Let’s Play
2024
Gallery exhibit made with Eclipse Gaming Café and community contributors.
Games are a starting point for connection — they tap into deep and varied emotional wells. In the spirit of this connection, Carlisle Arts Learning Center partnered with their Pomfret Street neighbor, Eclipse Gaming Cafe, to explore games as a tool for observation and relationship-building. For this exhibit, we used what already exists, like the earliest (and often most fun) examples of games. Community members were invited to contribute stories and objects related to game play at all ages and life stages. Through interactive displays modeled on different styles of play, we explored ways that games can embody escape, competition, collaboration, experimentation, curiosity, and even invention.
CALC’s Artworks teen program contributed games to the exhibit, and visitors were invited to create their own characters, play games together, and gather in what can be one of the loneliest months of the year: January. One of the fan favorites in the show was a turet from a beloved wooden playground in Carlisle, PA called “Fort Letort” that had been demolished and replaced the previous year.