A community that supports transformation

Are you dedicated to growing your practice of playful inquiry?

Are you seeking an antidote to the isolation so often felt by practitioners who believe play, meaning-making, and the rights of children should be prioritized in school?

Are you an educator committed to re-imagining environments and experiences for learning that promote joy, creativity, and the wonder of learning?

Are you a school leader hoping to support colleagues as they reimagine their work?

You've found a global community dedicated to mutual mentorship towards responding to those questions in your unique context.

Contact Susan and Matt here.

The Studio invites you to participate through multiple doorways:

Engage: Monthly framing for your investigations.

Inspire: Frequent support and interaction catalyzing your growth.

Transform: Full community immersion, including live meetings and courses.

Join the Studio

Studios are places where people come together to experiment: to imagine greater possibilities, try out new ideas, and share experiences investigating pathways that include immersion in the arts, investment in play, and sharing stories.

The Studio for Playful Inquiry is an online community filled with colleagues eager to grow with you. Here, you’ll find inspiring, provocative invitations that spur meaningful conversation and exchange, catalyze reflection, and encourage innovation. It's slow pd: for the price of a workshop, you get a year of evolving and deepening connection. 

Members come from all parts of the world, teaching and leading in a wide range of schools for children (usually ages 3 to 11, but sometimes younger and sometimes older.) We share images and stories, read, watch, and listen to a range of texts, and connect with each other through an inviting platform and realtime meet-ups. Together, we support each other to create the kinds of learning communities upon which healthy living depends.

At your fingertips when you want it

What do members say?

In the Studio:

Each month we explore a "through line" of interest to members around the world. We’re in the midst of a two month focus on perception, with March’s focus being making sense of our senses and April’s celebrating doubt. Across those two months, we’re reading Beau Lotto’s Deviate: The Science of Seeing Differently. This month’s Guide Line conversation with Anthony Semann will be held April 1 and will be available for later viewing. Our investigation of perception and doubt is complemented by an exploration of light and shadow.

Kathy Collins leads a course focused on a topic we all care about - no matter how old we are. Registration is included in the Transform Plan and opens for a la carte registration April 25.

Not ready to join? Get on the list!

Click here to be added to our mailing list. We send frequent newsletters with essays, links to relevant articles and other interesting things, and keep you updated on ways to get involved with the Center for Playful Inquiry and its Studio.

Who is behind this project?

Susan Harris MacKay and Matt Karlsen are the hosts of The Studio for Playful Inquiry.

Learn more about them and the Center for Playful Inquiry here.