About
About Our Space
IMAGINATION PLAYce is a Pitt School of Education community space created for students, faculty, and staff to come imagine and dream about the possibilities of learning through play. We want you to feel comfortable tinkering, playing, making, taking risks, and dreaming - and feel safe to fail, and try again!
Making and playing can lead to serious learning, and we want people to engage with our space so they can see firsthand that there are multiple ways to represent knowledge and understanding.
Come to Open Play Hours, partner with us to bring your class, collaborate on a play workshop, or simply come work within the space with your colleagues/peers. E-mail us with questions so we can support your work.
What can you do here?
Open Play Hours
Open Play Hours can be attended by students, faculty, and staff, where you can create artifacts, get support introducing playful practices or making projects, or simply meet with peers and colleagues in a creative space. We have staff in the space to support you, answer questions, and help you think through your ideas. Each week, current Open Play Hours will be listed on the Home page of our website.
Facilitated Workshops
Faculty are able to plan a visit to the Imagination PLAYce where we help host a play workshop. Our team will collaborate with you to design a session that is meaningful for your students. We help plan and run these workshops, and you can provide input on any playful experiences you want your students to participate in. Contact a member of our team to plan a facilitated workshop.
Class Sessions
We encourage faculty to reserve our space to teach a class. Our team can collaborate with you to design a session that is meaningful for your students - and our team can be present for the session, or you can simply use the space and materials for you and your class. Please reach out to a member of our team if you want to hold your class in the space.
Professional Development
We hold professional events in our space, such as writing retreats and workshops. Reach out to a member of our team if you are interested in holding any kind of professional development session in our space.
Our Values and Practices
We want the Imagination PLAYce to represent our core values and practices. In our space, we center values like joy, love, care, kindness, connection, empathy, and curiosity - we want you to feel free to engage in playful practices and utilize all materials available to you. In addition to these values, we aim to emphasize the following practices listed below.
Play
Dream
Tinker
Make
Create
Remix
Design
Imagine
Wonder
Revise
Reflect
Deconstruct
Freely engage in activities
Thoughts, ideas, images, and sensations that are made possible
Take risks, purposefully play, and try everything
Construct, build, assemble, and fabricate
Produce something
Everything is a remix - alter, rework, and reimagine something that already exists
Plan, sketch, outline, and construct objects
Visualize, brainstorm, and fantasize ideas
Desire to know something or to be curious about it
Give and receive feedback, fail and try again, iterate on your designs
Think deeply and critically, ask questions
Take apart and unravel the layers