The concept of ‘play’ in art and design is not new; it can be found in the work of influential figures likes Charles and Ray Eames and Libuše Niklová who saw as much value in well-designed toys as they did in well-designed chairs.

From a more contemporary view, we looked to artists and designers imagining future scenarios like those showcased in the Museum of Modern Art’s 2011 Talk to Me exhibition.

In this exhibition, works imagined a world in which every object would need to project human emotion and relate to its owners in a personal way. An industry-minded perspective is offered by Tim Brown, CEO at IDEO, who says “playfulness helps us to get better creative solutions – helps us do our jobs better.”

Play has long been a focus of academic discourse; twentieth-century Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga believed that “play is older than culture” and deemed all play to be a kind of transcendent experience.

Contemporary researchers see play as a critical element in the development of the brain’s circuitry: by figuring out rules, parameters and possible outcomes, our brains get the best workout.

When we are engaged in a game, we are fully invested in what we are doing, completely absorbed. As a result, learning is not forced; it is needed, even craved, in order to achieve greater results. We hoped to embrace this focus, while promoting the wild, unexpected outcomes implied by our rallying cry – 3ajeeb!

The conference was, in some ways, also about shifting expectations. In the Gulf region, we are regularly exposed to the most polished, high-end deliverables – from artwork to architecture, Damien Hirst to Rem Koolhaas. In contrast, Tasmeem 3ajeeb! was an opportunity to embrace the messy, unpredictable starting points of the creative process – the happy accidents and strange connections essential to the practice of art and design. The goal of the event was to present playfulness as a methodology: an approach to learning, investigating and making.

Finally, from a global standpoint, the timing seemed right for this type of approach. Coverage of current events portrays an increasingly polarized world, in spite of our unprecedented digital connectedness.

We Tasmeem 3ajeeb!, we had the opportunity to forge positive, creative and diverse networks of people in real life and real time, through the sharing of ideas, experiences and skill sets. VCUarts Qatar’s unique identity as an American branch campus in the Middle East – a mash-up of fifty-plus nationalities and many different cultural and religious backgrounds – makes it the ideal backdrop for such an exchange.