In this episode of Playopolis, we hear highlights from Restart the World, a panel conversation about Melbourne post-lockdown hosted by Playable City Melbourne during the recent Melbourne International Games Week.

Participants in the discussion include RMIT Honorary Associate Professor Esther Anatolitis, City of Port Phillip Arts and Creative Industries Coordinator Paul Callaghan and Play Australia Executive Director Barb Champion. Working the city as a material and renewed engagement with public spaces, game designers, placemakers and public artists explored strategies for hyperlocal urban play and connection to place.

In part two, we explore the second of our features on Melbourne’s ‘untranslatable’ words with 64 Ways of Being language researcher Rachael Vorwerk. For the past year, Rachael has been interviewing Melbourne’s diverse communities about words that can only be translated to English through story. In this episode, Rachael explores words that are connected to place, and how they can be used to evoke feelings that connect us to culture.

She asks the question: How do words describe our diverse experiences of place?

Episode 3 show notes

• Esther Anatolitis is Honourary Associate Professor at RMIT University and a leading advocate for arts and culture in Australia. She talks about her project Plan Unintended Consequences and other playful interventions in Melbourne’s public spaces. Follow her on twitter @_esther
• Paul Callaghan is a creative producer and writer, and coordinator of arts and creative industry at the City of Port Phillip. Take a look at their Games Action Plan and its relationship to playable cities. Follow him on twitter @paul_callaghan
• Barb Champion is executive director of Play Australia, home of 1000 Play Streets a national movement to reclaim quiet residential streets for outdoor play.

2:30 Restart the World
6:30 Optimising public spaces for play
8:28 1000 Play Streets
9:19 Shifting focus to local communities
11:12 Artists and designers restart society
13.29 Changing cities
16:05 Melbourne’s evolution

19:00 Playtesting 64 ways of Being

26:12 Untranslatable Words (part 2)
28:04 Muni Muni (Filipino)
30:05 Forza (Italian)
33:00 Apapachar (Spanish)
34:57 Sobremesa (Spanish)
37:11 Anangmanang (Sinhalese)
38:52 Qi-Chang (Chinese)
43:50 Kilig (Filipino)
45:50 Credits