Play Make Learn 2026 Registration Open NOW!

Calling all creatives, educators, librarians, games & learning practitioners, and education researchers!

Play Make Learn is getting ready to bring you the best in research and practice on educational games, making, arts, playful learning, creative education, and more! The Play Make Learn Conference is a place for collaboration and discovery in the design, research and practice of playful learning, games for learning and positive social impact, making and makerspaces, STEAM education, and arts in education. PML creates an inspirational space for preK-12 educators, designers, developers, innovators, librarians, museum professionals, makers, and researchers to tinker together, share knowledge, and celebrate one another’s work – each year!

Play Make Learn 2026 will be hosted on July 9^th and 10^th (with optional pre-conference activities on July 8^th) the at the beautiful Memorial Union on the historic University of Wisconsin-Madison campus in Madison, WI.

 Register Now!

• Registration is open now (until we sell out) — but don’t wait! Register by May 29, 2026 to secure the Early-Bird discount. Play Make Learn has sold out for multiple years in a row; don’t miss your chance to attend! We have different pricing options available.
  
  

Call for Proposals still open!

• You are invited to submit a proposal to present at the Play Make Learn Conference! Applicants will be asked to select themes that applies to their proposal, including: Playful learning, Games for learning and positive social impact, Making and makerspaces, STEAM education, and Arts in education. There are multiple session “formats” to choose from for your proposal, including: Hands-on Workshop (75 minutes, 1-6 presenters), Organized Panel Presentation (75 minutes, 3-4 presenters), Individual Presentation (15 minutes, 1-2 presenters), Poster, Playful Demo, or a “Break the Mold” session. For more details about session strands and formats, please visit our Call for Proposals webpage.
  
  
• In the interest of providing diverse perspectives any individual will be limited to participating in a maximum of two sessions. Posters and Arcade Demos do not count towards this maximum.
  
  
• Sessions should focus on new insights, learnings and innovations of broad interest to the PML community and should not be promotional in nature. If you are a for-profit company interested in showcasing your product to the PML audience, please reach out to conferences@education.wisc.edu for sponsorship opportunities.
  
  
• We believe that everyone has unique contributions to bring to the conference. PML aspires to foster a learning community that has a diversity of perspectives and practices. Are you a first time presenter, young person, or practitioner considering submitting for Play Make Learn and need additional support? Reach out to our planning team at: conferences@education.wisc.edu.
  
  

 This year's conference theme: “Scrappiness”

• Setting out to create something involves both big dreams and many obstacles. We quickly run into time constraints, limited materials, access challenges, administrative rules, and the inertia of how things have always been done. We push against that resistance. We fight to get in and get on with it. We are scrappy. We pull from the bottom of our own buckets of energy. We are outsiders, leftovers, left-outs. We are educators who deserve more but make do. We are makers who build with the materials at hand. We are inventors who cobble together rules to turn our surroundings into a game.
  
  
• “Scrappiness” means using whatever is around us—the trash, the leftovers, the scraps. We cut construction paper and leave tiny bits behind. We make a meal and compost eggshells and orange peels. Those leftovers become opportunities to make again, to play, and to learn. A cardboard box becomes a rocket ship. Compost becomes soil for a community garden. From scraps, we create beautiful art, meaningful experiences, and community.
  
  

Questions? You can email organizers at conferences@education.wisc.edu or connect with Chris.Baker@dpi.wi.gov!

Neon Art Show Program Collaboration

Nick Andrews, director in Elmwood  (population 810) recently shared the following message to the Youth Services listserv in IFLS and Leah Langby shared it with us.  What a great collaboration and fun program!

Nick shares:

I just wanted to share an art collaboration with my local elementary art teacher. They had five classroom's worth of glow-in-the-dark artwork, and a handful of black lights. I had a place to show it all off, the time to help put it all up, and the willingness to spend $60 on LED light strips and glow in the dark balloons. Between the two of us, we planned out where it would go, talked it up to all our school families, and placed all the art and lights. Additional props to the art teacher's kids, who helped me get all the balloons inflated.

Then we had the regular lights off for two hours this evening, and nearly 100 people came through to see the show! (those are excellent numbers for us, I'm really excited )

Partly I'm bragging because I had so much fun with so many of my student artists, but I also wanted to mention how far this went with just a handful of conversations with my local art teacher and a willingness (and capacity) to help turn the library into a gallery.

