GPB Takes Center Stage at TASP Conference

August 10, 2023

Playship: A pathway for building sustainable and equitable playful spaces. 

Can a playful activity like “I am a tree” make all the difference in a keynote presentation?


Well, our Executive Director Rita Ezenwa-Okoro showed us how at The Association for the Study of Play's (TASP) 2023 Conference.


Rita's presentation  captivated educators and attendees as she shared the history, explorations, and future plans of GPB using the analogy of a ship in tandem with the theme of the conference “Playship: A pathway for building sustainable and equitable playful spaces."


It’s better experienced, so click below to watch the keynote presentation.

GPB brigadiers, Jeff Aron and Viviane Carrijo, also led a TASP workshop:  "Global Play Brigade: Building a Planetary Playship Through Co-Creation, Cooperation, and Cross-Cultural Dialogue”.


Participants included academics, mental health and education professionals. We played “performance greetings” and "who is like me" as a way to introduce our conversation.  The workshop also featured a short video in which Global Play Brigade leaders from India, Japan, China, Latin America, and Africa responded to the following prompts:


  1. How do you speak with others about the possibilities play offers for social transformation?
  2. What has it meant to you and those with whom you’re working to be creating a movement for play in your country and around the world?


The lively discussion focused on the challenges, experiences and excitement we all have had as advocates for the value of play.

Playing with Social Construction: GPB at the Taos Institute Symposium

By Danielle Speciale • June 9, 2026
Author: Sarah Filman, GPB Director of Programs

GPB and Linking Circles Academy Collaborate on Project TECI

June 9, 2026
GPB and Linking Circles Academy Collaborate on Project TECI We love a good partnership. And we really love a partnership that puts play where it belongs, in a classroom. So when Linking Circles Academy came with a vision to transform how teachers in Nigeria show up for their diverse learners, we opened the door. Fewer than half of teachers in Nigeria do not receive any training on inclusive education, and there are a lot of learners with diverse learning needs and abilities. Founded by Elizabeth Adams, a brigadier, Linking Circles is an education-focused organization on a mission to improve learning outcomes in African schools through teacher development. They've already trained over 50 teachers through virtual and in-person workshops. Project TECI (The Equitable Classroom Initiative) is their boldest move yet, aimed at training and mentoring at least 1,000 primary and secondary school teachers to design and sustain inclusive, equitable, student-centred classrooms. It's ambitious. It's necessary. And it has GPB's name all over it. Inclusive classrooms need teachers who know how to meet a room full of different minds, different stories, and make every single one of them feel like they belong. And play is one of the most powerful tools for developing exactly that. That's why GPB is stepping in as a curriculum partner for Project TECI. Through our Educators Ensemble, we're bringing our play-based and experiential learning methodologies directly into the teacher training design. GPB will be providing play-based learning resources and frameworks to shape the TECI curriculum, offering advisory and technical input, and delivering a virtual training session for TECI facilitators on how to integrate play and performance-based approaches into their work. We'll also introduce GPB's work to the educators coming through the TECI programme — because once a teacher catches the play bug, there's no telling where it spreads. We're happy to be walking this road with Linking Circles Academy. We're bringing play into spaces where it has been absent for too long. And we can't wait to see the classrooms and the children that TECI helps transform. Let's play it forward!