“Philosophy is, or should be, a kind of magic. It is not an escape from but rather a new window—or many windows—onto our lives. It is not so much abstraction as insight and vision. Great philosophers, from the earliest Vedantins to the existentialists, have offered dazzling and disturbing insights and visions, ideas that make our heads spin and make us lose for the moment our everyday orientation and concerns. I hate to think that sense of magic and joy has been lost or abandoned.”
—Robert C. Solomon, The Joy of Philosophy
The value of philosophy is not always visible or accessible to all. The public humanities, as an enterprise, seeks to share the resources of the field with those not already members of academic circles. But its formats have tended to mimic the default forms of academia: lectures followed by Q&A, open research, and op-eds. This makes sense, as professors are generally skilled in writing to the learned and speaking to a quiet audience. While these formats have their place in the public humanities toolbox, they involve preaching to the choir more often than not. If we wish to expand the circle of philosophy, we need to evolve and enrich our methods. The Humanities Challenge, a project of Humanities Washington, is an experiment in structure, design, and engagement, which aims to build a multi-week, scaffolded learning experience into a fun, social game. David Haldeman and I created and launched the game in October 2022, with vital contributions from Sarah Faulkner and colleagues at Humanities Washington.
An Invitation and a Challenge
Originally published in 2022, from October 11 to November 22, the Humanities Challenge is a set of seven weekly activities that seek to make the humanities accessible and active. Playing along as the challenges are published, participants take on a new challenge each week, exploring a different corner of the humanities each time, from having a philosophical conversation with a friend about the idea of freedom to creating a playlist that attempts to capture the breadth of the human experience. Challenges also include resources that invite participants to dive deeper with articles, videos, podcasts, and museum exhibits; these provide the context, history, and analysis that characterize the humanities. Participants can now take part asynchronously at their own pace by downloading the gameboard and challenges here.
The game board’s striking design, inspired by the phases of the moon, symbolizes change and fulfillment, two core themes of the Humanities Challenge. Once a participant completes a challenge, they place a moon-phase sticker on their game board to signify their accomplishment. The custom stickers introduce an element of both light-hearted play and a sense of accomplishment as participants make progress through the challenges. The seven phases of the moon motivate participants to complete what they have started, as a board only partially filled is so much less satisfying than a full one.
The first challenge, “A Playlist for Aliens,” was inspired by the Golden Record launched into space on the Voyager in 1977. This challenge asks participants to communicate the human experience to hypothetical extraterrestrials by creating a music playlist. This is, to put it lightly, a difficult task, but a fun one, asking the participant to think deeply about what they care most about communicating, find songs that would convey their intended meaning, and since they are restricted to a playlist of only twelve, it requires difficult decisions about what to include and what to leave behind. Additionally, the challenge invites audience members to explore the history of the Voyager as well as the Mixtape Museum’s online archives. This hypothetical sci-fi scenario, like so many philosophical thought experiments, provides fertile ground for inquiry.
Later challenges include visits to museums, creating artistic pieces related to the moon, and connecting over meals significant to one’s family and culture. The full list of challenges, in English and Spanish, can be found here.
Design Priorities
Active Humanities
The core aspiration of the project was to create opportunities for the public to do the humanities rather than only learn about the humanities. That is, the Humanities Challenge aspired to be a platform for audiences to take active part in the practices of the humanities: critical thinking, discussion, research and investigation, conceptual analysis, curation, and more. Whether it was by having a philosophical conversation, visiting a museum, or writing a letter, participants were given a permission structure and motivation to step outside of their comfort zone and try something new. The game board, too, involved important active elements. The sticker system, while fun, also provided a way for participants to mark their accomplishments with both a tactile and visual action.
Visual Aesthetic
From the beginning, we prioritized the visual design of the Humanities Challenge. While this may be seen as a surface-level consideration and therefore of no real intellectual value, we understood the aesthetic as a way to capture the attention and curiosity of individuals who had not yet found a home in the humanities. The visuals turned the project into an invitation to new publics rather than presenting the humanities in the same old ways.
One way in which co-creator David Haldeman and I assessed the aesthetic was “the fridge test.” Would someone who was not already in the circle of the humanities be inclined to put the game board on their fridge? That is, would they like the design enough to look at it every day, to display to others in their home, to make it a part of their routine? This is a high bar, but our design partners, The Medium, made this a far more achievable goal.
