About Us
WE ARE AN INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
The Global Play Brigade is a global network of play practitioners, educators, mental health professionals, grassroots activists and community leaders united by a belief: that play is a powerful tool for bridging difference.
Founded in 2020, GPB has grown into a movement spanning 106 countries across six continents.
WE TAKE PLAY SERIOUSLY
Play is not simply fun and games. Play is not only for children.
We play with difficult emotions and conversations, stuck institutions and political environments, and even within crisis. Play allows people to envision new possibilities in their every day lives and in society.
Play is a powerful catalyst for change. Play is the way we will transform our world.
WHAT WE DO
WORKSHOPS
We offer free play-based workshops on Zoom in different languages and time zones around the world. These sessions are a place for people across borders to play, improvise, grow, and tell stories together.
GLOBAL EDUCATORS ENSEMBLE
The GPB Educators Ensemble brings together educators, parents, and school administrators from around the world to build capacity for learning and development through play-based methodologies. We support and learn from one another's cross-cultural perspectives.
AMBASSADOR PROGRAM
This training program bolsters grassroots leaders' own capacity for organizing in their community and on the global stage. As always, there is emphasis is on the use of play.
REGIONAL HUBS
GPB is a global network made up of regional hubs. Each hub has a leader, workshops, activities, and events dedicated to building that region.
PLAY GENERATOR
The Play Generator is our app-in-progress. Users will be able to look up improv games to infuse some play into their day, break up the status quo, or flip the script.
MEET THE TEAM
Our Origin story
The Global Play Brigade (GPB) has emerged in response to the global Covid-19 pandemic. A gathering of about 40 performers, improvisers, educators, musicians, clowns, therapists and coaches across the world began meeting over Zoom to see if we might be able to be of organized support and help to our fellow human beings as we weathered this crisis together.
But it's not over yet...
With crisis comes the possibility of lasting change. We had no interest in “going back to normal." Rather, we continue to work to create a new world.
“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew...It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly...ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”
— Arundhati Roy