Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Begin To Play: The Case For Play In Community Engagement In Higher Education, Naomi B. Roswell

Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Journal

Although little is written about the role of play in community engagement in higher education, professors and administrators intuitively grasp its value in building trust and democratizing spaces, but use games thinly. This paper acknowledges the challenges of developing effective community engagement partnerships and demonstrates how and why games based in Theater of the Oppressed deepen and enhance initiatives to dissolve town / gown divisions and enable collaborative knowledge generation. Through an analysis of literature reviews and interviews, this paper makes a case for deliberately incorporating games from Theater of the Oppressed (TO) - to advance community engagement initiatives by …