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The R&D phase of JIAS is supported by Creative Scotland's Go See Share fund, which enabled JIAS founder Anthea Moys to travel to Denmark to participate in CounterPlay 2026  — an international festival of play — and to interview nine practitioners whose conversations form this podcast series. The podcast series was produced with support from Altered Lens (Johannesburg, South Africa) and the Really Terrible Orchestra (Edinburgh), whose rehearsals open and close every episode. This website was designed by Francis Burger (Johannesburg, South Africa).

The Joyful Institute of Adequate Studies Podcast.

Episode 8. Jennifer Williams — Holding Space


Ep.8. Jennifer Williams — Holding Space


Jennifer Williams is a poet and the director of Utopia Lab at Edinburgh Futures Institute. She describes herself as water. Not passive — but moving through a fixed structure rather than trying to rebuild it.

She has been at the University of Edinburgh for ten years, which she says happened in the blink of an eye.

She told me that adequacy, for her, is about choosing joy as a practice. Not as toxic positivity. As commitment. As the thing you return to, again and again, even when everything around you is pressurised and difficult and collapsing a little.

I participated in a Utopia Lab last year. We breathed. We moved. We picked weeds and painted them together and explored what it means to do nothing. It was, in the middle of a very busy life, a radical act.

Jennifer closes this series not as a conclusion but as an opening. In November, we'll be holding a Utopia Lab together — about dark play, the trickster, and utopia. The conversation continues.

Ps. 

I also asked the interviewees for a game if they wanted to share one, here is Jennifer’s: 

Feeling Your Heart

Objective: Remember That You’re Alive Right Now

Rules: Don’t worry about anything!

Demo: Stop whatever else you are doing, put your hand on your heart, feel your heart beat. You can take deep breaths. The game is finished whenever you feel calm, or as if waves of joy are washing through your body. 



stop drawing