importance of play-Emma Worrolo
Emma Worrolo is an expert speaker, researcher, writer, and author in the topic of play. She is very relaxed and informal, making her very genuine and approachable. I recently had a guest lecture with Emma which really had me invested in what she does. That is what I will be writing about today. She started her career in market research, more specifically qualitive research, working in a sector called consumer insights which is something that I would not particularly want to do but where it took her is what interests me. She very quickly became a specialist in children's youth, which is something she studied for well over 15 years. She studied how children, more specifically generation alpha, interact with popular culture. She has worked with massive companies such as Disney and Lego, a lot to do with the entertainment space. What she was really trying to do was understand generational shifts, which led her to become an expert in generation alpha which opened a lot of opportunities for her. Emma started her own business at only 27 years old which really shocked me as she was so young, starting as a small freelance business but led to it operating on a larger global scale. She became incubated by a larger agency called pineapple lounge leading to offices in not just London but New York city. Emma ran that business for 11 years, until the pandemic hit, and Emma had her 3rd child. For some reason in my mind, I had the idea that to become successful in this industry me as a woman would have to put off children for an exceptionally long time, but Emma has broken down that stereotype for me. While listening to Emma's journey she was very honest and realistic. She did not just describe her success; she described the burnout that came with it. ‘High pressure but high fun’. Thats when she decided to do something different and specialize in ‘play’, looking at the world through a child’s eyes were her exact words. Play is something I have never heard of but it brought me to research it even deeper to come to realize it was a huge part of the industry directed to not only children but for adults as well. Thats when she decided to start the ‘playful den’, which is what she has been doing for the last 3 years and is still doing. Inside the Den psychologists, researchers, content creators, innovators, writers, and big thinkers collaborate across a range of services. From product ideas, brand campaigns and courses our reach is wide and varied. I had never even heard of the playful den before, but Emma has opened a whole other sector of the industry for me, and I could not thank her enough. My opportunities as a fashion communication student have just considerably increased. I can now answer the question ‘where can my creative learning take me?’ very differently. Everyone should go and look at who she is and what she does because it changed my view on many different things, and I now have a greater knowledge of the industry.
