Grant funding is a distinctive feature of our annual Play Conference, and we are proud to have awarded $47,000 in funding to date. At the 2017 Conference on the Value of Play: Where Design Meets Play the new grant winners were announced. The review process was challenging as we had a record number of outstanding submissions this year.
Each year a $3,000 research seed grant is awarded to a researcher or group of researchers who present empirical research at the play conference to support new, innovative and thoughtful work on the value of play. This is seed funding in support of longitudinal or future research in diverse topics related to play, and grant recipients’ work reflects great potential for expanding knowledge in the field.
The 2017 Research Seed Grant was awarded to Shan Jiang, PhD, from West Virginia University for her project, “Healing through Play: Play Opportunities as Positive Distractions at Pediatric Healthcare Environment.”
In addition to the research grant, $1000 action grants are awarded to support creative and innovative proposals to engage groups in play or to educate abo
ut the value of play. This year we had two partners supporting our action grants, IPA-USA and Partners for Parks. We also had funding from our Giving TuesPLAY initiative.
There were three projects that each received a 2017 Action Grant:
– Britt Stetson for Harper’s Playground at Arbor Lodge Park, a playground for children of all abilities in in Portland, Ore.
– D
ebora Wisneski and Miriam Kuhn for “Building a Community of PLAY Through an Interdisciplinary University Collaborative” at the University of Nebraska Omaha.
– Gregory Manley from City of Play in Pittsburgh, Penn., for Ludovia, a weekly class for young professionals and working-class minorities to foster play through physical, emotional and social communication. 