“How to Play Congklak Anywhere” centres around the human need for play, using the Congklak, the Indonesian variation of mancala board games, as a medium. Play is a common human experience that enables its participants to explore who they are through their relationships to the world, to other people and to the materials they have access to. To be in play is to explore what it means to be human, but being human involves a lot of other complicated things in our daily routines. Creating time and opportunities for play with the objects provided to us by our environment limits our materiality but can enhance our creativity.

Opportunities for specific actions or activities provided by an environment or object are known as affordances. Developed by J.J. Gibson in the 1970s, affordance theory helps identify how individuals interact with the features of the environment, resulting in activities which take place in a specific context. These opportunities are communicated and perceived through cues, or visual elements designed into the environment that indicate what activity a person can partake in within that specific space.

The final outcome of this project is a guidebook, modelled after Y2K girls' diaries and planners which were often colourful and fun in a way that encouraged its use with stickers. It contains instructions on how to make the boards I've made along the way as well as how to identify and create play spaces out of your surrounding environment. Users can also use a play map template that comes with the guidebook, where people can draw the play spaces they've identified in an area they often visit, along with stickers that say “THIS IS A PLAY SITE”.

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