Don't Delay - YSS Webinar on Nov 14

 

Free for WLA members; $25 for non-members 

Visit the YSS page on the WLA website to learn more and register here 

Islands of Brilliance is a Milwaukee-based non-profit that uses art and creative technologies to empower autistic and neurodivergent individuals and open pathways to employment and independence. The Fellowship is one of the newest programs from IOB, which focuses on transition-age participants in six mid and small-size cities across the state. In this webinar, three staff members will share insights about The Fellowship program design and implementation, as well as key insights about supporting and engaging neurodivergent youth and young adults within community spaces.

Presenters:
Dr. Kate Siekman: Director of Learning and Outcomes
Kate has 12 years' experience in education and autism therapy. With teaching licenses in alternative and special education and a doctoral degree in occupational therapy, Kate has cultivated a passion for alternative access to learning. Kate seeks the best educational experiences for the students and families she serves, using her creativity in pedagogy to deliver dynamic student outcomes.

Natalie Derr: Lead Creative Technologist
Artist and experimental creative Natalie Derr aims to use her background in Digital Studio Practice and Painting and drawing as a tool for creative intervention in the exploration of students' identities. As IOB’s Creative Technologist, Natalie is passionately curious about our diverse imaginations and how to exercise empathy by sharing artwork.

Mark Fairbanks: Cofounder and Executive Director of Islands of Brilliance
Mark leads a devoted team of education and design professionals at Islands of Brilliance. Since the launch of the program in the fall of 2012, along with his wife Margaret he has guided the organization through constant evolution and growth.

Prior to Islands of Brilliance, a 27-year career in advertising, design, and digital saw Mark working for notable creative boutiques in Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Chicago. During this period his work appeared in The One Show, Communication Arts, Graphis, and The Obies, while also receiving acclaim in Adweek, Creativity, and The New York Times. He was a member of the Creative Alliance, a cohort of notable agency creatives and agencies working on social impact initiatives during the final two years of the Obama Administration.

Don't Forget to Register for Nov 14 YSS Webinar

 

Free for WLA members; $25 for non-members 

Visit the YSS page on the WLA website to learn more and register here 

Islands of Brilliance is a Milwaukee-based non-profit that uses art and creative technologies to empower autistic and neurodivergent individuals and open pathways to employment and independence. The Fellowship is one of the newest programs from IOB, which focuses on transition-age participants in six mid and small-size cities across the state. In this webinar, three staff members will share insights about The Fellowship program design and implementation, as well as key insights about supporting and engaging neurodivergent youth and young adults within community spaces.

Presenters:
Dr. Kate Siekman: Director of Learning and Outcomes
Kate has 12 years' experience in education and autism therapy. With teaching licenses in alternative and special education and a doctoral degree in occupational therapy, Kate has cultivated a passion for alternative access to learning. Kate seeks the best educational experiences for the students and families she serves, using her creativity in pedagogy to deliver dynamic student outcomes.

Natalie Derr: Lead Creative Technologist
Artist and experimental creative Natalie Derr aims to use her background in Digital Studio Practice and Painting and drawing as a tool for creative intervention in the exploration of students' identities. As IOB’s Creative Technologist, Natalie is passionately curious about our diverse imaginations and how to exercise empathy by sharing artwork.

Mark Fairbanks: Cofounder and Executive Director of Islands of Brilliance
Mark leads a devoted team of education and design professionals at Islands of Brilliance. Since the launch of the program in the fall of 2012, along with his wife Margaret he has guided the organization through constant evolution and growth. Prior to Islands of Brilliance, a 27-year career in advertising, design, and digital saw Mark working for notable creative boutiques in Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Chicago. During this period his work appeared in The One Show, Communication Arts, Graphis, and The Obies, while also receiving acclaim in Adweek, Creativity, and The New York Times. He was a member of the Creative Alliance, a cohort of notable agency creatives and agencies working on social impact initiatives during the final two years of the Obama Administration.

Wisconsin Arts Board Grant Program

Thanks for the tip from NFLS Nic News Weekly 8/23/24!

