Playing in Northampton: Connecting Past, Present and Future
- Submitting institution
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University of Northampton, The
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 4563438
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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- Book title
- Celebrating 40 Years of Play Research: Connecting Our Past, Present, and Future : Play & Culture Studies, Volume 13
- Publisher
- Hamilton Books for The Association for the Study of Play (TASP)
- ISBN
- 9780761868163
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- September
- Year of publication
- 2016
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This chapter was published in Play & Culture Studies, in an issue marking the fortieth year of The Association for the Study of Play (TASP). The organisation grew out of the anthropological studies of play. Playing in Northampton was based on a body of research looking at the creative benefits of play undertaken over a five-year period. The author had researched the links between social processes as defined by Marcel Mauss and the design of consumer objects. The toy research arose through successful Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, led by the Product Design academics at the University of Northampton. Two exhibitions “All work and no play make you a dull designer” (All Play) were used, not only to disseminate their findings to the wider community, but as methodology to gather data from companies and the public. They found from this research, that the innovate design role of firms in Northamptonshire had not been recorded, although the V&A’s Museum of Childhood had been collecting oral history accounts of the industry.
New studies were undertaken in partnership with staff at Northampton’s Guild Hall Museum for their exhibition entitled “Toy Town”. The significance of the history of a local toy industry had not been known or preserved locally, until the stories came to light through the All Play exhibitions. The relationships between play, design education and the local economy came into a clear focus. The publication in Play and Culture, also marked the significance of Northampton in the global story of toys and play. World War One & Two disrupted the international toy industry and the region was able to take a lead globally, through production of model engineering, innovative plastic technology and export machine tools. So, what looked like a local history study has proved to be significant internationally.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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