The game’s afoot in the playful city.  The sun has set and night is creeping across the city. As you near a lamp post a shadow appears in front of you and seems to invite you to dance. Or jump. Or run, maybe? What do you do?

People create bat shadows beneath a Bristol lamp post

Shadowing invites interaction between people who share a space – picture from Watershed website.

Fear not.  This is just a game and it seems plenty of people are up for playing it. Shadowing, the winner of Watershed’s 2014 Playable City Award, generated no fewer than 100,000 actively participating shadows in Bristol in six weeks. Look out because Shadowing, created by Jonathan Chomko and Matthew Rosier, could be on its way to a lamppost near you. 

Something interesting is happening on our streets. Cities with a playful spirit are being taken seriously – there’s economic value to places that are fun to live and work in. But there’s much more to the new concept of the Playable City than money. “The Playable City is a counterpoint to the Smart City”, according to Watershed, “A Playable City is a city where people, hospitality and openness are key, enabling its residents and visitors to reconfigure and rewrite its services, places and stories”.  

We love the idea because it fits so well with some of the new games we have been playing in Glasgow, using digital technology to connect people in the real world, rediscovering a sense of time and place.  For us it began in 2013 with Cinema City treasure hunt. In that first experiment with Glasgow Film we discovered the buzz that’s created when tech is used to bring people together for a live experience, sharing the fun of a chase through city streets – and meeting in a bar at the end to discover who won.

Three treasure hunters form a star on the floor of Glasgow's O2 ABC

Stars of Walking Heads Cinema City treasure hunt

That’s not a blinding revelation. People are social animals but digital technology is transforming human interaction at a bewildering pace. When we attended the ETAG conference on smart tourism in Edinburgh this year [ETAG technology solutions for tourism] there was excitement at the rapid development of geeky gizmos which could guide every step of a holiday, shopping trip or lunch break. But there were mixed feelings too. What do we lose when every pre-determined experience is filtered through a small screen?

There are signs of reaction against an ever faster pace of change. See the (suitably leisurely) growth of the Slow movement (Slow Food, Slow News, Slow Travel…).  It’s only human to enjoy meeting people in the real world. The interesting thing about the Playable City is that it combines smart technology with spontaneous human happenings.  Look at Shadowing – Jonathan Chomko and Matthew Rosier gave memory to Bristol’s city lights which enabled them to record and play back shadows of people walking underneath. The result was an extraordinary outburst of imaginative activity.

In Bristol we saw an incredible array of playful, thoughtful and creative responses, from those who lay on the ground to leave the shadow equivalent of a snow angel behind, to 10-person conga lines, breakdancing displays and wheelbarrow races with citizens trying to defeat the earlier shadow of themselves.  Watershed.

Bristol currently seems the UK capital of playfulness – it is Banksy’s hometown after all – but you can find other examples. Three years ago Edinburgh welcomed the new year with a 21st century version of an ancient Scottish tradition.  Uppies and Doonies took to the streets of Auld Reekie for the 2012 New Year Games (created by Hide and Seek for Unique Events) and digital tech played its part. For one of the games Found the band invited the audience to throw paper aeroplanes to activate an invisible (robot) band on the stage of the Hub;  for another, blindfolded contestants made their way through an electronic maze in the National Museum guided by their remote partner’s voice relayed through headphones.  Smart stuff. But the games were a success because 12,000 people came into the city centre to play.

Blindfolded contestants make their way through electronic maze in National Museum of Scotland

Smart thinking in National Museum of Scotland during Edinburgh’s New Year Games 2012

And of course you don’t always need fancy tech.  Blogger Lucy Brouwer recently sent us a ‘Postcard from Nottingham’ noting the sound of a street piano in the city’s newly designated Creative Quarter. That was simple ‘hands on’ playing – but we know about it because the news was tweeted.

Walking Heads are now working on some new and old tech ideas for 2015. If you have stories of playful cities anywhere in the world we would love to hear from you – by Twitter, Facebook, email, postcard, or carrier pigeon!