Learn about grant programs for library programs with an art component, including:

Creation and Presentat​ion Grants

Creation and Presentation Program grants provide artistic program and operational support to established nonprofit arts organizations whose primary mission is to create or present ongoing arts programming that makes a significant local, regional, or statewide impact on the cultural life of Wisconsin, and that furthers the Arts Board's community development and arts education goals. Next Deadline: October 2024​​

Woodland Indian Arts

The Woodland Indian Arts Program ​is designed to promote and develop a foundation of cultural and economic support for traditional and contemporary Native American arts in Wisconsin. As part of this work, the Arts Board annually distributes funds from Gaming Compact monies to support artistic activities among Wisconsin's tribes, bands and urban Indian communities. Please contact WI Arts Board staff​ before submitting an application to this program. Next Deadline: October 2024

Creative Communities Grants

The Creative Communities Program encourages arts education, cultural understanding, and​ community arts development in Wisconsin. It provides support for projects that further the Arts Board's goals in the following three areas: Arts Education; Folk and Traditional Arts; and Local Arts. The application is in two phases. Next Deadline for Phase 1 Applications: February 2025. Next Deadline for Phase 2 Applications: April ​​2025

Arts Challenge Initiative

The ACI Capacity Building for Minority Organizations Grant Program works with Wisconsin's racially diverse nonprofit arts organizations to build their organizational capacity and long-term sustainability. Only eligible nonprofit organizations with substantial policy, management and artistic control by members of the African-American, Hispanic-American, Native American, or Asian-American communities can apply to this program. This means that the majority of the artists, board, and administrative staff of the applicant are of the community of color on which the organization focuses its primary mission/service. Please contact WI Arts Board staff​ before submitting an application to this program. Next Deadline: TBD

Mark Your Calendars - YSS Webinar in November

Free for WLA members; $25 for non-members 

Visit the YSS page on the WLA website to learn more and register here 

Islands of Brilliance is a Milwaukee-based non-profit that uses art and creative technologies to empower autistic and neurodivergent individuals and open pathways to employment and independence. The Fellowship is one of the newest programs from IOB, which focuses on transition-age participants in six mid and small-size cities across the state. In this webinar, three staff members will share insights about The Fellowship program design and implementation, as well as key insights about supporting and engaging neurodivergent youth and young adults within community spaces.

Presenters:
Dr. Kate Siekman: Director of Learning and Outcomes
Kate has 12 years' experience in education and autism therapy. With teaching licenses in alternative and special education and a doctoral degree in occupational therapy, Kate has cultivated a passion for alternative access to learning. Kate seeks the best educational experiences for the students and families she serves, using her creativity in pedagogy to deliver dynamic student outcomes.

Natalie Derr: Lead Creative Technologist
Artist and experimental creative Natalie Derr aims to use her background in Digital Studio Practice and Painting and drawing as a tool for creative intervention in the exploration of students' identities. As IOB’s Creative Technologist, Natalie is passionately curious about our diverse imaginations and how to exercise empathy by sharing artwork.

Woodzick: Statewide Outreach Manager
Woodzick holds an MFA in Contemporary Performance and has 18 years of experience as an arts educator and digital marketer specializing in new media. They are passionate about amplifying the voices of fellow neurodivergent artists and are the proud co-host of the Brilliant Voices podcast.

Celebrating Creativity in the Time of a Pandemic

If we could ask kids around the world what they’re thinking and feeling right now, what would they say? Action for Media Education (AME) is inviting young people from 3-19 and their families to participate in an international online exhibit of creative work that reflects their lives in this time of COVID-19.”

 

TO learn more, stop at the Corona Multimedia Showcase (https://coronashowcase.org/). Students are encouraged to submit entries between now and October 9^th.

 

The press release plus flyers in English and Spanish are in this Google folder.

Thanks to Monica Treptow, DPI's School Library Media Education Consultant for this link!

WI Water Library Collaborates on Chazen Art Museum Exhibit Educational Materials

Anne Moser, Senior Librarian at Wisconsin's Own Water Library shares:

Wisconsin Sea Grant and WI Water Library are proud to have collaborated with the Chazen Museum of Art at UW-Madison on their exhibition, Plastic Entanglements: Ecology, Aesthetics, Materials. (Sept 13-January 5). The exhibition features contemporary artwork investigating the complex cultural and material nexus that is “plastic.” 

In conjunction with the exhibition, the Wisconsin Water Library and Wisconsin Sea Grant staff have put together materials for students and educators to take a deeper dive into the connection between the art of plastics and the science of marine debris. In addition, through a generous grant from the NOAA Marine Sanctuary Foundation through NOAA Marine Debris, we are able to offer funding for schools to cover their transportation costs for a visit to the museum.

