Issue 61

Kinfolk’s Sixty First Issue examines play as a way to move through adulthood with greater joy, curiosity and wonder. “We don’t ever lose the desire to play; we’re just socialized to stop playing in certain ways,” Mia Sundstrom, who leads the National Institute for Play, explains to us on page 154. Throughout the issue, we explore pathways to play, including expert advice on rediscovering your own play type as a busy adult and, failing that, five games devised and demonstrated by artist Carsten Höller for those who don’t know where to begin.

In a study of architects, psychologist Donald MacKinnon found that those considered most creative by their peers were often those who knew how to play; this is certainly true of John Outram, whose over-the-top masterpiece, Sphinx Hill, we visit on page 70. Painters play with color and line—a type of immersive flow state our fashion editorial explores on page 60. And musicians improvise and experiment, a process familiar to the band Balming Tiger (interviewed on page 78), whose alternative approach to K-pop subverts the genre’s perfectly synchronized image.