Anthea Moys

Newcastle, UK

Anthea is an artist, a teacher, a play facilitator, a lifelong learner, runner and a Ph.D candidate at Northumbria University. Anthea wears many hats, but her main interest lies in the diverse streams of playful practice as an artist/facilitator/researcher/teacher in a variety of contexts. In 2008 she completed her Masters at Wits with a focus on play and performance in public space. In 2013 she won the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Performance Art (inaugural) where she created her “Vs.” series, which embraced failure and reimagined winning as the act of learning itself. She has travelled widely as an artist and play facilitator. In May 2015 she participated in the Johannesburg Pavilion residency at the 56th Venice Biennale. In April 2017 Anthea was the keynote speaker for CounterPlay festival in Denmark and more recently she was a resident artist and researcher at The Capital of Children as part of the LEGO Foundation in Denmark. Anthea is now in the 2nd year of her practice-as-research PhD with a focus on play (watch this space!). Anthea currently lives, learns, works and plays in Newcastle, U.K.

Every day play raises the quality of my life in that it nudges me to approach things differently: upside down or with music or more slowly – through iterative processes, or with great gusto and joy. Every day play saves me a little as it reminds me to laugh at myself and not take myself so seriously. Every day play reminds me to get out of my own way!

Two truths and a lie about Anthea:
I speak 5 languages, enjoy conducting zoom meetings in masks and dancing like a wild thing when out of the frame.