Materials for teaching about marine debris and for visiting the exhibition are available at http://go.wisc.edu/artscienceplastic

Docent tours and our educator materials are geared for students in elementary and middle school. However, the exhibition is appropriate for families and people of all ages. It is through provoking and inspiring to see an artistic expression about the past, present and future of this ubiquitous material. For details on the exhibition itself, please click here.

Art For a Rainy Day

A colleague and I were recently introduced to Rainworks - works of sidewalk art that appear only when it gets wet!

Programming possibilities abound with this biodegradable substance, and I could especially see school-agers and teens loving creating their own sidewalk art, then returning to the library to see it when it rains. Find information about how to create your own rainworks, get ideas, and purchase supplies on the website.

Developmentally Appropriate Art Exploration

Art begets writing and writing and reading go hand-in-hand. When children first learn to hold a crayon or a marker, they are taking some of their first steps towards writing. Zero to Three provides a useful overview of the stages in children's artistic development and how these skills promote writing readiness. Just as with other aspects of child development, the ages given are a range and children may reach different stages at different times. Every child follows their own timetable. This information can be helpful in creating process oriented art activities in the library as a program or as a storytime craft experience. View the Learning to Write and Draw article here.

Finished watercolor doodle art project. Photo credit: Sarah Cournoyer

Intent on exploring the art experience. Photo credit: Sarah Cournoyer

More art resources:

Dresser Public Library has an Artsy Smartsy arts-based early literacy program that Tiffany Meyer shared about during the UnStorytime Programming for Preschoolers session at the Wisconsin Library Association's 2014 Conference. View the session slides here.

The National Association for the Education of Young Children has a great article on How Process Art Experiences Support Preschoolers explaining the characteristics of process-oriented art vs. product-oriented art in a bullet-point list including tips, ideas, and further resources.

The Artful Parent has many ideas that translate well into a library setting.

Art Attack!

I love blogging and social media for the way they make learning about new concepts or initiatives so easy.  One great idea gets posted or tweeted and the snowball rolls on from there.  The connectivity is so immediate and so constant that you almost can't help learning something new to try in your work every day.

Today's "Aha!" moment is from the ALSC blog (ALA's Association for Library Service to Children). Our colleague Heather Accero from the Rochester MN Public Library has a great post about an Art Room they created for kids to explore and make art.

While I love the concept, even more fun is how they found the space to make this room. Heather gave up her office and it was re-purposed!  By looking for ways to include art, they found creative ways to make the space happen.

Rochester is just a short 60-90 minute drive away from La Crosse and Eau Claire and might be worth the stop to visit colleagues in these cities on your way to observe the wonder of the Art Room in Rochester!

Community Art + Food @ the St. Croix Falls Public Library

Many thanks to Cole Zrostlik, Youth Services Librarian, St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin for this guest blog post!

Somebody at the St. Croix Falls Public Library was hungry when we decided to apply for an Ezra Jack Keats minigrant! Inspired by the interests of our Friends of the Library group, some comic-making courses for middle-schoolers that we had been hosting at the library, and a recipe for pancakes that I had created for my college-aged brother, the idea was conceived and the project began to flourish from an idea into a great community arts project!

An entry in the show

In November 2012, we put a call out for recipes and art (any 2D media accepted) from any and all members of the community no matter their age or artistic ability.  Collaborative, class, and family entries were encouraged and the art was not required to be visually related to the recipe. Between December 2012 and March 2013 we held a series of art clubs and classes for kids (including comic-making, collage, and miniature food sculpture) and a collage course for adults/families to encourage submissions to the project and to promote the telling of recipes (just like stories) through visual media and text.

Ham Sauce Recipe!

With 43 total entries, we had a terrific level of participation and enthusiasm for the project. Many of the submissions are steeped in tradition and history, some are quite funny, and all are colorful, interesting to look at up close, and perfectly accent the library space. We had senior citizen to senior-in-high-school to tween to early elementary-aged participation and, being the first art display of its kind at this library, there is an overwhelming sense of pride and curiosity among the kids, adult patrons, and staff at the library.

Headstart created this one!

Our Comic and Graphic Cookbook Art Show officially opened at the end of March and will be on display throughout the library until the end of the summer. Participants will all receive a compilation of the project (a zine!), and the Friends of the Library plan to use the artworks and recipes in a fundraising cookbook to be released at a later date.

All the art from the project can be seen on the SCF Public Library’s Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.584082841604842.1073741827.164112953601835&type=1&l=b7a1ce29fe.

