The world’s current tangled mess of problems — pandemics, wars, climate extremes, energy shortages, inflation, rising authoritarianism, polarisation, continued interconnecting systems of oppression and supremacy (racism, ableism, sexism, transphobia...) – is an interdependent ecosystem resulting from the inherent dominant cultures of modernity on the back of settler colonialism, imperialism and relentless, predatory globalised capitalism. In the face of a polycrisis which promotes and prizes hyper-individualism, urgency and speed, achieving personal wealth and status, competition with winners and losers, always moving “forward”, young people and communities in general find themselves ever more isolated, accelerated, divided and feeling helpless or "futureless". To remedy this and challenging the idea that there should or can be one finite solution to all problems, we aim to cultivate connection exploring simultaneously innovative and ancestral practices and knowledge for sustainable and life-affirming (justice-fuelled and joy-filled) futures. In this project we propose to untangle the roots of the oppression-based modern ecosystem of power and profit, to understand that the only constant is change – observe its course and transform its direction, and to challenge the crisis of imagination we are experiencing socially through play and other creative liberatory practices. Taking inspiration from literature such as Kazu Haga’s “Healing Resistance – a radically different response to harm”, adrienne maree brown’s “Holding Change – the way of emergent strategy facilitation and mediation” and Vanessa Machado de Oliveira’s “Hospicing Modernity – facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism”, and finding common ground through concepts authored and channeled by Otra Escuela such as relational care, positive transformation of conflict, life-affirming powers and healing justice, we propose to co-construct alternatives to these cultures of more than/less than and narratives of helplessness, by promoting imagination, action and liberation for human (and more than human) individuals, relations and communities. Finding that play is so widely distributed among other beings is harder for evolutionary biologists to explain than almost anything else. According to Darwinism’s economical view of reality, wherein every- thing that exists must be useful, it is hard to explain why young tigers risk their necks out of playful curiosity, or why, for example, a full-grown stag would expend energy on something that did not contribute to the dissemination of his genes. Since even older animals play—and adult human beings, the long-held “standard” explanation for such frivolous high spirits, which claims that play is a preparatory exercise for activity that will be useful later, no longer has any traction. Play does, however, make one thing possible: creating relationships. It is not actually training for the serious business of acquiring nourishment or forcefully defending territory, but for imaginative participation in the creative universe and for one’s role within it. So, play comes very close to being a comprehension of one’s own aliveness. It is the model for an existence that is not subjected to functionalism but boldly carries forth the natural history of freedom and expresses individuality (not individualism) and authenticity – the backbone of belonging, inclusion and embracing diversity. Understanding play as a fundamental way that we develop our muscles of imagination and creativity, it can be the path to embodying alternative and new or different perspectives, embracing experimentation, uncertainty, risk and failure, mobilising stagnant energies under the weight of burden and burn-out, expanding our ways of being and relating which open space for neurocomplex identities and depathologising our mental health (collectivising grief and hardship), and replacing the self-help trends shrouded in individualism, productivity and competition with connection and kinship with ourselves, each other, our communities and territories on micro and macro levels. Through a process of deconstruction and reimagination, experimentation and adaptation, playing and co-creating, we aim to achieve the following objectives: -To better understand the interconnected systems of oppression and current polycrisis through intercultural learning and nonformal education -To explore the benefits of different pedagogies and expressions of play for personal and social transformation and health -To generate action and community for social justice and active participation through experiencing, creating and testing games The key concepts to explore social justice & active participation through play will be community, territory, power, care, transformation, and collective liberation. This has a wider aim of enabling and empowering youth work professionals and young people to move towards collective healing and imaginative action.