School
for
Poetic
Computation
Drawing on critical perspectives from urban planners, historians, game designers, anarchist thinkers, skate academics, and beyond, we examine what play is, how it manifests, and expand our imagination for its expressive, creative, and political potential. Students will then pursue projects to incorporate these critical perspectives of play—broadly construed—to explain a concept they’re interested in teaching or translating.
Images courtesy of teachers.
How does play manifest in your day to day life? How can you utilize play as a tool to imagine political, pedagogical, and urban possibilities? Is playfulness different from gamification? In this class, we examine play as a pedagogy for educational interventions, both critically and practically. In the first half of the class, we draw on writing from urban planners and historians, game designers, anarchist thinkers, skateboarding scholars, and beyond to examine what play is, how it manifests, and its expressive, creative, and political potential. Students will develop their own project using play—broadly construed—to translate, communicate or critique a topic they care about. Students will propose, build, and playtest a prototype of their project by the end of class.
We draw on existing playable explainers, games, and critical interventions and discuss the tradeoffs between pedagogical, educational, and creative priorities in our and other people’s work. Final projects can build on students' existing skills and interests and may take digital or non-digital forms. No prior coding experience is required, but students with coding experience are welcome—and encouraged—to leverage it.
This class may be for you if you:
This class may NOT be for you if you:
Alia ElKattan is a researcher and creative technologist whose work examines the sociopolitical implications of online platforms and emerging technologies. She obtained her Ph.D. at NYU Politics, where her research focused on how the design of technology mediates the acquisition of political information, and how to motivate and safeguard responsible, healthy, and critical engagement with emerging technologies such as large language models and conversational agents. Her creative practice leverages play and interactive storytelling to demystify opaque technologies and expand public imaginaries of alternative technological futures. Alia is a grantee of the Responsible Technology Youth Power Fund and a two-time winner of Mozilla Foundation’s Creative Media Award for work on AI bias, data transparency, user choice in algorithmic feeds. When not writing code or papers, ElKattan can most often be found playing football (soccer), skateboarding, or making playlists.
she/her
I'm Fred Wordie, an artist, writer, and co-funder of a Luddite Club who's playful work explores how we have embodied the values efficiency, rationality and frictionless, that are core to our Technological Society, and is attempting to reject them one spelling mistake, wrong turn and typewriter repair at a time.
He/Him
Applications open until Applications closed on November 16, 2026.
You can expect to hear back from us about the status of your application on . Please email us at admissions@sfpc.study with any questions you have.
For 10 classes, it costs $1200 + processing fees, for a one-time payment. We also offer payment plans. Participants can schedule monthly payments of the same amount. First and last payments must be made before the start and end of class. *Processing fees apply for each payment.
SFPC also offers scholarships to attend for $600, $300, $100 or even $0. Over half of our students receive some form of scholarship. Our application will ask you how much tuition you are able to afford and if we accept you, you will only have to pay that amount. Learn more about scholarships at SFPC here.
For more information about what we look for in applicants, scholarships, and other frequently asked questions, please visit our applicant FAQ.
Interested in more learning opportunities at the School for Poetic Computation? Join our newsletter to stay up to date on future sessions and events, and follow us on Instagram and Twitter. Support our programming through scholarships. Get in touch over email.
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