Kai Durkin

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Co-creating Performance and Play: Supporting community cohesion and well-being through mixed-media co-production 

The presenter, Kai Durkin, sits at a table populated with plasticine, building blocks, lettered tiles and board game tokens, along with multiple pens, pencils and sheets of paper. Behind them is a posterboard displaying an A1 poster
For my showcase, I brought a selection of games and creative activities for participants to interact with, experiencing my work firsthand.

Kai Durkin is a third year full-time PhD student at Abertay University. Their thesis revolves around finding ways in which play can motivate creativity and support communities, in particular using play to capture the impact of community interventions. Their research interests include play, performance and participatory arts, creative research methods and community wellbeing.  

There is a growing prevalence across the UK of community-based participatory arts projects, which can have a powerful impact on community wellbeing, mental health and social cohesion (Hui et al., 2019; Stickley et al., 2018). Groups wishing to demonstrate the impact of such projects, however, face barriers such as a lack of time and resources for data collection, or difficulty capturing the more abstract benefits of their work (Morton and Cook, 2023).

One solution may be introducing play to the process of impact evaluation. In addition to making the process more attractive to participants, using play and creativity in data collection can disrupt hierarchies, interrupt automatic thinking, elicit the use of metaphor from participants, facilitate the discussion of complex ideas, and account for different ways of knowing, leading to richer data (Kara, 2020).

Therefore, I am iteratively designing a series of playful data-gathering activities, following an experiential cycle of practice-based research (Gray and Malins, 2016). These designs have been informed by focus groups and questionnaires carried out with local community groups in Dundee, to assess the needs of both participants and facilitators. Currently, they are being playtested in lab conditions; my next steps shall be to share these designs with facilitators of local community groups, to test in the field. The result will be a selection of activities which local community groups can choose from according to their needs.

I demonstrated my research at the SGSAH 2025 summer school showcase by inviting attendees to interact with some of my design prototypes: 

  • The first provocation was a selection of double-sided game tiles. One side of each tile was blank, inviting participants to write a reflection on their experience of the showcase; the other depicted a portion of a landscape, which participants were able to arrange in different combinations to create a unique tableau (inspired by tile-laying board games such as Carcassonne and Dorfromantik). The features of the landscape depicted on each tile prompted different areas of reflection, introducing a playful restraint to the process of giving feedback. Participants affixed their completed tiles to a clear acrylic A3 stand, and the result was a double-sided display, one side showing landscape co-created by the participants, the other side showing their written comments.
A photograph of three hexagonal game tiles, stuck to a clear acrylic frame. Together, they form the image of two cartoon figures standing next to a bike path, leading to a garden. In the foreground is a stack of similar tiles
Visitors were invited to play a board game arranging tiles on a clear A-frame to create a landscape with features like bike paths and gardens.
A photograph of three white hexagonal tiles stuck to a clear A-frame. Each tile has writing on it: “Summer school helped me get active by travelling across Glasgow and the ARC to see the full breadth of exhibitions”; “Summer school enabled me to re-unite with old colleagues and see how their research has evolved”; “I’m planning to go on a walking tour later today as part of the summer school, and I’m excited to take notice of the local woods.”
On the back of the board game tiles, participants were invited to provide feedback about how SGSAH and the summer school had impacted their wellbeing
  •  The second activity featured stackable building blocks in a range of five different colours, with textured stickers attached to make them possible to distinguish by touch as well as colour. Each of the five block types corresponded to one of the Five Ways to Wellbeing (Aked et al., 2008). Participants were invited to stack the blocks in different arrangements to visually indicate which of these five aspects of their wellbeing they felt were most impacted by SGSAH and the showcase.
  • The third provocation was a collection of lettered blocks, which participants were be invited to arrange and combine (a la a crossword puzzle) to spell out one-word responses to the summer school and showcase. 
A photograph looking down at a collection of lettered tiles arranged on a table so that they intersect to spell different words: ‘sit; stunning; SGSAH; Helen; fun; fab; brel; eustress; community; done; lunch; shiny; dive; waiting; tea; ant
Visitors used the lettered tiles to provide one-word summaries of the SGSAH summer school, such as ‘Fun’; ‘waiting’; ‘eustress’; and ‘community’
  • The final activity invited participants to sculpt creative responses to the showcase using plasticine. Participants had to follow one or more arbitrary rules, such as “you may only use one hand” generated randomly by rolling dice against a table. These rules introduced playful constraints and humour to the activity, thereby interrupting the inner critic and reducing participants’ self-consciousness. Participants were invited to display their sculptures on plinths, and to fill out an accompanying display card giving their creation an explanation, thereby providing written feedback on the showcase.

    A photograph of nine tiered display plinths, each showcasing a plasticine sculpture. The three forefront sculptures show a guitar, drumsticks and musical note; a love heart; and a plant growing upside down. The middle row of plinths exhibits a piano; a splatter; and a round person in a hat. The back row of plinths exhibits a cube; a teacup; and a sphere.
    Participants used plasticine to sculpt different creative responses to questions about their experiences at the SGSAH summer school

These activities invited attendees to reflect on and share their own experiences of the showcase and its impact on their wellbeing, encouraging thoughtful discussion amongst attendees and generating additional feedback for SGSAH.  Additionally, an A1 poster provided attendees with further information on my research methods and next steps. To access this information and keep up to date with my progress, please visit: https://playingwithimpact.com/ 

SGSAH; SGSAH ResearchCONNECT WITH KAI
E-mail: k.durkin2200@abertay.ac.uk