Last Thursday, students, faculty and community members gathered in Kresge Auditorium for a lecture from Cas Holman, a New York-based designer and author.

The lecture, titled “The Power of Play,” is part of the many academic talks hosted by the Bowdoin Library, made possible by the Harold and Iris Chandler Lectureship Fund.

Erin Valentino, associate librarian for research and chair of the fund, spoke about its purpose of bringing intellectually stimulating and insightful speakers to campus.

“The Chandler Fund was created in connection with the [Chandler] room to support the arts and technology on campus. So it’s [a] very loose scope, in terms of what the fund is about, but we usually use it to support lecturers that we feel will be of broader interest to the campus,” Valentino said.

The lecture itself grappled with the idea of open-ended play: engaging in some form of fun with minimal constraints and without a guaranteed outcome. Holman introduced the concept of play by discussing her past and ongoing projects and designs—many of which are geared toward children.

One of her acclaimed projects is Rigamajig, a collection of wooden pieces, structures and miscellaneous tools intended to promote engineering skills, problem-solving and creativity in young minds.

Rigamajig takes inspiration from the traditional understanding of play by allowing the user to create anything they can imagine. The toy encourages users to abandon societal norms and pursue their own interpretations.

In this sense, Holman challenges us to consider her work not as designing “toys” but rather designing products that facilitate open-minded playfulness.

By bringing Rigamajig into classrooms and educational curricula over the years, Holman observed that the challenge and conflict resolution created by such an ambiguous product initiated the kind of imaginative thinking she aspires to nurture through her work. She hopes to see a world where children approach collaboration and play with a willingness to explore abnormality.

In addition, Holman has dedicated her work to themes of social justice. For example, she has worked to support an ongoing initiative to build a park in Reynosa, Mexico at the Senda de Vida shelter, where many migrants and asylum seekers reside. Building off her idea of open-ended play, especially in an environment susceptible to cartel violence and extreme climate conditions, Holman has mapped out a playground design for children to peacefully engage with their peers.

While her projects primarily pertain to children, Holman also discussed  open-ended play with relevance to an older audience.

In 2025, Holman co-authored “Playful” alongside science writer Lydia Denworth. The book challenges the regimented paradigm by which many adults lead their lives, instead suggesting more intentional explorations of play.

To further this argument, Holman suggests a taxonomy of different forms of play and their applications to daily life, with some examples including meditative and creative play.

Attendee Melanie Missias-Manning ’30 had a lingering question after the lecture about reforming educational institutions from controlled entities to more inquisitive, exploratory spaces.

“It’s all about getting to the next step in your life, and not about having fun along the way,” Missias-Manning said. “How do we convince more institutions that they should invest in play instead of … what has more return on investment?”

Toward the end of her lecture, Holman made a similar argument. Even though, as a society, we are comfortable with traditional education because it is familiar, Holman poses the question of how learning can be approached in a way that isn’t controlled or fixed. This is especially seen in the Senda de Vida initiative, where the sheltered community lacks the traditional classroom setting for a controlled education.

Another attendee, Josie Brooks ’30, reflected on how she implements open-ended play in her own life as well as how she sees the Bowdoin community doing the same.

“I think being outdoors … is play for a lot of people, because we’re detaching from work or computers,” Brooks said. “I feel like it’s a great way to similarly connect with others, and there’s no end purpose to it, other than just forming connections.”

While Holman’s lecture was directed toward students, Valentino emphasized that Holman’s research went hand-in-hand with one of the Bowdoin Library’s new initiatives. Valentino asks us to reconsider the role of a library as not just a vessel of information but also as an invigorating space meant to foster knowledge, creativity, imagination and most importantly—play.

“One of the things [Holman] is talking about is using different processes, because [when] we use the same process, we get the same answer. But if we broaden the ask [to], ‘What does a library do for a campus community?’ … we imagine it more playfully. And play always involves people, right? I mean, ‘What would attract people to want to use the space? What would make it delightful and comfortable and intriguing and the variety of things that people need from it—for their work but also their well-being?’” Valentino said.