PLAY: Imagination and Worldbuilding

In her book Reimagined Worlds: Narrative Placemaking for People, Play, and Purpose, former Disney Imagineer Margaret Kerrison addresses that "in every environment, in every experience, we (people) want to immerse ourselves in a narrative and to feel it… We want to feel connected, to feel human. We seek these places in our lives." [1]

Connection and belonging from experience building and the wish fulfillment of ritual prevail throughout human history.  The need for rituals and wish fulfillment stems from a deep human desire to feel a sense of control over our lives, to mark significant moments, and to actively engage with our hopes and aspirations.  We often engage in this way by performing symbolic actions that can provide psychological comfort and a belief that our wishes might be realized, even if the fulfillment is not directly caused by the ritual itself; essentially, it's a way to manifest desires and connect with a larger purpose or meaning.

'Immersive storytelling' leans into imagination and world building as a means of connecting to others through wish fulfillment; it is "when we use tools and techniques to transport our audience into a different time, place, story, and most importantly emotional state." [2]

According to Kerrison, the best examples of this emerging discipline share five characteristics:

1. Emotional
2. Engage all senses
3. Create a believable sense of time and place
4. Invite us to participate and play
5. Promote social interaction

Creating an immersive narrative helps to answer the fundamental question for an audience or consumer: why should I care about your experience? Why should I devote my time, attention, energy and money to it?  More importantly, how can imagination and world building cultivate shared space of connection, safety, and belonging to make sense of chaos?  How can imagination, world building, play, and immersive narratives "make us feel more connected not only to ourselves but to each other as a society and as a whole?"