Page 1074 - Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Coverage Book 2023-24

GameCity festival in Nottingham. Photograph: Ash Bird

Since the closure of the celebratory Nottingham GameCity event in 2016, most video
game live events have become boisterous, noisy affairs where aromatic punters vie for a
quick go on the games of tomorrow. The Humanise festival of Play is an attempt to
wrench the video game festival from the clutches of the marketers. It will transform the
Cumbrian town of Kendal and its surroundings into a playable map filled with
diversions real and virtual. The hope, its organisers say, is to resituate play in the
physical world and thereby to “reconnect games to the human experience”. Whether
players can be so easily prised from their screens remains to be seen. SP

This article was amended on 8 January 2024. An earlier version said Judy Chicago’s
show at the Serpentine Gallery would be her first major exhibition in Britain. It should
have said “in London”; her work was previously shown at the Baltic in Gateshead in
2019.