EVENTSIMPORTANCE OF PLAY
On December 14, 2025, The Opentree Foundation (TOF) hosted a Play Seminar – Child Wellbeing Through Play at the Armaity Desai Hall at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. It was attended by over 100 engaging, enthusiastic play supporters from diverse spaces of academia, education, urban design, psychology, philanthropy and the social sector. It was heartening to see an auditorium and a courtyard bustling with participants throughout the day, showing a shared commitment and passion for play and play advocacy.
The keynote speakers for the event were Farida Lambay, Co-Founder, Pratham Education Foundation, and Anmol Sagar, IAS, CEO of Latur District, where TOF’s play programmes impact over 10,000 children across 50+ schools.
Lambay spoke at length about the various socio-economic barriers that limit children’s access to play, highlighting that even with the inclusion of Play in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, there remain considerable gaps in the implementation of play-centric teaching methods and the integration of play into learning spaces. Sagar, who has witnessed the impact of TOF’s programmes in Latur, spoke about play as a key tool for helping children develop positive attitudes towards school and learning, and urged organisations like TOF, and experts to come forth and collaborate with the government on more scalable, low-cost models of play-centric learning.
A Play-centric Space
Play is ubiquitous – we are surrounded by Play, and yet, we often fail to notice it. At this seminar, along with fostering dialogue and collective action on play, one of our goals was to create as many opportunities as possible for everyone to observe, recognise, and reflect on the presence of play all around.
The essence of Play and playfulness was a key element of the experience design of the seminar. Our team created a series of interactive ‘play nooks’, that gave participants a chance to relive their own play memories, to understand some of the games used as part of project Toybank’s Conscious Play® approach, and invited them to reflect and collectively brainstorm solutions to these big questions: How can play become a part of learning environments? What can be done to make play accessible and equitable for children from underserved communities?
At these exhibits, participants also had a chance to understand the impact of TOF’s life skills play programme, which was also the focus of a session on Assessing through Play.
Panel Discussion - The Child and Play: Current Realities & Way Forward
The lack of equitable access to play is a complex problem, one that is deeply enmeshed with other socio-economic-cultural factors, and needs to be addressed through an ecosystem of mindset change, policy reform, capacity building and resource allocation. It is important that the child’s Right to Play is examined in the context of all these factors, along with defining the roles of various stakeholders in realising it.
These diverse perspectives on play came together in the form of a panel discussion titled ‘The Child and Play: Current Realities & Way Forward’ at the seminar, chaired by Ingrid Srinath, Founder-Director of Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy. The panelists were:
- Prof. (Dr.) Shubhada Maitra, former dean of the School of Social Work, TISS and an expert on children’s welfare, mental health, gender and play
- Ms. Samriti Makkar Midha – a clinical psychologist and expert on play therapy, child protection, diversity and inclusion
- Mr. Luis Miranda, chairman of the Indian School of Public Policy
The panelists navigated questions on where play can find a place in children’s well-being and cognitive development, the need to reimagine ecosystems through play-centric design and approaches, the role that socio-economic adversity, gender, geography play in enabling or restricting access to play.
Play in Practice: Parallel Sessions
One of the highlights of the seminar were the sessions led by play practitioners – experts who use play as a tool for change in their own practices and contexts. The first session, ‘Beyond Toys: Beyond Toys: Creating a Culture of Playfulness for Families and Communities, was conducted by Dr. Krishna Kulkarni, a play researcher who uses playful practices to advise parents on fostering safe, joyful interactions and spaces with children. In Urban Spaces for Play, Sarfaraz Momin, the Co-Founder of StudioPOD spoke at length about how play can consciously be integrated into the design of spaces, and how play-centric design fosters wellbeing, cognitive development, and creates more equitable access for play.
The third session, How Play Makes Sense: Integrating Play in Schools & Communities and its Impact on Children was conducted by Rahul Aggarwal and Kuldeep Kannoujiya from Swatantra Talim, a Lucknow-based organisation that works to build children’s skills and agency through play-centric activities and environments. This session wove elements of free play, puppetry to give participants an immersive experience. These sessions inspired participants with ideas on how to integrate play into their own context, to address children’s needs and overcome barriers to play.
Workshop: Rediscovering Play
Facilitated by the The Opentree Foundation’s team, this 45-minute workshop was a space for participants to revisit play in their childhood, reflect on the paucity of play as we become adults, and to immerse themselves in a state of playfulness where they used their imagination to bring abstract objects to life. The workshop brought out rich reflections – from the role of stress in our fast paced lives, to the lack of non-judgemental, safe spaces where one can be playful, to the need for being open to newer, less structured ways of thinking and finding solutions.
Launch: Play is Everywhere
With all the participants in a playful state of mind, TOF announced the launch of Play is Everywhere, a crowdsourced digital archive that will inspire all of us to be more aware of play round us, to think more critically about what enables or deters access to play and the intermingling of culture with play. You can follow us here.
Assessing Play through Play
In the two decades of our work at The Opentree Foundation, a question that we have tried to address is: How do you measure Play? Play is not linear; its impact of play is largely visible through observation or interaction with children, and the outcome varies from child to child. Over the years we have conducted assessments, observations and case studies that document the impact of play on skills, socio-emotional development, school attendance and learning outcomes; and yet, there remains a large gap in terms of a shared body of knowledge, or even shared evidence on measuring the impact of play in the Indian context.
As our programmes have evolved, we also have steadily worked on bridging this gap in terms of resources and research on assessments for play in India. At the play seminar, Shweta Chari, CEO and Co-Founder, The Opentree Foundation, presented this journey of evolution of impact measurement for play, along with Vijaya Balaji, founder, Social Lens, which is our partner for data analysis and impact measurement.
In their session, Shweta and Vijaya reflected on the lack of structured tools and methods to measure the impact of play, beyond traditional surveys and questionnaires, and introduced TOF’s play-based assessment of life skills, which will be the first every framework of its kind in India that uses play to measure play.
Call for Collective Action
The seminar concluded with a call to action, for participants to come forward and sign up for a Play Collective, which will bring together a group of driven play advocates who will leverage their individual strengths, influence, resources and expertise to initiate collective action for mainstreaming play in schools, communities and public spaces in India. Through this Play Collective, The Opentree Foundation will spearhead play-centric research, innovation and policy change, paving the path for realising the Right to Play for every child in India.
