Conference Program

From a very early age, children do not wait for adults to teach them how to play; they are biologically predisposed to do so by exercising their bodies and senses, exploring their environment and objects. This is referred to as the nature of play (Farné, 2024): play grows with the child and helps them grow. The amount of learning and mastery children acquire through spontaneous and natural play is extraordinary, provided they are not inhibited by overprotective adults (Rousseau, 2024). Through play, children relive the reality in which they are immersed and thus come to know it, making sense of the present and the future (Vygotsky, 2014). “For the commitment they put into it, play is real work” (Montessori, 2000), through which the child expresses their inner world (Erikson, 2008).

Speaking of a culture of play (Farné, 2024) means considering the forms through which play manifests in different social contexts. Play is a universal category of human action (Fink, 2023) and carries significant meaning: “every game means something.”, trascending immediate needs and giving sense to action; even at the animal level, it goes beyond purely biological activity (Huizinga, 2016). Within play, a complex relationship is established between freedom and rule, between the inner and outer worlds (Fink, 2023). Creativity, often associated with play, is not “infantile” in a reductive sense, but expresses a drive toward inquiry and change (Bertolini, 2015); it entails the capacity to question what appears given. However, contemporary capitalism, strengthened by neoliberalism, redefines creativity to fuel economic growth: to be creative means producing innovation functional to the status quo. Creativity thus becomes a competence oriented towards competitiveness and the reproduction of the existing order (Mould, 2018).

Broadening the perspective to the penal system, the concept of the prison-industrial complex (Davis, 2022) invites us to interpret punitive processes in light of economic and political structures: prison fits into a productive logic, where punishment can become profit. If creativity implies openness and transformation, prison represents the disciplinary management of bodies; yet, precisely here, play can assume educational value. As Caillois (2016) notes, play is freedom, separation, uncertainty, rule, non-productivity, simulation; between paidia and ludus, an alternative experiential space opens up.

Lifelong education (Loiodice, 2016) calls for pathways capable of fostering personal planning between conservation and transformation (Strollo, 2006). Within this framework lies the experience of “Giocare Dentro” (Decembrotto, Mari, 2025), carried out in Ravenna’s penitentiary from 2015 to 2023: 171 sessions, 103 board games, 65 participants. Through ludic mediation, the activity promotes learning and well-being. Play becomes a symbolic space in which inmates can requalify their self-image and reactivate relational and cognitive competences. Education concerns healing, empowerment, and liberation (hooks, 2022). In this sense, play proves to be a rehabilitative practice capable of reopening possibilities and supporting processes of identity reconstruction, keeping in mind the possibility of replicating the model in other contexts of confinement.