Liberated through teddy bears: resistance, resourcefulness, and resilience in toy play during the COVID-19 pandemic

Heljakka, Katriina

doi:10.1080/21594937.2021.2005402

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…The third way of performing togetherness was found in the group members’ sharing of playful resilience in response to the prescriptive home quarantine, which turned out to be an opportunity for community building through co-celebrating the hardiness of lay people. Playful resilience, in Heljakka’s (2021) definition, refers to people creatively mitigating the negative impacts of forced self-isolation, and in difficult times, finding a resolution through play to enhance resilience and well-being. As exemplified within the group storytelling, people shared different stories about their creative and playful navigation of the adversity, ranging from toy-playing (e.g., Teddy bear hunt around neighborhood to show collectivity), orchestra over the fence (e.g., musicians playing an orchestra with a fence between them), and a relay on showing drawings, paintings, and handcrafts to memorize COVID-19.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As exemplified in this study, some group members (opinion leaders) have smartly used humor or irony as a vehicle of releasing negative energy and tactfully challenging political power ( Ernest-Samuel, 2021 ) without damaging the community’s positive ambiance; and (3) Showcasing playful resilience by building cheerful counternarratives to mitigate the adverse impacts of COVID-19 and facilitate self-/community resilience. As found in the group members’ sharing of creative ways to counteract loneliness and isolation, their uplifting storytelling demonstrated a spirit of “playing for the common good” ( Heljakka, 2021 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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“Sharing Is Caring”: Participatory Storytelling and Community Building on Social Media Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic

Hou

2023

American Behavioral Scientist

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While most health communication studies tend to adopt an information-based approach to unpacking the communication issues around COVID-19, scant attention has been paid to the emerging narratives from local communities as a way of sensemaking, self-representation, and creative responses to the pandemic. Especially locally driven narratives that convey positive emotions and exhibit remarkable resilience of the great majority are underexamined. To narrow this gap, this study analyzed a Facebook-based, participatory storytelling program to reveal how local communities (co-)construct humanized narrative accounts of lived experiences and context-specific knowledge about pandemic responses. Data collection involved qualitative content analysis of 245 user-generated stories, associated with comments and engagement from the group members, for a 6-month period. Results show that open and participatory storytelling on social media affords a pathway of performing togetherness even though individuals narrate their lived pandemic experiences differently. Such performing togetherness somewhat facilitated virtual community building. This study contributes to the health communication literature with a refreshing perspective of understanding the grounded, participatory storytelling as a vehicle of collective sensemaking and community spirit-lifting.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Sharing Is Caring”: Participatory Storytelling and Community Building on Social Media Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic

Hou

2023

American Behavioral Scientist

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“…This resulted in reduction in their stress levels. This is echoed in the findings of Heljakka (2021) who found that regular daily activities and distractions, such as walking a neighbourhood looking for bears in windows, was a positive experience for young Finnish children.…”

Section: Health and Well-beingmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…The name of the project 'Bear in a Window' comes from an activity that developed through Australia's early waves of the pandemic, when people put teddy bears in windows facing streetwards, so that families in lockdown, who were permitted to go outside for an hour daily, could make a game of spotting the bears on their neighbourhood walks. This practice is reported to have been positively viewed as a transgenerational form of expression and play during the pandemic (Heljakka, 2021). With this practice in mind, in the current study, children were invited to respond to a discourse prompt from a bear sitting in a window.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bear in a Window: Australian children's perspectives on lockdown and experiences of the COVID‐19 pandemic

Kelly

Diskin-Holdaway

2022

Children & Society

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This paper examines the reflections of a cohort of Australian children who lived through the 2020–21 COVID‐19 pandemic and experienced being in ‘lockdown’; a state of largely being confined to the home for long periods daily. We report how children reflect on their experiences and illustrate how reflections draw on similar topics focused on localised child concerns regarding health, education, family, digital engagement, mealtimes and food. Further, we argue for the importance of including children's own voices of lived experience in reports regarding life during the pandemic since these perspectives may differ from those reported by adults on children's behalf.

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“…As previously suggested, playful resilience, as a theoretical concept originates in the area of play research conducted at the first stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020 with an interest in object play (where various materials are manipulated, see Hughes, 2002) and a play pattern that became a viral and global online phenomenon-the teddy challenge (Heljakka, 2020b). In the following stage of this research, the author, who conducted the original study, interviewed players of the teddy challenge from Finland, U.K., and Singapore in 2021, and arrived at an understanding that the underpinnings for motivation to engage with teddy bears by participating in the teddy challenge (that is, displaying plush toys in the windows or making social media posts about them, and spotting the toy displays in windows) were grounded in three ideas, namely the ones of resistance, resourcefulness, and playful resilience (Heljakka, 2021b). This study continues the work of the author, combining findings of play research with the areas of playful learning and entrepreneurship education.…”

Section: Definitions Of Playfulness and Playful Resiliencementioning

confidence: 99%

Building playful resilience in higher education: Learning by doing and doing by playing

Heljakka

2023

Front. Educ.

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Playful approaches include many benefits for higher education. Here, they denote elements of playful learning that invite students to engage with various challenges related to imagination, innovation, and co-creation. As stated in earlier research, playful learning follows the constructivism approach seeking students be active participants in their learning process, and tries to offer them surmountable challenges to learn while being intrinsically motivated—through learning by doing. Again, playful approaches include experimentation with uncertainty—through doing by playing. As particular instances of creative endeavors, they offer students joyful moments of discovery and possibilities to learn in a novel, but safe and failure-free situation and environment. This exploratory study presents new ideas on how playful learning methods, such as playful approaches may be used in higher education to contribute to the formation of playful resilience through playful activation. To substantiate this argument, we propose that playful learning approaches are similar to those used in the context of entrepreneurial education that aim to support the growth of a flexible, entrepreneurial mindset among students. Our suggestions for using playful approaches in higher education focus particularly on how a combination of playful tactics, tools, and tasks allow students to ideate, innovate, and create solutions to novel challenges. The contribution of the study is in linking the previously unconnected areas of higher education, playful approaches, playful resilience, and entrepreneurialism achieved through learning by doing, and doing by playing.

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Liberated through teddy bears: resistance, resourcefulness, and resilience in toy play during the COVID-19 pandemic

Cited by 6 publications

References 8 publications

“Sharing Is Caring”: Participatory Storytelling and Community Building on Social Media Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic

“Sharing Is Caring”: Participatory Storytelling and Community Building on Social Media Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic

Bear in a Window: Australian children's perspectives on lockdown and experiences of the COVID‐19 pandemic

Building playful resilience in higher education: Learning by doing and doing by playing

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