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League Play Book

League Play Book

League Play Book serves both as documentation of Germaine Koh’s ongoing League project focused on play as a creative practice, and as a kind of workbook that could inspire more invention.

The book is released in free digital edition and a limited-edition bookwork. It is sized for a standard North American three-hole binder, and the bookwork with custom binding is in an edition of 200. Read and download the free PDF at https://germainekoh.com/league-play-book-2025.pdf.

The book is arranged into three sections: Analysis, Plays, and Practice.

The short essays of the Analysis section are written by artists, athletes, scholars, game designers and players who have intimate, lived understanding of the processes of invention and discovery that can develop through play. They share their experiences of the anatomy and dynamics of ingenuity; the culturally radical potential of play; creative mindsets; psychological and cognitive processing; and the situations and settings for discovery. Some analyze the mechanics of how invention and decision-making happen in their fields. Others address how play works to create possibility by revising conventions.

Jesse Birch writes on learning through mimicry in skateboarding, Koh proposes vulnerability and uncertainty as key elements. League collaborator Bruce Emmett shares his recollections of how innovation unfolded at League events in conversation with objects and places. Considering the production of artworks, James Long looks at virtuosic plays of implicit meaning, while Eliot White-Hill narrates his development of work in relation to the traditional forms of his Coast Salish heritage. Revising social conventions, Simona Dolinská describes the potential of neurodivergent play and Elizabeth Nijdam considers critical play. Focusing closely on decision-making, Ian Verchère analyzes the mechanics of progression in games and action sports, Lindsey Freeman writes on the mind games of distance running, and Meaghan Hackinen traces some decision-making in emergent sport.

The Plays section collects case studies written by participants, which outline the creative processes that produced some of League’s events and products. These are not recipes, but they do try to identify the key ingredients, conditions and prompts that encouraged creative decisions.

The Practice section includes worksheets, rooms for notes, and space for users to record their own plays.

League Nanaimo

Pawns, 2025, found and altered objects, crate and trunk

 Pawns, 2025, found and altered objects, crate and trunk

Nanaimo Art Gallery and off-site
1 August – 5 October 2025

From Nanaimo Art Gallery website: League Nanaimo is a project led by Vancouver and Saltspring Island based artist Germaine Koh that unites creative process and play. Community members of all ages are invited to gather and exercise creativity by developing new games and sports through iterative, embodied activities. Games evolve organically as they are played, and strategies emerge through trial and improvisation, and sometimes new tools are invented on the fly.

Koh’s playful art installation turns Nanaimo Art Gallery into an experimental arena of sorts where visitors are welcome to jump, throw, dance, run, and touch; all actions that are usually frowned upon in art museums. In this space, that is a cross between a hockey rink, a dance hall, a tennis court, and an archery range, you are invited to interact with objects and markings, and with each other, and could find yourself developing your own games.

The Gallery also serves as a hub for community outreach as the artist and Gallery facilitators bring League Nanaimo into the broader community. During the run of the exhibition, League activities not only take place in the gallery, but also at Nanaimo parks. Listings of events are available on our website, and at the Gallery.

Launched by Germaine Koh in 2012, League is an art project that shares creative process rather than finished artworks. Processes of learning, adapting, and iterating are central to the overall concept. League invites us to experience the similarities between the improvisation, negotiation, reflection, and critical thinking that happen both in sport and art-making. The project is based in a belief that games, sport and play are serious forms of problem-solving and even problem-making.

League Nanaimo is the third exhibition through which Nanaimo Art Gallery asks the question: How can we play together?