Mapping ZombieBoy: spaces of care, joy and in-betweenness in encounters with minor theories of therapeutic playwork

This article plays with stories from the collaborative evaluation of Play2Nurture, a UK project exploring the spaces in-between playwork and play therapy. The evaluation used a cartographic approach to build an understanding of how spaces that support children’s play are produced, building the team’s account-ability and response-ability. Emerging from the ‘inefficient mapping’ and ongoing dialogue are the beginnings of minor theories of therapeutic playwork that build on and exceed major psychological theories, offering spatial perspectives that can open up spaces in-between for thinking and doing playwork and children’s geographies of play differently. Exploring the mappings, dialogue and diffractive readings of practice and theory, this article considers the spaces in-between playwork and play therapy, intrinsic and instrumental value, desire and damage, and caring and curing. We argue that co-producing a space where all children can play entails acts of care alongside a more expansive and geographical understanding of Winnicott’s relational and spatial thinking and his notion of ‘care-cure’ that embraces joy, nonsense and the capacity to affect and be affected by the space known as The Play Sanctuary.