A sincere thank you to the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation for their generous support of ours and other great community arts programs.  Entries for minigrants for libraries and educators of up to $500 must be submitted by March 15 each year, but check out http://www.ezra-jack-keats.org/ for more information!

Caine's Arcade-Inspired Program in Chippewa Falls

 Editor's note;  Many thanks to Colleen Crowley of the Chippewa Falls Public Library for this guest post!

Setting up a cardboard arcade game

After much publicity to the larger community, especially the local elementary schools, it was time for our long awaited Caine's Arcade-inspired event to take place. Let's back up a moment. Does everyone know about Caine? He made the rounds on You-Tube and even PUBYAC, but I don't know how many of us youth librarians have actually created events in our own local communities.

So for those of you who don't know: He was, at the time of discovery, a 9-year-old boy who created a cardboard video arcade in his father's auto parts store in East L.A. After a local film director met him, his story went viral and can be seen at the website: www.cainesarcade.com. Many interesting things have come out of this story, i.e. a Global Cardboard Challenge, as well as the creation of the Imagination Foundation.

The Chippewa Falls Public Library and the local Boys & Girl's Club collaborated to create our own Cardboard Challenge. The library's contribution was my time for the initial publicity, general planning and about an hour or so of my work time each afternoon for three consecutive days. Though this is a tough time of year to get away, with all us planning for our summer reading programs, this event was a long time in the making, so I felt it was important. 

All youth in the community had been invited and we planned it to occur during the public school's spring break week. Though the Boys & Girls Club is geared to youth ages 8-18, the kids that were in attendance were 8-13 year-olds. The room had a lot of floor space, perfect for the kids to spread out and build their creations. I examined the assortment of supplies. The director had saved cardboard boxes for a few months, but none were very big. He said someone had mistakenly recycled the bigger boxes. When I saw that they were all small boxes, I quickly headed over to the appliance store, conveniently located 2 blocks away and got a few giant boxes.  I brought a lot of other things I'd saved, like egg cartons, empty thermal paper cartridges, recycled blue mushroom trays from the store, empty cardboard tubes from book tape and book cover rolls. These were the types of items the kids latched onto the most.

We got started then as a group, by watching the Caine's Arcade video from Caine's Web page and then discussing the various types and genres of arcade games available today, and in the past. I had brought some photos from Wikipedia and Pinterest that I thought might inspire their creations. Then they began to gather supplies. There was a frenzy to get the 'good stuff' and I can see that it might have been helpful for us, as planners, to come up with a better system for handing out the items. There was some disappointment as some of the teams missed out on supplies that they had wanted. But the kids really made do with what they had.

I spent a lot of time cutting the long tubes into 3 & 4-inch pieces for the kids. Knowing this, I would have saved more empty rolls of 2-inch and 4-inch sized book tape rolls for the kids. Ultimately, I think that while it is nice to have the basic cardboard boxes of different sizes, saving and providing the odd things were the most helpful. The kids made unusual things out of these pieces, like skee-ball holes and marble drops.  I had saved some 10 foot long boxes and kids used them for ramps and other ideas.  I had also saved the ends of the boxes that the library's iPads came in and the kids used those as ticket slots and other interesting additions to their games. 

The children created whack-a-mole, bowling, golf, basket-ball (using hand-created tape balls), tube drops, and knock 'em down 'throw' games just to mention a few of the good ideas. One team even created a cleverly designed dunk tank. My favorite was a photo booth. When it took your picture a 'hand-drawn' photo came out of the slot and the resulting picture showed a funny caricature. Impressive artistic ability, all the way around! 

It ended up being quite chaotic when parents came to get their kids. There were so many games that had been created. There simply wasn't enough time to vote on any of them and certainly not enough time for parents to interact with all the kids as we had hoped.

  Still, in the end, I couldn't help but smile. In my eyes, the goal of the event had been reached --it was all about the journey for these kids. Kids jumped in and used their imaginations to create some elaborate  games that were interesting to try out. They learned something new about themselves, and because many had worked together on teams with new people they worked on some important life skills. Many kids also got a chance to use parts of their brain-spatial, logic and creative thinking that perhaps they didn't utilize all the time. I was truly inspired all over again. Organizing community events like this is what makes being a youth librarian worthwhile. For a moment in time, I was part of something bigger and I am grateful everyday for the opportunities, like this one, to be here in this place, in this position.