Do a quick prototype and test out a couple pieces, because it's going to unveil a lot and you can mitigate some of these problems before you launch the full on “product.”

Real World Impact

Greg: It was easy to see the kids playing and coming back and the relationships formed between play ambassadors and families week after week. When we had to move one of our hubs to a new location for sustainability reasons, we heard about a petition the families wanted to start to keep it in their park instead. You could tell the impact. And I live in Beddington, one of the communities the Play Project serves. I have been able to bring my son to them and see that impact as well.

Anthony: We've gotten a lot of great feedback, people saying how much they love the program, love the opportunity. It's been really, really humbling.

Lessons Learned

Anthony: In the past, I hadn't really thought about the intentionality behind design. I was going to do a whole lecture teaching play theory. Whereas this experience pushed me to think about experiential learning and design. What happens when I take all this stuff out of the books and put it into a real world context? That really coloured my approach to a lot of things, including how I present.

“What happens when I take all this stuff out of the books
and put it into a real world context?”

It’s also really empowered me in other ways. I’m getting a small pop-up restaurant off the ground in Strathmore. That comes courtesy of the skill set I learned around designing experiences, building prototypes, and building relationships. There's a lot of this innovation DNA that's been imprinted on me from the Play Project that I am so grateful for.

Greg: A big learning for me is that nothing is ever truly completed. We've had all of our targets, and yet we're still tweaking things and working with things and building relationships and upkeeping relationships. So just because things are “done”, nothing is ever actually done.

Personal Takeaways

Greg: This role has given me the chance to push myself at home a bit more. If Lincoln, my son who is six, is acting silly or playful, I can understand where he’s coming from. I try to be silly with him sometimes as well. It's good for me to let loose a little bit. I don't just have to be the onlooker. I can co-play with him and that's good for both of us.

“The work with the Play Project really helped me
think about how I wanted to show up.”

Anthony: The work with the Play Project really helped me think about how I wanted to show up. The people that I got to work with, the leadership journey that we've been on, and the work that we've gotten to do, all of those components have built more empathy and compassion in me and helped me to be a better human being to other people in my life. The roles that Greg and I both have, there's an ecosystem around it. And that ecosystem impacts not just the role, but us—who we are, what we do, how we act, how we are.

What’s Next?

Greg: This role has made me think a lot about user experience, user design, and service design a bit more broadly. Iif all of these principles work in play, as they worked at the Science Centre, it's because it's a usable skill set in a multitude of industries.

“Play is a philosophy or a way of being that you
can bring with you everywhere, and it touches
everything you do.”

Anthony: I used to think, how am I ever going to use my play knowledge in real life? And now I see the ways I can use play and those soft skills to build out a whole new skill set, to keep growing my professional practice in the service design field. It's one of those big blanket things where I can design in a playful experience and use it to impact the lives of other people.

I've been thinking about play as a philosophy or a way of being that you can bring with you everywhere, and it touches everything you do. That's a big thing to bring forward.

Greg and Anthony, thank you for the heart, commitment, and creativity you’ve put into bringing play to families and communities across North Central Calgary.