Burn, Andrew and Potter, John and Cowan, Kate and Bishop, Julia (Eds).
(2025)
Playing the archive: from the Opies to the digital playground.
[Book].
UCL Press: London.
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Abstract
Playing the Archive: From the Opies to the digital playground reflects on a major study inspired by the work of citizen scholar folklorists Iona and Peter Opie. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Opies built a vast collection of children’s street and playground games, stories, sayings, rhymes, beliefs and habits as told to them by children all over Britain. These accounts are now held in the Bodleian Libraries and were the focus and inspiration for the new study. New stories and games were gathered from today’s children, and comparisons drawn between play experiences at these two different points in time. The book explores how the Opie Archive was made publicly available online by the project through digital images, innovative cataloguing and playful digital media interfaces, such as a red telephone kiosk at the Young V&A. Chapters analyse the ethnographic strands of the project, collecting evidence of new and old forms of play on today’s playgrounds using state-of-the-art digital methods. The book proposes new ways of thinking about changes and adaptations to play and games, theorising on the workings of interfaces, repertoires and archives. It also considers the Opies’ ways of working, landscapes of play over time, and intergenerational dialogue about play. The collection presents research evidence and theory which speak back to the often reductive public discourse around children's play and digital media. It positions children as creative, agentive and engaged participants in their play cultures.
| Type: | Book |
|---|---|
| Title: | Playing the archive: from the Opies to the digital playground |
| ISBN-13: | 9781800083745 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.14324/111.9781800083745 |
| Publisher version: | doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800083745 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Collection © Editors, 2025 Text © Contributors, 2025 Any third-party material in this book is not covered by the book’s Creative Commons licence. Details of the copyright ownership and permitted use of third-party material is given in the image (or extract) credit lines. Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher. If you would like to reuse any third-party material not covered by the book’s Creative Commons licence, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright owner. This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. This licence allows you to share and adapt the work for non-commercial use providing attribution is made to the author and publisher (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work) and any changes are indicated. Attribution should include the following information: Burn, A., Potter, J., Cowan, K., and Bishop, J. (eds). 2025. Playing the Archive: From the Opies to the digital playground. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800083745 Further details about Creative Commons licences are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ |
| Keywords: | play, childhood, folklore, Opie archive, intergenerational |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Culture, Communication and Media |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10206508 |
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