After many prototypes and discussions, the game board aesthetic evolved into its final form: moody blues, autumnal oranges, and moonlight silvery whites, all in the service of the lunar theme. These coalesced into an intriguing aesthetic that had evoked the idea of change and incorporated hints of the mysterious, speaking to the magic of philosophy, as described by Robert C. Solomon. The resulting design provided a reason for new audiences to inquire further and to take their first steps in the humanities. To this day, when Humanities Washington staff bring the game boards to events, they are, by far, the item that generates the most interest.
Tangible Rewards
While all public humanities projects seek to be valuable to audiences, the Humanities Challenge wanted to make its value abundantly clear to its participants. The challenges honed skills, provided context and history, guided discussion, and motivated participants to boldly take on novel experiences. These rewards showed them that the humanities need not be confined to lecture halls but could be a source of personal development, joy, and fun. The Humanities Challenge sought to instill in participants a sense of intrepid discovery. As a more literal reward, those who completed their challenges and sent in a photo of their completed boards were rewarded with Maeve Chocolate “Moon Rocks” bars, befitting the lunar theme.
Impact
As a game-like crash course, the Humanities Challenge allowed audiences to see the impressive depth of the humanities and its centrality to a full life. In addition to social media postings, print versions of the game board and stickers were mailed to nearly 2,000 households, and the digital versions were sent to Humanities Washington’s email list of over 15,000. We were grateful to see communities taking on the challenges together. For example, the entire staff of the Cowlitz County Library in southwest Washington participated in the challenges as a group. The Spokane County Library shared it with all of their patrons, greatly expanding the reach of the project.
The anecdotes meant even more than the statistics: in response to a challenge to create a work based on the phases of the moon, one participant sent us an illustration she created, depicting the story of her mother’s life. A radio DJ told us the challenge encouraged him to take out his bass clarinet after years of not playing it. Within a day of sending out the first challenge about making a playlist, we received emails and were tagged in a dozen social media posts from people sharing their selections. At Humanities Washington’s annual fundraisers, staff enjoyed witnessing hundreds of attendees craft their “human experience” playlists together at their tables, creating a lively and joyous atmosphere as people shared songs, stories, and ideas.
Challenges of the Challenge
By far, the biggest obstacle was tracking participation. In pursuing a widely distributed, freely accessible, and printed game board, we depended on people self-reporting their progress. We attempted to incentivize this by offering free chocolate bars to those who shared their completed game board with us via social media or email. While we know that at least several hundred individuals participated, we suspect that participation was undercounted, as anecdotal reports of participation came in well after the original seven-week period. In the future, we would likely opt for a different tracking mechanism. This may involve requiring an email address to download the game board or ticking a box next to a pledge saying the participant will do their best to complete the challenge. However, a balance must be struck, as tracking mechanisms can ironically serve as obstacles to participation.
Designing the challenges themselves was itself a challenge. Developing active tasks with only textual guidance, which would both provide value to the participant and showcase the value of the humanities, involves a lot of needles to thread. As such, the collaboration of our colleagues at Humanities Washington was essential as we playtested and refined each challenge (with special thanks to Violeta Martin and Rachel Jacobson, who led our playtesting).
Experiments in the Public Humanities
The Humanities Challenge was an experiment in prioritizing active engagement, aesthetic design, and tangible rewards to motivate new audiences to take their first steps in the humanities. While not all public humanities projects need to focus on these priorities, the field benefits from experiments and innovation, not just in terms of ideas, but also in structure and design. A plurality of strategies might very well reach a plurality of audiences.
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank David Haldeman (co-creator), Sarah Faulkner (lead contributor), Violeta Martin, Rachel Jacobson, Julie Ziegler, his colleagues and the Trustees at Humanities Washington, Rachel Arteaga, Lane Eagles, The Medium, and Maeve Chocolate for their invaluable contributions to this project.
Stone Addington
Stone Addington holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Washington, where he also now teaches. Stone served as Director of Programs and Deputy Executive Director at Humanities Washington for over seven years. He is the Co-Editor-in-Chief ofQuestions: Philosophy for Young People and a member of the APA Committee on Pre-College Philosophy.
