Neurodivergent Library and Information Staff Network

I’ve been involved in play and playfulness in adulthood related things for quite a few years now and I’ve found one aspect of it quite uncomfortable to me for much of that time. When people discuss playfulness, or even create tools to assess how playful someone is, there is always a strong “social” element built in. If you aren’t outgoing, extroverted, or generally inclined towards being social by default, then you can score low on playfulness tests.

Playfulness – literally “full of play”, the state of mind or personality attribute that means we are likely to start playing.

In addition to this, play itself is often referred to as a social activity, the phrase “play is inherently social” is pretty normal to hear. The default form of play is seen to be in social groups, we play together rather than alone. Sociologists such as Goffman talked about how we signal to one another, give cues to help each other shift our framing of a situation towards play, to transition towards play as a group.

Play – an activity that engrosses us, that we take part in voluntarily for no material reward. It’s hard to define, but we often recognise it when we experience it!

But where does that leave neurodivergent players? Some of the most playful people I know are neurodivergent. And how does it vary across the range of neurodiversity? ADHDers or Dyslexics, for instance, may readily fall into the social player categories, but Autistics and Dyspraxics may not. Or we might fit into a narrower range of social play, preferring to inhabit other characters through role play of various sorts, including Dungeons and Dragons, LARPing, Clowning, which allow us to approach that social play from a different angle, with our play sometimes reflecting a special interest.

When you look at some of the fundamental works in play and games theory, you also see that much of what is described as play does not actually need to be “social” in the way that play is normally perceived.

Roger Callois talked about different types of play including Agôn (competition), Alea (chance), Mimicry (playing a different character), and Ilinx (vertigo, spinning, or just twisting our perception to introduce an element of chaos). But we can compete against our selves, play games of chance alone, inhabit different imaginary characters and worlds in our own heads, and go an a roller coaster without them being social activities!

The National Institute for Play in the USA lists play styles for people (based on Stuart Brown’s work) of creator, explorer, competitor, organizer, dreamer and mover. Again, these can largely be expressed through solo play rather than group or social play.

So why do we think of play as a group activity, as something that is rarely solo? I’d say it’s heavily influenced by neurotypical expectations of play. It’s still the case that autistic children may get interventions to attempt to make them play more “appropriately”, which tends to mean in the social and normative ways in which neurotypicals expect play to occur. But if we accept that we all have different ways of playing, which are equally valid (unless harmful to others), then we can broaden out the ways in which we view and encourage play.

Which takes us onto libraries, archives, and other spaces! When we talk about introducing play (or games) into information work, we often mean very narrow neurotypical friendly types of play. We bring games and playful group activities into our teaching or training. Encourage humour, creative activities, and more based around groups of people entering our spaces, taking part in scheduled activities together. These things speak to many people, but not necessarily to the neurotypes who are uncomfortable with group play, who are potentially very playful, but within their own minds, their own protected spaces.

If we can make our spaces, services, training more playful, in ways that encourage solo play as well as group play, this can potentially increase engagement, increase a sense of psychological safety, build a feeling of belonging, deepen learning, and improve the service for a wider range of people through play.

I hesitate to list ways of making such changes as it will be different for each service and their users! Especially as a classic ways of signalling that it’s ok to play is the use of humour which is so hard to pitch right! But we could consider things that enable the play styles or play types mentioned above – can we build in “rabbit holes” for people to fall down (little extra things for the “explorers” to discover)? Can we give users the chance to compete against themselves in low risk ways? To pretend to be another character when trying something new? To create things individually, including academic work, perhaps next to others doing similar (body doubling) rather than as a group activity? There is so much more, but the important thing is to consider these groups of people. Those who would benefit from play, but who would be turned off by group play and reluctant to engage with the default, neurotypical play activities people tend to plan.

Play is neurodiverse in nature itself, the activities which might work brilliantly for some neurotypes will not work effectively for others. If you try to bring play, playfulness, or games into your library work, remember this, try to account for it, and share the things that seem to work with others.

Andrew Walsh, @Playbrarian.uk June 2026. These reflect the opinions of the author, not NLISN as a whole.