Archives, Memories, and Spaces of Children’s Play: Pre-digital and Postdigital Places of Affective Possibility

This chapter frames young children’s playspaces as sites for their own research into contemporary and archival play and games. It recognises the material and non-material, as well as human and non-human, contributors to the ‘kaleidoscopic vitality’ of their play. Children are positioned as agentive co-producers of research in these and related projects, which involve the use of a range of technologies, from tablet screens to voice recorders, Go-Pro cameras, hidden computers, and red phone boxes, alongside the play of the past as inscribed in pencil on paper, and the play of the present as captured onscreen for an audience in the future. In this sense, what follows is not about ‘education’ in ‘learning spaces’ but is about agentive and affective ‘learning’ about play and its place in children’s lives in pre-digital and postdigital times. This chapter brings together findings, memories, and impressions of a collaborative project on children’s games, conducted in the UK, called ‘Playing the Archive’ as a way of bringing these concepts together and reflecting on the postdigital in play, and research on play.